Gates says missile attacks in Pakistan will continue - CNN

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

Later in the article he goes on to say that troops will remain in Iraq "for many years to come". They're still trying to salvage some kind of "Peace with Honor" out of two lost wars by killing civilians.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/27/gates.pakistan.afghanistan

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates said missile strikes in Pakistan will continue in an effort to root out al Qaeda members.
Robert Gates testifies Tuesday before a Senate panel. He was wearing bandages from surgery he had on his arm.

Robert Gates testifies Tuesday before a Senate panel. He was wearing bandages from surgery he had on his arm.

Gates spoke to the Senate Armed Services Committee in his first comments to Congress as President Obama's defense secretary.

In response to a question from committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Michigan, Gates said the strikes will continue to target terrorists who have based themselves across the border from Afghanistan.

"Let me just say, both President Bush and President Obama have made clear that we will go after al Qaeda wherever al Qaeda is. And we will continue to pursue this," Gates said.

[truebrit71]

1. Good.

If Pakistan won't do it, we have to.

[atreides1]

9. WE????

You have a mouse in your pocket?

Tell you what why not just drop a small nuke in the area, something that won't cause massive destruction.

And who really cares if some innocent civilians die, they live in mud huts and probably won't be missed by people like you who possess all the humanity of a rock!

[truebrit71]

12. Nah...nukes aren't effective enough...terrain is too rough...

...but whatever we do we MUST stop the Pakistani Taliban and A-Q from getting their hands on Pakistan's nukes...

[bigtree]

2. It's still not clear that 'al-Qaeda' were anywhere near the last strikes

Everyone they target and kill is 'al-Qaeda' until proven otherwise.

(I thought the last bunch were just 'militants'.)

[EFerrari]

6. 1 of 3 dead people were suspected militants. The others were women and kids.

[G_j]

14. and just what is a "suspected militant"

anything they want it to be.

rule number one, if the Pentagon says it, it is probably a lie.

[EFerrari]

22. A "suspected militant" is likely a post-pubescent male.

I just read in LBN that the Pentagram gave $40K to a group of Afghans after having killed fifteen of their family members -- including one "suspected militant". I'm thinking the rest were women and children.

[Mari333]

3. no change. same old chest thumping adolescent crap. nt

[bdamomma]

4. oh crap.

[Idealism]

5. Militant stupidity n/t

[leftstreet]

7. What complete bullshit: "wherever al Qaeda is"

Here, there, everywhere.

They'll be exactly where the Military Industrial Congressional Complex decides they'll be... until they're not - Look, they're over there!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

8. It's a very expensive bogeyman they have erected. And, the MIC is cashing in.

[truebrit71]

13. Time to pull your head from the sand...there are REAL bad guys in that part of the world..

...and they need to be dead. Hiding your head in the sand and talking about "Military conspiracies" won't change that fact..

[leftstreet]

15. "and they need to be dead" Can't fucking believe I'm reading that on DU

:eyes:

[truebrit71]

17. Do you know anything about what's going on in that part of the world?

Do you have ANY concept as to how evil those individuals are? They must be stopped. Best way to do that is to make sure they get planted.

[leftstreet]

19. Yes, Corporate War Profiteers need to be stopped

But I don't necessarily think they need to be "planted." We have courts and shit.

Oh wait...you weren't clear on your lesser of evils thing here.

[truebrit71]

21. Apples v apples please...I don't think there are any profiteers in Afghanistan..

...Iraq is a totally different story...Afghanistan and Pakistan is where we MUST now focus, because if Pakistan goes rogue it will NOT end well...and the current govt is very, very weak...

Please watch the PBS Frontline episode "The War Briefing" and see if you think that "courts and shit" would really apply..

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warbriefing/

[leftstreet]

23. And you wondered if *I* knew what was going on in that part of the world

Pffft

You funneh.

[truebrit71]

25. You do then? So you think that "courts and shit" will work?

Really?

Naah, YOU funneh...

[leftstreet]

26. To try members of the corporate war profiteer class? Yeah

Why wouldn't they?

:shrug:

[truebrit71]

28. Apples v apples please...

...or are you deliberately being obtuse...??

[leftstreet]

31. maybe

;-)

Sorry, just trying to figure out who it is you want to kill.

(It's not every day a person can login to DU and read people advocating death, destruction and murder.)

[truebrit71]

33. The Taliban. You know. The bad guys.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warbriefing/

[leftstreet]

34. All your talk of apples has made me hungry. BRB n/t

[truebrit71]

36. Enjoy..I just finished an orange...mighty tasty...

...

[bigtree]

29. 'no profiteers in Afghanistan' . . . really??

CorpWatch : Afghanistan, Inc.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13518

[G_j]

16. really?

there are real bad guys in the US also, perhaps a few domestic drones can make them dead too.

[truebrit71]

18. Did they fly planes into the WTC? No? Then how about we stick to apples v apples then?

..Okay?

[G_j]

20. ha ha

is that you Rudy?

[truebrit71]

37. Not even remotely close...

..but nice dodge of my question though...

[EFerrari]

24. Yes, there are real bad guys there. And we add to their numbers every time

we kill goat herders and the wives that bring them their lunch.

[truebrit71]

27. No doubt. But they too get killed by the bad guys when they don't support the Taliban

..or they don't adhere to their version of Islam...

Sorry but this kumbaya bullshit won't fly if the Taliban gets their hands on Pakistan's nukes, and neither the ISI or the Pakistani military has shown much appetite to do anything much to stop them...

[EFerrari]

32. Why would the ISI stop them? They were their idea in the first place.

The Taliban came into being to fill a power vacuum and a power vacuum is still feeding their resurgence. When we kill people for no reason, we just give them another boost.

You can't bomb Afghanistan or Pakistan into compliance, let alone, into stability, as anyone with the brains Nature gave a monkey knows. Pakistan is the most dangerous country on Earth right now and we make it more dangerous with these random strikes that undermine the government and give the radicals another talking point. It's idiocy.

Obama needs to shore up both governments and he needs to put together a real coalition to promote development and stability in both countries. And he needs to stop killing the wrong people immediately.

[Solon]

30. "bad guys" what the fuck is this, a fucking movie or video game we live in?

Seriously, can you be anymore simplistic? So we kill a dozen SUSPECTED terrorists, and in the process kill hundreds of more people, and create hundreds of more REAL terrorists from the survivors in the process. Yeah, this is going to end well. :eyes:

[truebrit71]

35. Yeah, because doing NOTHING is a MUCH better alternative...

...ask the relatives of the those in the WTC if that is a good enough option...

This cupcake, bleeding heart bullshit has to stop...we are dealing with really nasty characters and they need to be eliminated because they will NOT stop until they are eradicated...And if innocent people get blown up because the Taliban us them as human shields maybe the innocents need ot get together and tel the taliban to fuck off...

[independentpiney]

41. You're not going to find much pragmatism here on these issues

Actally you can, it all depends on who shows up on the thread. I don't think you've got that on this one.

[EFerrari]

43. What kind of "pragmatism" imagines doing nothing as the only alternative

to randomly killing civilians? That's not pragmatism, that's some kind of failure of imagination.

And don't even begin with the human shields bs because it's been well documented that the US takes hostages, too.

Good grief.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

45. Murdering civilians worked ever so well in Vietnam...oh, wait.

[EFerrari]

46. "Because this must all end . . this Sicillian thing that's been going on

for two thousand years." -- Kay Corleone, TGF

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

47. My grandfather fought in Pakistan/Afghanistan.

"When yer wounded and layin' on Afghanistan's plains,
and, the women are comin' to cut up what remains,
just roll on yer rifle and blow out yer brains,
and go to yer God like a soljer."

Rudyard Kipling

[EFerrari]

48. DUer Squatch is heading up a military humanitarian project in Kandahar.

I haven't seen him check in lately but we've been trying to get some winter clothes out to him to hand out.

[independentpiney]

57. I have no idea what you're talking about with human shields

Maybe you're confusing Israel/Hamas with Pakistan and the Taliban? Pakistan is a nearly failed nuclear state that not only can't control their own border provinces, but has the potential to fall to real extremists. Ones that India will not tolerate, and barring a Cambodia/Rwanda moral failure will not be tolerated by the rest of the world. We've been pouring aid into Pakistan since 2001, and it hasn't done much good as far as creating a stable government. I have no idea what the solution is, I look forward to you enlightening me.

[EFerrari]

61. Bush bought Pakistan after 9/11 but you have to wonder what he was buying exactly.

And no, I'm not confused. The post you responded to mentioned the Taliban using human shields. We use them just as the IDF uses them, in defiance of court orders, so trying to scare up opprobrium for the way anyone else uses them is not a winner.

[truebrit71]

63. No, the Taliban move in and out of the villages and use the villages as areas for stockpiling etc et

..we have spent well over $10 billion in the past 7 years in Pakistan to no avail...what becomes of that weak govt I do not know, but what is perfectly clear is that the Pakistani Military and the ISI have zero appetite to do anything useful against the Taliban..so therefore WE must..

Longer term I think that India has to be brought into the mix because it is in that country's best interst to have a stable Pakistan as well. Sort of like rebuilding a house, at the moment worrying about what sort of carpet, or what sort of furniture we want to use makes no sense because we're trying to get the rot out first...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

42. How has the tough guy approach worked so far?

The military has bombed the hell out of "them" (mostly civilians), shot up the countryside, made deals with the warlords to do their share of killing, and generally screwed everything up.

So, now that all that's a failure, the new administration brilliantly plans to follow the same failed policies...except more so.

[EFerrari]

44. Taliban 2.0 now wears suits and uses cell phones. We must be doing something right!

[Bluenorthwest]

51. Rule one in Central Asia

Never listen to a self professed Brit, because no people on Earth are more culpable for the troubles, or more experienced in failure in that region.

Sorry, but the name just makes me think of all that failure of Empire that was fueled by similar rhetoric as yours. "Evil people! Must die! Brown! Black! We are superior!"

My Gandpa from Ulster called you Brits 'Satan Incarnate'. So are these folks worse than you folks?

[truebrit71]

54. I think Moscow might disagree with you on your failure assessment...

I'm sorry, can you point out where I said ANYTHING about ANYONE's colour, or whether one was superior to another?

Nice personal attack though...:eyes: Because it is so relevant to ME in this century...or should I naturally assume that based on your descendants that you are an alcoholic wife-beater that can't hold a job or grow potatoes?

See how stupid and irrelevant that sounds?

Stick to the topic mate, and leave the past in the past...

[Bluenorthwest]

68. I'm not mates with folks with no sense of irony

Just saying. Afghanistan ate the British Army for lunch. And you are here with 'over there is evil' rhetoric.
My attack was not an attack, nor was it personal. I'm saying Brits with advice on Central Asia do not have a good track record, and so it is funny to see you here pretending you know best, and yes, using language of superiority and Empire. Which is funny, although you'll not get it.
I'd love to see us-and of course, it will be U.S. us- take out the criminals and madmen there. I've wanted that fucker Omar since 2001, in particular.
That does not change the fact that it is hilarious to see your postings. Ironic.

You say "or should I naturally assume that based on your descendants that you are an alcoholic wife-beater that can't hold a job or grow potatoes?" Rather than note the ease with which you jump into racist terminology, let me ask you why you are trashing my descendants, who are really a tad young to drink. Do you always say such things about kids?

Sorry about the snark, but my OP was a historical reference that is accurate. It was not personal. And the word you wanted was probably 'ancestors', but who's looking for proof of intelligence while discussing bombing civilians? Use whatever insults work for you. Won't change the fact that Kabul ate the Army and thus it is funny to use a Brit screen name while lectuing others on Kabul. It just is. Like an American lecuring on Viet Nam, you see? Funny, because we failed, obviously not because we are failures. Take a breath. No one thinks you are responsible for the mass exodus from Ireland. Thought you would understand that frankly. The point is- you are calling people 'evil' and my Grand said your people were evil. The point is that there is always some one calling someone else evil, and if I must paint a picture for you, just as my Gand was not correct, most who use such rhetoric are also not correct.
Not about the past, about today, where you say 'they are evil'. Yesterday, Gand said you were evil. I say you are both crazy hyperbolic nutters. Ok?
You make me laugh. Like Gandpa did. "ohhh, they's not like us, you know..."

[truebrit71]

71. Hmm, you accuse me of being a racist, but you're not attacking me personally...

Nice...

You are correct, ancestors is the proper word I was looking for, or "the people from whom you descended", either way you, somewhat amazingly, managed to figure out what it was I meant to say through all of your snark..

I am also well aware of the severe beating handed to the British Army by the Afghans, and also the Soviets, which is why the US needs to learn from those lessons and route out the evil bastards that are the cause of the problem.

Oh damn, there's that word "evil" again...Sorry about that...not sure what other word you would use for people that attack women and young girls with acid and decapitate their enemies and string their bodies up in the local villages to threaten the populace into submission..What word would you suggest I use? 'Misunderstood' perhaps?


I never claimed to 'know best' nor am I lecturing anyone...but feel free to continue to put words in my mouth...

Still waiting for you to show me where I mentioned ANYONE's skin colour...

FYI, I'm sure your Granddad was/is a swell fella, I know mine was, but neither of those gentlemen and their various opinions about each other's country has the damnedest thing to do with what the topic of this thread is, so how about we leave them out of it? Yes?

[Solon]

78. Oh please, tell the relatives of those we killed if your option is any better...

Question, are those who try to kill those responsible for their relatives' deaths recently in Pakistan justified in doing so? If not, why not?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

74. Hey! No Facts Allowed In Fairy Tale Land!

:spank:

[Winterblues]

77. There are even worse bad guys in New York city or LA

They are ordinary criminals just as those in Pakistan and Afghanistan are. They are not uniformed soldiers that require the Army. You need to understand the difference between crime and Military strength.

[independentpiney]

79. The Taliban are ordinary criminals..there's worse in NYC & LA?

Without getting snarky there's just no reply to such ignorance:crazy:

[Winterblues]

81. I truly feel sorry for you

You are scared to death of a bunch of ignorant people with zero resources, zero education. They live in caves and have zero military training. We have far worse elements that live within the USA. True killers that have both resources and education. They just don't hate America like those extremely poor people in Afghanistan. We have more people die ever week from tobacco products than ever will be killed from terrorists.. Get a grip, they really are not the bogeyman...They are just dirt poor haters..without any means to hurt anyone but the local women there.

[G_j]

10. cut the freakin' ties to this Bushian quagmire!

:thumbsdown:

[nichomachus]

11. The beatings will continue until morale improves. n/t

[Phoonzang]

38. Did any of you people listen to Obama during the campaign?

I'm curious...was it selective hearing or some shit. He kept saying he's going to escalate the war in Afghanistan and strike in Pakistan when we have actionable intelligence? Even with our technology war means death, including civilian deaths. I don't know what kind of fucking Lala land people here have been living in. Did you expect us to pack up and leave Afghanistan to the Taliban? Just say "oh well, buh by. Enjoy your opium crops. Hope you don't use them to fund terrorism."

Do we have to go through 8 years of hair pulling, blaaarrrggg! threads every time there's an air strike over there?

[bigtree]

39. he was much more specific than that

. . . for instance, he said the cross-border attacks would be used if we had intelligence pinpointing those considered responsible for the 9-11 attacks. Now that edict has been inflated to include whoever someone wants to label 'al-Qaeda'. You'd think folks hadn't just lived through the same conflating lies.

[EFerrari]

40. Yes, he said that. I disagreed then and I will continue to disagree.

And guess what, so will sane people all over the world.

[truebrit71]

50. Watch the PBS programme I mentioned before and tell me you feel the same way afterwards...

...http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warbriefing/

Sane or not, the Pakistan Taliban need to be taken out...

[EFerrari]

53. I understand how dangerous these people are. And there are two wings, actually.

One that is roughly the Afghani Taliban and the other that is mainly the Pakistani Taliban. They sometimes collaborate but they're two different groups with two different power structures.

[truebrit71]

56. So you DO understand how dangerous these people are?

...then where's the problem? They need to be eliminated.

[EFerrari]

58. Of course I do. But this isn't a video game and the tactics we're using now

just makes them more popular and drives more support to them.

ETA: And the Taliban is not building the al Qaida campus in the tribal regions. That's not their gig.

Yes, we have real problems in Pakistan and we need real solutions for them, not cowboys shooting at anything that moves.

[truebrit71]

65. I disagree. The tactics do not drive them to support the Taliban..if anything they are even more...

..vicous and callous..

Who are the cowboys shooting at anything that moves? Certainly not the US...

[EFerrari]

70. Oh, please. We just had to pay off a bunch of people for killing 15 of their family members.

There are threads here and in LBN. How much of that money is going to buy weapons to kill Americans?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4922108

[truebrit71]

72. I'm talking about trying to apply the same pay-off that worked (for a time) in Iraq,,,

..

[bigtree]

59. right, even Karsai has said there are some Taliban he hopes to influence

[EFerrari]

60. And he's right. How many heads of families joined the Taliban when

they were the only game in town? There are surely a lot of people that went with them that can be brought over if we have something real to offer them.

[truebrit71]

66. So your solution is we pay them off and hope that they don't ask for more?

Not really a long-term sustainable policy...

[EFerrari]

69. No. That's was the Petraeus solution and it's not sustainable.

That's why Iraq will fall apart as soon as we leave.

Throwing money only buys you time to put something more workable in and even then you have to have the stamina for it. That's why we need a real international coalition in there to work on economic development. The only way to deny terrorist groups territory in Afghanistan is if you make that territory too valuable to hand over to them. I think that's the challenge.

[truebrit71]

75. I agree with you. But therein lies the problem. The US doesn't have the stamina for it...

...the general population at least...

[EFerrari]

80. We cannot do this alone. There's just no way.

Even if we had the money which we don't, even if we had the troops which we don't, we can't do it alone.

That really is the problem.

[truebrit71]

49. "Do we have to go through 8 years of hair pulling, blaaarrrggg! threads...

....every time there's an air strike over there?"

Apparently the answer to that question is "yes"...As well as a large number of people apparently being perfectly content to live in Lala Land...

Amazing...

[bigtree]

62. you want folks to just shut up and go along for the ride just because they cast a vote

That's not how our democracy works. Our responsibility to hold these officials to account doesn't end at the ballot box.

The military doesn't have the credibility in these attacks to merit immediate acceptance that their 'targets' and goals are in line with our expectations, our national or security interest, or even their own rhetoric. Most of the same leadership is still in place who have practiced deception to cover the ineptness and folly of many of their military strikes and raids which have killed so many civilians.

It's just irresponsible and foolish to cheer-lead the continuing, escalating militarism there. But, you go ahead . . .

[truebrit71]

64. Um, President Obama said he would INCREASE the military presence in Afghanistan...

..and would go after Al-Q regardless of borders if there was actionable intel...I will hold him to his word...

[bigtree]

67. the language he used in the campaign was directed specifically to the 9-11 suspects

. . but I understand why you've inflated that to include whoever is identified by the military as al-Qaeda. That's the same tactic the military uses to initially justify the mass killings of folks caught in the way of their bombs and raids.

And, tt should matter to voters just what Obama has said he intends to do with those troops, as well as what he ultimately does with them.

But, you can just avert your eyes. As far as you are concerned, the military knows best, no matter how many times they've been proven wrong and negligent in Afghanistan.

[truebrit71]

76. He said OBL and Al-Q...

I'm not inflating anything...

[bigtree]

82. yes you are

The issue of cross-border attacks became controversial in the campaign. Mr. Obama rhetorically limited the scope of such attacks to intelligence on 9-11 suspects. He talked about taking out 'high level terrorist targets' which he described as individuals responsible for the 9-11 attacks and he named 'bin-Laden and his deputies in his statement . . .


Mr Obama said: “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again . . . If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2182955.ece


from the campaign's 'Fact Check' page:


FACT: Barack Obama has never said he would "attack Pakistan"--he has said that he would attack "high-level terrorist targets."

Obama's statement of policy--in his August 1 terrorism speech--dealt directly with high-level terrorist targets like Osama bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri, not the Pakistani government.

"There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

Obama has voted for hundreds of millions of dollars to support the Pakistani government's efforts to root out al Qaeda, and would prefer that Pakistan take action. But he will not stand by if he has actionable intelligence about high-level terrorist targets in Pakistan's northwest tribal regions: "But relying on Pakistan while we fight the wrong war in Iraq has not worked. Because of that policy, bin Laden and members of his inner circle who bear direct responsibility for the murder of 3,000 Americans are plotting new attacks. If Pakistan cannot or will not take out these high-level terrorist targets and we have actionable intelligence about where they are, then I would take action to protect the American people. I firmly believe that if we know the whereabouts of bin Laden and his deputies and we have exhausted all other options, we must take them out."

The co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission--Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton--endorsed Obama's stance just over a month after his terrorism speech, writing in the Washington Post: "Pakistan should take the lead in closing Taliban camps and rooting out al-Qaeda. But the United States must act if Pakistan will not."

http://factcheck.barackobama.com/factcheck/2008/02/10/post_3.php

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

52. Hopefully, the decent people will continue to protest the mudering of civilians in a lost war.

And, the apologists will tell us it's just too bad about the murders.

[Freddie Stubbs]

84. The President doesn't seem to think the war in Afghanistan. Do you have some info which he does not?

:shrug:

[spanone]

55. we'll see....gate is not the cic

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

73. Good On Him. Democrats Chose Him Over Kucinich For A Reason.

[bigtree]

83. what a narrow view you have of the interests and concerns of Democratic voters

There were many factors cited by voters in their choosing Barack Obama. Your notion that our votes were endorsements of yet un-clarified objectives Obama may have for our military in Afghanistan is hogwash. I've read many comments from voters who had expressed hope that we'd see a decidedly more progressive Obama than has emerged.

But, you go on shoving this escalation down their throats and see what you come up with.