Warfare continues to become more professional and dehumanized every day.

The purpose of Extraordinary Edition is being revisited for winter, headed into 2013. U.S. foreign policy, Central Asia and the Middle East remain key focal points. Economics and culture on your front doorstep are coming into focus here.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Drones and Democracy

Story on Truthout.org Sunday, May 23, 2010 by Kathy Kelly and Joshua Brollier

A particularly brutal excerpt ...

"The social worker recalled arriving at a home that was hit, in Miranshah, at about 9:00 PM, close to one year ago. The house was beside a matchbox factory, near the degree college. The drone strike had killed three people. Their bodies, carbonized, were fully burned. They could only be identified by their legs and hands. One body was still on fire when he reached there. Then he learned that the charred and mutilated corpses were relatives of his who lived in his village, two men and a boy aged seven or eight. They couldn't pick up the charred parts in one piece. Finding scraps of plastic, they transported the body parts away from the site. Three to four others joined in to help cover the bodies in plastic and carry them to the morgue.

But these volunteers and nearby onlookers were attacked by another drone strike, 15 minutes after the initial one. Six more people died. One of them was the brother of the man killed in the initial strike.

The social worker said that people are now afraid to help when a drone strike occurs because they fear a similar fate from a second attack. People will wait several hours after an attack just to be sure. Meanwhile, some lives will be lost that possibly could have been saved."

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