But hey Boxy!...Let's celebrate the 'Arab Spring' in Egypt...I'm sure you totally support the new (democraticly elected) Muslim Brotherhood celebration of lauching rockets into Israel. http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012.....ttack-on-israel.html
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
"We are at war you dummy...Have your forgotten about Afganistan?"
It's spelled "AFGHANISTAN" (YOU DUMMY )
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Your spelling correction will be the only thing your only thing right in this thread
"Approval ratings go up and down for various reasons... An example is the high post 911 support for GWB even though he could be said to be responsible for the event." --- Box A Rox '9/11 Truther'
Melania is a bimbo... she is there to look at, not to listen to. --- Box A Rox and his 'War on Women'
"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."
"Your spelling correction will be the only thing your only thing right in this thread"
Yea... the only thing your only thing!
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
North Waziristan: 9 militants killed in drone strike A compound near the vehicle was also badly damaged.
By Our Correspondent Published: August 23, 2012
A compound near the vehicle was also badly damaged. DI KHAN / MIRAMSHAH:
At least nine suspected militants were killed when US drones targeted a vehicle at 7 pm on Tuesday in the Sheen Khwar area on the outskirts of Humzonee village, around four kilometres from Miramshah, the headquarters of North Waziristan Agency, on Tuesday, a security official said.
The official told The Express Tribune that four missiles were fired on the vehicle. He added that it could not be ascertained whether any senior insurgents were among the dead.
“The militants were leaving a house for an undisclosed location when they were attacked by the drones,” the official said.
A local tribesman said that he was on the way to his house when two drones launched four missiles on the militants’ vehicle, adding that the militants were from the group of Hafiz Gul Bahadur, an influential commander who is believed to be hosting the Haqqani network, the deadliest of all Afghan Taliban groups.
Another official in Miramshah said a compound near the vehicle was also damaged in the strike. “One of the missiles also hit a nearby compound which was badly damaged after catching fire,” he said.
Earlier on Sunday, at least six militants were killed when US drones fired missiles twice in North Waziristan.
Humzonee village is inhibited by the Dawar tribe and is located close to the Miramshah market.
There has been a dramatic increase in US drone strikes in Pakistan since May, this year.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 23rd, 2012.
In an ever-changing global frontier a variety of war time weaponry provides a multitude of options for the U.S. government. The latest and greatest 21st century lethal toy, drones, use GPS coordinates to carry out precision missile strikes in countries far from U.S. soil in undeclared wars and off the traditional battlefield.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) concludes that “the CIA's drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals… at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims.”
In the past, it was the terrorists who used the barbaric tactic of killing first responders; unfortunately TBIJ says the Obama Administration has adopted a similar strategy. And unlike his predecessor, George .W Bush, Obama has amped up his covert drone war. The numbers paint a startling picture of the devastation left behind when missiles hit their human targets.
According to TBIJ, the total (numbers reported by the U.S. government) drone attacks from 2004 – 2012:
Total US strikes since 2004: 337
Total Obama strikes: 285 Total reported killed: 2,524-3,247 Civilians reported killed: 482-852 Children reported killed: 175 Total reported injured: 1,204-1,330
The number of drone strikes in Pakistan 2004-2012:
Total US strikes: 336 Obama strikes: 284 Total reported killed: 2,532-3,251 Civilians reported killed: 475-879 Children reported killed: 175 Total reported injured: 1,204-1,332
The number of drone strikes in Yemen 2002-2012:
Total US operations (all): 48-58 Total US drone strikes: 37-47 Suspected additional US operations: 116-131 Suspected additional US drone strikes: 58-67 Total reported killed (all): 339-977 Total civilians killed (all): 58-149 Children killed (all): 24-31
The number of drone strikes in Somalia 2007-2012
Total US strikes: 10-21 Total US drone strikes: 3-9 Total reported killed: 58-169 Civilians reported killed: 11-57 Children reported killed: 1-3
Conversely, former President George W. Bush used the lethal remote control drones 52 times during his eight years in the White House. Democrats and the media pummeled the Bush Administration for war mongering, capturing suspected terrorists and sending them to Guantanamo Bay for interrogation.
Intelligence agencies and military brass say the swift trial by drone action is an effective tool used to “kill” targets, but the consequences of remote controlled strikes take out a number of non-combatants. In the end critics argue that this form of attack in sovereign counties outside the traditional war zone lacks Congressional approval, severely limits any intelligence gathering and creates thousands of new terrorists for decades in regions already hard to control.
The New America Foundation said 71 percent of the targeted drone strikes inside Pakistan’s borders took place in North Waziristan, a known tribal region that borders Afghanistan and provides harsh terrain to hide and launch attacks on U.S./NATO troops.
While Obama’s “Terror Tuesday” (previous story here) continues to add suspected terrorists to the notorious “kill list,” it’s the silence from the complicit media and Congressional members that is deafening.
The escalating justice by drone program directed by Obama has other consequences. In the past 27 months, 1,000 American soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. It took nine years to reach that same grim milestone under the Bush Administration.
So how does the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Barack Obama, explain his “kill list” and the thousands of lives he extinguished with the swipe of his pen? Furthermore, what are the parameters the Nobel committee uses to confer “peace” status?
In the end, it may be wise for the Obomber-in-chief (Obama’s nickname in high school) to read executive order 12333 that has been followed by every administration since signed by President Ronald Reagan. The executive order stipulates; “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in or conspire to engage in assassination.”
Up Next- part two: Is America safe from drone attacks?
America's murderous drone campaign is fuelling terror
Obama's escalation of a war that's already caused thousands of deaths will only destabilise his own allies and bolster al-Qaida
More than a decade after George W Bush launched it, the "war on terror" was supposed to be winding down. US military occupation of Iraq has ended and Nato is looking for a way out of Afghanistan, even as the carnage continues. But another war – the undeclared drone war that has already killed thousands – is now being relentlessly escalated.
From Pakistan to Somalia, CIA-controlled pilotless aircraft rain down Hellfire missiles on an ever-expanding hit list of terrorist suspects – they have already killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians in the process.
At least 15 drone strikes have been launched in Yemen this month, as many as in the whole of the past decade, killing dozens; while in Pakistan, a string of US attacks has been launched against supposed "militant" targets in the past week, incinerating up to 35 people and hitting a mosque and a bakery.
The US's decision to step up the drone war again in Pakistan, opposed by both government and parliament in Islamabad as illegal and a violation of sovereignty, reflects its fury at the jailing of a CIA agent involved in the Bin Laden hunt and Pakistan's refusal to reopen supply routes for Nato forces in Afghanistan. Those routes were closed in protest at the US killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers last November, for which Washington still refuses to apologise.
Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan's high commissioner in London, describes the latest US escalation as "punitive". But then Predators and Reapers are Barack Obama's weapons of choice and coercion, deployed only on the territory of troublesome US allies, such as Pakistan and Yemen – and the drone war is Obama's war.
In his first two years in office, the US president more than tripled the number of attacks in Pakistan alone. For their US champions, drones have the advantage of involving no American casualties, while targeting the "bad guys" Bush lost sight of in his enthusiasm to subjugate Iraq. Enthusiasts boast of their surgical accuracy and exhaustive surveillance, operated by all-seeing technicians from thousands of miles away in Nevada.
But that's a computer-game fantasy of clinical war. Since 2004, between 2,464 and 3,145 people are reported to have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan, of whom up to 828 were civilians (535 under Obama) and 175 children. Some Pakistani estimates put the civilian death toll much higher – plausibly, given the tendency to claim as "militants" victims later demonstrated to be nothing of the sort.
The US president insisted recently that the civilian death toll was not a "huge number". Not on the scale of Iraq, perhaps, where hundreds of thousands were killed; or Afghanistan, where tens of thousands have died. But they gruesomely include dozens killed in follow-up attacks after they had gone to help victims of earlier strikes – as well as teenagers like Tariq Khan, a 16-year-old Pakistani boy decapitated in a strike last November after he had travelled to Islamabad to protest against drones.
These killings are, in reality, summary executions and widely regarded as potential war crimes by international lawyers – including the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Philip Alston. The CIA's now retired counsel, John Rizzo, who authorised drone attacks, himself talked about having been involved in "murder".
A decade ago, the US criticised Israel for such "extrajudicial killings" but now claims self-defence in the war against al-Qaida. These are attacks, however, routinely carried out on the basis of false intelligence, in countries such as Pakistan where no war has been declared and without the consent of the elected government.
Lawyers representing victims' families are now preparing legal action against the British government – which carries out its own drone attacks in Afghanistan – for taking part in war crimes by passing GCHQ intelligence to the CIA for its "targeted killings". Parallel cases are also being brought against the Pakistani government and the drone manufacturer General Electric – whose slogan is "we bring good things to life".
Of course, drone attacks are only one method by which the US and its allies deliver death and destruction in Afghanistan and the wider Middle East, from night raids and air attacks to killing sprees on the ground. The day after last Friday's Houla massacre in Syria, eight members of one family were killed at home by a Nato air attack in eastern Afghanistan – one of many such atrocities barely registered in the western media.
But while support for the war in Afghanistan has fallen to an all-time low in all Nato states, the drone war is popular in the US. That's hardly surprising, as it offers no danger to American forces – the ultimate asymmetric warfare – while supposedly "taking out" terrorists. But these hi-tech death squads are creating a dangerous global precedent, which will do nothing for US security.
A decade ago, critics warned that the "war on terror" would spread terrorism rather than stamp it out. That is exactly what happened. Obama has now renamed the campaign "overseas contingency operations" and is switching the emphasis from boots on the ground to robots.
But, as the destabilisation of Pakistan and growth of al-Qaida in Yemen shows, the impact remains the same. The drone war is a predatory war on the Muslim world, which is feeding hatred of the US – and fuelling terror, not fighting it.
We used to listen to Communist radio broadcast concerning US attacks in N Vietnam. Every attack would include a report that a school or a hospital was hit in the bombing. I'm sure that on some of these attacks schools or hospitals may have been struck... although they were never the target. If you added up all the schools and hospitals in all of N Vietnam... these reports accounted for hundreds of times more than the total number of schools and hospitals in the country.
When you say American bombs hit a bridge, a military base or a transportation center, it's not news. Those were the targets. When you say American bombs hit a school or a hospital... it's 'news'.
I would guess that there is much of the same thing going on in this war.
Above is a report that: "Hafiz Gul Bahadur, an influential commander who is believed to be hosting the Haqqani network, the deadliest of all Afghan Taliban groups". were the target. A legitimate military target. A success for the US Military. But if there was an outhouse behind the strike that was also hit... it now becomes a mosque full of devoted worshipers.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
We used to listen to Communist radio broadcast concerning US attacks in N Vietnam. Every attack would include a report that a school or a hospital was hit in the bombing. I'm sure that on some of these attacks schools or hospitals may have been struck... although they were never the target. If you added up all the schools and hospitals in all of N Vietnam... these reports accounted for hundreds of times more than the total number of schools and hospitals in the country.
When you say American bombs hit a bridge, a military base or a transportation center, it's not news. Those were the targets. When you say American bombs hit a school or a hospital... it's 'news'.
I would guess that there is much of the same thing going on in this war.
I agree. There are the same atrocities going on today in a different but also illegal invasion and occupation.
I agree. There are the same atrocities going on today in a different but also illegal invasion and occupation.
YUP! It really sucks here... I think you should leave and find a better place to live. Try Somalia! You'll love it there. They don't have Big GOVT... (or small govt)... They practically have no govt at all. Ideal for you. See if Cicero wants to join you.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
YUP! It really sucks here... I think you should leave and find a better place to live. Try Somalia! You'll love it there. They don't have Big GOVT... (or small govt)... They practically have no govt at all. Ideal for you. See if Cicero wants to join you.
You spout more rhetoric, while defending Democratic government atrocities.
You really don't care how many innocent lives are taken by your owners.
You spout more rhetoric, while defending Democratic government atrocities. You really don't care how many innocent lives are taken by your owners. Good little slave.
Innocent lives? Obama didn't start this war. Obama is cleaning up George Worst Bush's dirty diapers that he left for the rest of us to fix. Obama has an end date for the war in Afghanistan... Just as he did with G Worst Bush's Oil War in Iraq... Obama fixed Bush's disaster there as promised.
And... on top of ending the war in Iraq... setting an end date for the war in Afghanistan... OBAMA DID WHAT GEORGE WORST BUSH GAVE UP ON DOING... OBAMA GOT BIN LADEN. The last thing from GWB about Bin Laden was...
~ "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02 and ~"I am truly not that concerned about him." - G.W. Bush, repsonding to a question about bin Laden's whereabouts, 3/13/02 (The New American, 4/8/02)
Don't tell me about innocent lives lost... the lives lost in these two wars rest with George Worst Bush.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Logged
)
