"50 dead in Pakistan suicide bombing; Blast targets assembly of Taliban foes" by Riaz Khan, Associated Press / December 7, 2010
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The United States is squeezing the insurgents with missiles fired from unmanned drones.
This is the most offensive aspect of the entire war. The thought of missiles whizzing through the air and crashing into houses is horrifying.
The frequency of such attacks has surged under the Obama administration.
Not the change I was looking for.
In the most recent strike, seven people were killed yesterday in a different part of the tribal area from where the suicide bombing took place, Pakistani intelligence officials said....
Yesterday’s US missiles were the latest of more than 100 to hit the area this year.
They struck a shop and a vehicle close to the town of Mir Ali in the North Waziristan region, said Pakistani intelligence officials, on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the media. The identities of the dead were not immediately known.
Then it's murder, isn't it?
US officials do not say whom they are targeting, but some of the attacks are believed to have killed midlevel or senior Taliban and Al Qaeda figures.
Some believed, huh?
Related: US drones killed 2,043 people, mostly civilians, in Pakistan during last five years
But some believe.... sigh.
Pakistan publicly condemns the missile strikes but secretly supports some of them.
That is why the government is hated.
Civilians are sometimes said to be among the dead, but some locals say the strikes are very accurate in targeting militants....
So says my war-promoting newspaper anyway.
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"US set to target Pakistan havens for more attacks; Strategy review sees border as key war issue" by Helene Cooper and David E. Sanger, New York Times / December 17, 2010
WASHINGTON — Administration officials said the increased attacks across the Afghan border would help offset the Pakistani government’s continued refusal to move against the Al Qaeda leadership and their extremist allies, especially the Haqqani network. From havens in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region, those groups have carried out deadly assaults against US troops and have plotted attacks against the West, officials say....
Haqqani and who?
"Haqqani.... credited with introducing suicide bombing to the region.... cultivated as a "unilateral" asset of the CIA and received tens of thousands of dollars in cash for his work.... He may have had a role in expediting the escape of Osama Bin Laden.... In July 2008, CIA officials confronted Pakistan officials with evidence of ties between Inter-Services Intelligence and Haqqani. Haqqani has been accused of involvement in the 2008 Indian embassy bombing in Kabul.... The Haqqani Network is based in Pakistan and is believed to have links to Al Qaeda."
Which "Al-CIA-Duh" would that be, huh?
The made-up "Al-CIA-Duh?"
Or the "Al-CIA-Duh" CREATION for the COURTROOM!?
Related:
Prop 101: Al-CIA-Duh and the OSI
Prop 101: Al-CIA-Duh's Greatest Hits
Prop 101: The "Terrorism" Business
New York Times Admits War on Terror is U.S. Creation
Oh, AmeriKa's MSM KNOWS ALL ABOUT and yet STILL PUSHES the CHARADE, huh?
That means even more strikes using Predator and Reaper drones in Pakistan’s tribal areas, and possibly carrying out special operations along the border....
Related: No Truth to the New York Times
The escalation in Pakistan will largely involve increased drone strikes. The military has also embedded small numbers of special operations troops with Pakistani military units carrying out operations in the tribal areas.
And that isn't counting all the Blackwater types running around.
The Pentagon has rarely blessed cross-border raids from Afghanistan, fearing a sharp backlash for US troops if villagers were killed on Pakistani soil.
They sure have dumped enough missiles and murdered enough people.
At the Pentagon, General James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that the United States would send conventional ground troops into Pakistan on their own only as a last resort....
Translation: It WILL BE HAPPENING SOMETIME SOON!
The July 2011 date to begin withdrawing troops is at the heart of the political quandary Obama faces.
PFFFT!
See: “We are not leaving in 2014.’’
I no longer take withdrawal or peace talk seriously. It is simply a propaganda tactic to make people calm down for a while so the wars can go on.... and on.... and on.... and on....
In announcing his troop increase for Afghanistan a year ago, he insisted that the buildup would be limited to 18 months, and then withdrawals would begin — an effort to quiet his restive base of supporters and put pressure on Afghanistan to speed the training of its own troops.
Like being lied to?
But that training is time-consuming, and while congressional Republicans have backed Obama’s Afghanistan strategy so far, he is facing opposition from members of his own party, who will undoubtedly increase the pressure on him next year to withdraw troops quickly.
I'm tired of excuses and obfuscations.
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"Top spy in Pakistan is pulled by CIA; Identity was revealed in legal complaint" by Mark Mazzetti and Salman Masood, New York Times / December 18, 2010
WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency’s top clandestine officer in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, was removed from the country Thursday amid an escalating war of recriminations between US and Pakistani spies, with some US officials convinced that the officer’s cover was deliberately blown by Pakistan’s military intelligence agency....
As the drama was playing out in Islamabad, the CIA was expanding its covert war 100 miles to the west, using armed drones against militants. Since Thursday, CIA missile strikes have killed dozens of suspects in Khyber Agency, a part of the tribal areas in Pakistan that the CIA had largely spared because of its proximity to the market city of Peshawar....
The US officials said they strongly suspected that operatives of Pakistan’s powerful spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, had a hand in revealing the CIA officer’s identity, possibly in retaliation for a civil lawsuit filed in New York City last month implicating the ISI chief in the Mumbai, India, terrorist attacks of November 2008.
The mistrust between the CIA and ISI, two uneasy but codependent allies, could hardly come at a worse time. The Obama administration’s Afghan war strategy depends on greater cooperation from Pakistan to hunt militants in the country’s western mountains, and yet if Pakistan considers Washington’s demands excessive, it could order an end to the CIA drone campaign....
And that would mean war!
Maybe OBAMA could ORDER and END to them instead, huh?
Mirza Shahzad Akbar, the lawyer who filed the complaint this week, said the case would continue despite the station chief’s absence. He is representing Kareem Khan, a resident of North Waziristan who said that his son and brother were killed in a drone strike. Khan is seeking $500 million in compensation and accusing the CIA officer of running a clandestine spying operation out of the US Embassy in Islamabad.
What was he doing working out of the U.S. Embassy?
A Diplomatic CIA
Then the State Department is just another arm of the CIA, isn't it?
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"Drone attacks fuel culture of retribution, Pakistani tribesmen say; Result in targeting of suspected spies" by Karin Brulliard, Washington Post / December 26, 2010
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Espionage has long been viewed as an egregious offense in the lawless borderland, but residents say the current pace of assassinations is unprecedented. The escalation parallels a surge in CIA drone attacks on North Waziristan, home to a nest of insurgents that includes Al Qaeda....
The escalated drone campaign, which Pakistan secretly allows, followed US pressure on Pakistan to launch a military offensive in North Waziristan. The Pakistani army rejected those appeals, saying it is overstretched in other combat zones and needs time to plan an operation.
American officials say those reasons are valid, but many also believe Pakistan is unwilling to jeopardize its longtime links to the Haqqani network.
Do you SEE WHY I TIRE of reading the PAPER?
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More innocent souls sacrificed on the AmeriKan altar of lies:
"US strikes kill 18 militants, Pakistan says" by Associated Press / December 28, 2010
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan — Suspected US missiles struck two vehicles in a Taliban stronghold on Pakistan’s side of the border with Afghanistan yesterday, killing 18 alleged militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
The attack in the North Waziristan tribal region came in the final days of a year that has witnessed an unprecedented number of such strikes from drone aircraft flying over Pakistani soil, part of a ramped-up US campaign to take out Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters seeking sanctuary outside Afghanistan.
At least 110 such missile strikes have been launched this year — more than doubling last year’s total....
It is hard to believe; however, Obama is worse than George Bush.
The six missiles fired yesterday struck the vehicles in the Shera Tala village of North Waziristan....
Isn't that overkill?
The vehicles were apparently leaving a compound, and one was carrying a large load of ammunition, magnifying the blasts from the missile strikes, the intelligence officials said.
The three intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media on the record....
But if you blog anonymously.... sigh.
US officials say the drone-fired strikes are very accurate and usually kill militants....
Those must be "some locals" from the article above.
Pfffft!
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Related:
Pakistanis protest civilian deaths in U.S. drone attacks
Victims of U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan took to the streets for the first time here Friday, as a new report claims that there are significant numbers of civilian casualties from the strikes and a lawsuit seeks hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from the CIA for those mistakenly injured or killed.
Never saw that in my paper.
I did see these:
Pakistani action on militants praised
Mullen upbeat on Pakistan, militants
Missile Strike Memory Holes:
"UN report faults secrecy in CIA’s drone campaign" by Peter Finn, Washington Post | June 3, 2010
WASHINGTON — A senior United Nations official said yesterday that the United States should halt the CIA’s drone campaign against Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan, charging that the official secrecy surrounding the strikes violates the legal principle of international accountability.
Translation: They are WAR CRIMES!
But a report by Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, stopped short of declaring the CIA program illegal.
Why?
Alston presented a 29-page report to the UN’s Human Rights Council in Geneva yesterday that focused on so-called targeted killings by countries such as Russia and Israel, as well as the United States.
“It is an essential requirement of international law that states using targeted killings demonstrate that they are complying with the various rules governing their use in situations of armed conflict,’’ Alston said in a press release.
“The greatest challenge to this principle today comes from the program operated by the US Central Intelligence Agency. . . . The international community does not know when and where the CIA is authorized to kill, the criteria for individuals who may be killed, how it ensures killings are legal, and what follow-up there is when civilians are illegally killed.’’
Try no follow up.
Alston noted that some commentators have argued that CIA personnel involved in drone killings are committing war crimes because, unlike the military, they are “unlawful combatants.’’ But he said “this argument is not supported’’ by international humanitarian law.
Which was written by and for imperial mass murders.
“Without discussing or confirming any specific action or program, this agency’s operations unfold within a framework of law and close government oversight,’’ said George Little, a CIA spokesman. “The accountability’s real, and it would be wrong for anyone to suggest otherwise.’’
CIA issued a comment?
In a speech in March, Harold Koh, the legal adviser to the State Department, said “the US is in armed conflict with Al Qaeda as well as the Taliban and associated forces in response to the horrific acts of 9/11 and may use force consistent with its right to self-defense under international law.’’
That no longer flies anymore, sorry. Too many lies told for too long.
Alston said the statement was “an important starting point’’ but did not address some central legal questions, including the scope of the conflict, who can be killed, and the existence of safeguards to ensure the “legality and accuracy of killings.’’
And that's pretty much where it ended.
Alston said the US military has a relatively public accountability process.
But he observed that nations are permitted to attack only civilians who directly participate in hostilities and argued that the military’s targeting of drug traffickers in Afghanistan is inconsistent with international humanitarian law.
Alston said the failure of states “to disclose their criteria for [directly participating in hostilities] is deeply problematic because it gives no transparency or clarity about what conduct could subject a civilian to killing.’’ He said key military states should convene with the International Committee of the Red Cross to address the issue.
And he argued that it is in the interest of the United States to have clear international rules on targeted killings as more and more states obtain drones with the ability to fire missiles.
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The on-the-ground results?
"US report faults drone operators in civilian deaths; Grave errors made in air strike that killed 23 Afghans" by Dexter Filkins, New York Times | May 30, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan — The US military released a scathing report yesterday on the deaths of 23 Afghan civilians, saying that “inaccurate and unprofessional’’ reporting by a team of Predator drone operators helped lead to an inadvertent air strike this year on a group of innocent men, women, and children.
It's called MURDER, folks!
The report said that four US officers, including a brigade and battalion commander, had been reprimanded, and that two junior officers had also been disciplined....
How harsh!
The episode, in which three vehicles were attacked and destroyed in February, illustrated the extraordinary sensitivity to the inadvertent killing of noncombatants by NATO forces....
The deaths also highlighted the hazards in relying on remotely piloted aircraft to track suspected insurgents.
Related: Obama's Airstrike Scalpel
Doesn't anyone know mass murderers should not be given weapons?
In this case, as in many others where drones are employed by the military, the people steering and spotting the targets sat at a console in Creech Air Force Base, Nevada.....
Related: US Training Terrorists in Nevada
We are killing our own guys?
Sure is a good way to keep a war going though.
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