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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsUS drone campaign fuels terror
United States military occupation of Iraq has ended and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is looking for a way out of Afghanistan.
But another war - the undeclared drone war that has already killed thousands - is now being relentlessly escalated.
From Pakistan to Somalia, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-controlled pilotless aircraft rain Hellfire missiles on an ever-expanding hit list of terrorist suspects. They have already killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians in the process.
The US 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 Osama bin Laden hunt and Pakistan's refusal to reopen supply routes for NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Read more: http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC120605-0000004/US-drone-campaign-fuels-terror
If a foreign power decided to constantly bomb and slaughter US citizens on US soil based solely on suspicion and no trial, wouldn't many of us be feel just as outraged and possibly motivated to resort to violence as a means of retaliation?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Works like a charm for the warmonger set.
Wilms
(26,795 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Wilms
(26,795 posts)C.I.A. Said to Use Outsiders to Put Bombs on Drones
By JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI
The New York Times
August 21, 2009
WASHINGTON From a secret division at its North Carolina headquarters, the company formerly known as Blackwater has assumed a role in Washingtons most important counterterrorism program: the use of remotely piloted drones to kill Al Qaedas leaders, according to government officials and current and former employees.
The divisions operations are carried out at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the companys contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. They also provide security at the covert bases, the officials said.
The role of the company in the Predator program highlights the degree to which the C.I.A. now depends on outside contractors to perform some of the agencys most important assignments. And it illustrates the resilience of Blackwater, now known as Xe (pronounced Zee) Services, though most people in and outside the company still refer to it as Blackwater. It has grown through government work, even as it attracted criticism and allegations of brutality in Iraq.
SNIP...
In interviews on Thursday, current and former government officials provided new details about Blackwaters association with the assassination program, which began in 2004 not long after Porter J. Goss took over at the C.I.A. The officials said that the spy agency did not dispatch the Blackwater executives with a license to kill. Instead, it ordered the contractors to begin collecting information on the whereabouts of Al Qaedas leaders, carry out surveillance and train for possible missions.
The actual pulling of a trigger in some ways is the easiest part, and the part that requires the least expertise, said one government official familiar with the canceled C.I.A. program. Its everything that leads up to it thats the meat of the issue.
CONTINUED...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21intel.html
What possible conflict of interests could arise?
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)Reich-winger's pockets. How uniquely American.
Life Long Dem
(8,582 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Life Long Dem
(8,582 posts)RC
(25,592 posts)Our "Defense" against terrorism is even worse terrorism than any terrorism they can do.
Why is our military even there in the first place, let alone destroying homes and families, killing people, mostly innocents, on somebody's say so?
How is this "Defending our Freedom"?
Life Long Dem
(8,582 posts)sudopod
(5,019 posts)Life Long Dem
(8,582 posts)sudopod
(5,019 posts)RC
(25,592 posts)Because they are now dead and someone says so after the fact? Because Fox news and CNN reports on a press release put out by our "Defense Department"?
Those citizens were in their own country, trying to live their lives. We are ones violating their country's sovereignty with impunity and killing their people without proof, visiting terrorism on them wiht our drones from miles away and we call them terrorists? How does this cure the terrorist problem, anyway?
What are we doing in their country in the first place?
Don't you believe in investigations, arrests, trials? Or is that too much trouble?
They are people just like us and deserve the same Geneva Convention Rights as we do.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)We are currently breaking international laws killing who ever the president thinks is a terrorist without any process. We wont hold Bush/Cheney accountable because no one can make us.
You post boasting about how we would nuke anyone that dared take us on says one hell of a lot.
I have no love for terrorists and I believe that our country is using terrorism.
morningfog
(18,115 posts)lunatica
(53,410 posts)This is so depressing and so predictable.
limpyhobbler
(8,244 posts)Not going to defend this drone policy anymore.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)morningfog
(18,115 posts)for everyone to oppose this stupid fucking policy. IT DOESN'T WORK. It makes us less safe and more hated.