White House offers to curtail drones
Source: Associated Press
White House offers to curtail drones
(AP)
27 March 2012
WASHINGTON In a bid to save the CIAs drone campaign against al-Qaida in Pakistan, US officials offered key concessions to Pakistans spy chief that included advance notice and limits on the types of targets. But the offers were flatly rejected, leaving US-Pakistani relations strained as President Barack Obama prepares to meet Tuesday with Pakistans prime minister.
CIA Director David Petraeus, who met with Pakistans then-spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha at a meeting in London in January, offered to give Pakistan advance notice of future CIA drone strikes against targets on its territory in a bid to keep Pakistan from blocking the strikes arguably one of the most potent U.S. tools against al-Qaida.
The CIA chief also offered to apply new limits on the types of targets hit, said a senior U.S. intelligence official briefed on the meetings. No longer would large groups of armed men rate near-automatic action, as they had in the past one of the so-called signature strikes, where CIA targeters deemed certain groups and behavior as clearly indicative of militant activity.
Pasha said then what Pakistani officials and its parliament have repeated in recent days: that Pakistan will no longer brook independent U.S. action on its territory by CIA drones, two Pakistani officials said. All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations.
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cstanleytech
(26,293 posts)intelligence then and remove the weapons and go back to using real people on real verified threats so as to reduce the number of fubar missions.
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)truthisfreedom
(23,148 posts)IamK
(956 posts)EFerrari
(163,986 posts)gratuitous
(82,849 posts)But those doggone Pakistanis don't seem to appreciate just what good guys we are. Okay, sure, mistakes have been made, and some totally innocent people have been blown to Kingdom Come. But we're not mean people. We're not! At all. Hey, why is everyone looking somewhere else? This is the United Fucking States talking here!
Canuckistanian
(42,290 posts)They're too easy to use, fired into unsecured areas based on intelligence that MAY not be accurate.
And despite the "surgical strike" claim, there are hundreds of innocents who die every year.
And the way the CIA uses them is NOT subject to review by the military or Congress. Hell, they don't even ADMIT to using them.
And besides, it's such a COWARDLY way to engage your enemy. Pushbutton death from a comfortable chair.
Can you imagine a rogue nation such as N. Korea getting a whole fleet of these?
burrowowl
(17,641 posts)Unaccountable
(30 posts)JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,350 posts)for domestic surveillance in our cities and along the Mexican border.
It's a "win-win".
Do I need to say ...
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