Criticisms of US policy from the press pool have grown more intense as Israel's Rafah operation presses forward.

Kirby essentially threw the US military under the bus by suggesting American troops have done worse things than what Israel's military is doing in Gaza. Kirby was initially asked by a reporter what the consequences would be "if there were an American strike on a legitimate terrorist target that ended resulting with 45 civilian deaths and some 200 others injured." Watch the exchange play out:

Kirby then replied, "I can't answer a hypothetical like that."

"But we have conducted airstrikes in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where tragically we caused civilian casualties," he continued.

"We did the same thing. We owned up to it. We investigated it. And we tried to make changes... We tried to learn from it to make changes so that those set of mistakes wouldn't happen again," Kirby continued, in what was at best a deeply awkward defense of Israel.

A lot of online observers highlighted that in trying to defend a foreign country and make it look good amid mounting international criticism, he took a swipe at his own American armed forces.

Kirby may have been referring to an August 2021 drone strike in Kabul that killed an aid worker along with nine members of his family. The Pentagon said it was targeting ISIS-K amid the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan, but among the dead were seven children.

Throughout the prior more than two decade-long US occupation of Afghanistan, there also had been several instances where entire wedding parties were obliterated by American airstrikes, leaving scores of civilians dead.