During WWII the US spent considerable time and money developing incindiary bombs. We then firebombed 4 of the major cities of Japan, including Tokyo and Kobe, as well as cities in Germany.

The Tokyo raid alone, by itself, in one raid, killed over 250,000 civilians. The source of that number is a book written by Gen. Curtis LeMay.

These raids were directed at those civilians. Any damage to a military target could be called "collateral", as it would have been incidental to the real reason for the raid.

At the time the Japanese had a uniformed army against which the US was fighting a declared war. And by that time the war was over. Japan was beaten, had the US not done another thing but mopped up various islands Japan was done for. Would have starved.

AND, there had been a bitter war, unbelievable cruelties on both sides, it's impossible to second-guess the on site commanders and political leadership.

An interesting thing about the Palestinian situation is that they know there will be Israeli reprisals, and apparently don't care. They must feel their situation is so desperate it just doesn't matter any more. That's pretty desperate.

Arf