This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2008)

Result of an airstrike during the Kosovo War

An air strike^[1] is an attack on a specific objective by military aircraft during an offensive mission. Air strikes are commonly delivered from aircraft such as fighters, bombers, ground attack aircraft, attack helicopters, and others. The official definition includes all sorts of targets, including enemy air targets, but in popular use the term is usually narrowed to tactical (small-scale) attack on a ground or naval objective. Weapons used in an airstrike can range from machine gun bullets, missiles, to various types of bombs.

In close air support, air strikes are usually controlled by trained observers for coordination with friendly ground troops in a manner derived from artillery tactics.

History[link]

This section requires expansion.

A-26 airstrike on warehouses in Wonsan during the Korean War

On November 1, 1911, Italian aviator Second Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti dropped four bombs on two Turkish-held oases in Libya, carrying out the world's first air strike as part of the Italo-Turkish War.^[2]

Use of air strikes become extended in World War I. For example at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in 1915 the British Royal Flying Corps dropped bombs on German rail communications.

Collateral damage[link]

Most modern military aircraft such as this F-22 Raptor carry precisely guided munitions which are claimed to decrease the chance of causing collateral damage during an airstrike.

In any air strike, there is a risk of injuring, killing, or destroying non-combatants, allies or non-military buildings. This is called collateral damage.^[3]

Collateral damage can be advantageous by damaging nearby enemy troops and installations. The negative side effects to collateral damage may include the infliction of damage to civilian facilities and accidental injury of friendly troops near the target.

See also[link]

• Aerial bombing of cities
• Aerial warfare
• Air raid (disambiguation)
• Time On Target

References[link]

Scott Pelley
Pelley with President Barack Obama in the Diplomatic Receiving Room of the White House, 2011.
Born	Scott Cameron Pelley (1957-07-28) July 28, 1957 (age 54) San Antonio, Texas, U.S.
Education	Texas Tech University
Occupation	Journalist
Years active	1975–present
Notable credit(s)	60 Minutes 60 Minutes II CBS Evening News

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2009)

Scott Cameron Pelley (born July 28, 1957) is an American television journalist who is currently anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News and a correspondent for the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes. Prior to his 60 Minutes position, Pelley was a correspondent for the 60 Minutes II program and served as CBS News's chief White House correspondent.^[1]

Early life[link]

Born in San Antonio, Texas,^[1] Pelley grew up in Lubbock, where he graduated from Coronado High School and obtained his first job in journalism at the age of fifteen as a copyboy for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Staying close to home, he majored in journalism at Texas Tech University, in Lubbock.^[2]

Family[link]

Pelley is married to the former Jane Boone and has two children, daughter Blair and son Reece. They reside in Darien, Connecticut.^[3]

Career[link]

Early career[link]

Pelley began his career as a broadcast journalist at Lubbock's KSEL-TV in 1975. He moved on to KXAS-TV in Fort Worth in 1978, then jumped to WFAA-TV in Dallas in 1982, remaining there for seven years. In 1985, Pelley's reporting on Guatemalan refugees living in remote jungles of Mexico caught the attention of executives at CBS News, but it would be another four years before Pelley would move to the CBS network.

Scott Pelley, in Antarctica, 2007

CBS News[link]

Pelley's CBS career started in New York City in 1989. Later, he returned to Dallas to cover national affairs from the CBS bureau. Pelley covered the 1990/91 Gulf war, reporting from Baghdad and traveling with the XVIII Airborne Corps in its assault on Iraq and Kuwait. He was assigned to cover the 1992 presidential campaigns of Ross Perot and Bill Clinton, and also reported on such major events as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Branch Davidian siege near Waco, Texas, and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Pelley served as CBS News' Chief White House Correspondent from 1997 to 1999. During that time, President Clinton was impeached by the United States House of Representatives. In covering the investigation of the president, Pelley broke the news that Monica Lewinsky had become a cooperating witness in the investigation conducted by the Office of Independent Counsel. Pelley was also first to report that President Clinton had been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. Later, in 2001, Pelley got the first interview with former president Clinton in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks.

Scott Pelley with President George W. Bush in the Oval Office.

[edit] 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II

In 1999, Pelley left the White House to join 60 Minutes II shortly after its inception. In 2000, Pelley landed the first interview with the new president-elect, George W. Bush. The next year, on the morning of September 11, Pelley reported from the scene of the collapsing World Trade Center towers. In 2002, Pelley landed the only interview with President Bush on the anniversary of 9/11. In 2003, Pelley began filing reports for 60 Minutes on Sunday. He moved to the Sunday edition of the broadcast in 2004.

Scott Pelley interviewing Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke

In recent years Pelley's work has featured reporting on the economic collapse of 2008-2009, on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and reporting on climate change from Antarctica and the Arctic. In 2008, Pelley conducted an interview with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The interview was the first with a Fed Chairman in decades and broke a long standing Federal Reserve tradition. The broadcast was honored with an Emmy Award.

In a 2007 article in USA Today,^{[citation needed]} Pelley told columnist Peter Johnson, "I am looking for epic stories of human struggle, big issues that I can get my arms around — especially in places that are difficult to get to and which most people don't see."

War reporting[link]

Pelley with Darfur refugees, 2006.

Starting with the Persian Gulf crisis of 1990 and the 1991 invasion of Iraq, Pelley has reported extensively from many war zones, including the former Yugoslavia and post-Taliban Afghanistan. In 2003, Pelley and a 60 Minutes team opted out of the Pentagon's embed system and covered the invasion of Iraq independently from the initial strike to the fall of Baghdad. He has returned to Iraq frequently to report on the insurgency. In 2006 and 2007 he filed reports on the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. In his 2007 report, Pelley enlisted the help of a rebel group to organize an armed reconnaissance into Darfur. The story revealed a village that had been destroyed by government forces in their campaign of genocide. The Darfur report was honored with an Emmy Award. In a review of the story, the Washington Times wrote, "The legacy of (Edward R.) Murrow lives at CBS in the daring, long-range investigations of Scott Pelley."

[edit] CBS Evening News

Pelley became the anchor of the CBS Evening News on June 6, 2011, succeeding Katie Couric.^[4][5] CBS's announcement followed media reporting that had pointed to Pelley being the frontrunner for the position.^[6] In his first 9 months in the anchor chair, Pelley gained an additional 821,000 viewers.^[7]

Appraisals[link]

The reviews of Pelley's 60 Minutes work have been generally positive. David Zurawik of The Baltimore Sun wrote in 2007, "If there is a single face of the broadcast, it is now that of Pelley who has done several of the biggest interviews and stories." Allen Neuharth, founder of USA Today, noted that "Pelley threw hardballs" in his 2007 interview with President Bush. Bob Woodward, writing in The Washington Post in 2007, said, "Scott Pelley nailed the crucial question" in his interview with former CIA Director, George Tenet. William F. Buckley, Jr., in the National Review, said "Pelley did fine work" in the Tenet piece. Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times wrote, "the strongest on-air personality of the moment belongs to one of the program's blander faces, Scott Pelley."^[8]

Recognition[link]

In 2011, Pelley's team of producers, photographers and editors won the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for an investigation into the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The story uncovered the troubled history of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the months and days before the 2010 blowout that killed 11 crewmen and unleashed the largest accidental oil spill in history.

In 2009, Pelley's team won its second George Foster Peabody Award for a report on the medical relief organization Remote Area Medical. RAM was created to airdrop doctors and supplies into the developing world, but today it does most of its work setting up free medical clinics for the uninsured in the United States.^[9]

Also in 2009, Pelley's team won the George Polk Award and an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for an investigation of American recycling companies that secretly ship hazardous waste to China. The report exposed an illegal trade that ruins the health of villagers who dismantle discarded computers under medieval conditions.

The Pelley team's reporting on the deaths of civilians during a Marine engagement in Haditha, Iraq, won the 2007 George Foster Peabody Award.^[10] The citation for the award said in part, "This thorough, open-minded investigation of the worst single killing of civilians by American troops since Vietnam put not just the incident into better perspective but the entire Iraq War and the terrible choices it presents both soldier and civilian".^[11]

Pelley has been the correspondent on teams that have won twenty national Emmy Awards from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Their reporting on child slavery in India earned 60 Minutes II the Investigative Reporters and Editors award in 1999. In addition, Pelley's team has won five Edward R. Murrow Awards, bestowed by the Radio and Television News Director's Association and the Writers Guild of America Award.

Pelley serves on the board of directors of the International Rescue Committee, the refugee relief agency headquartered in New York City. He is Co-Chair of the IRC's Board of Overseers.

Pelley was inducted into the Texas Tech University alumni Hall of Fame. He currently serves on the board of the university's College of Mass Communications.

In 2010, Pelley was named to Salon.com's "Men on Top" list alongside Conan O'Brien, Tom Hardy, and Mark Ronson.^[12] "He restores a little of our faith in TV news," writes Salon.com, "while performing hugely important, world-bettering reports along the way."^[12]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Scott Pelley's bio at CBSnews.com

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