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.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Reconciliation efforts with Afghan militants face major obstacle

LA Times Story by Julian E. Barnes, Laura King and Alex Rodriguez. Rodriguez reported from Islamabad and King reported from Kabul. Times staff writer Julian E. Barnes in Washington contributed to this report.

Excerpt--

Experts say both Pakistan and Afghanistan realize that breaking the Haqqani network's ties with Al Qaeda is a prerequisite to any deal. They question whether it would ever happen.

Amir Rana, one of Pakistan's leading analysts on militant groups, said it's not possible for many militant groups, including the Haqqani network, to completely separate from Al Qaeda.

"What the Haqqani network and the other Taliban groups can offer is a guarantee that they will influence Al Qaeda to not attack U.S. or NATO forces, and a guarantee that their soil would not be used in a terrorist attack against the West," he said. "This is the maximum concession that the Taliban can offer."

Numbering in the thousands of fighters, the Haqqani network has a strong relationship with Pakistan's military and intelligence community that stretches 30 years, back to the time when Pashtun warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani organized mujahedin fighters against Soviet troops in the 1980s. Haqqani has now delegated authority over his network of fighters to his son, Sirajuddin.

The group moves freely between Afghanistan's eastern provinces and its headquarters in North Waziristan, where it has been left untouched by Pakistan's military. Experts believe the Haqqani network continues to provide Al Qaeda leaders and commanders sanctuary there.

U.S. leaders have frequently urged Pakistan to launch an offensive against Haqqani hideouts, recently backing those entreaties with evidence that the network was behind major attacks in Kabul and at Bagram air base, the U.S. facility north of the capital. The government in Islamabad, meanwhile, has brushed aside those demands, arguing that its forces are overstretched by extensive military operations against Taliban strongholds in surrounding tribal areas.

Analysts and former Pakistani military commanders, however, say the real reason that Islamabad has avoided military action against the Haqqani network is that it sees the group and other Afghan Taliban elements as a useful hedge against India's rapidly growing interests in Afghanistan.

Haqqani leaders have yet to signal whether they are interested in starting talks with Karzai's government.

Al-Qaida ally reported killed in Pakistan drone strike

New York Times story appearing in the San Jose Mercury News;
By Pir Zubair Shah June 29

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Eight militants, including an Egyptian allied with al-Qaida, were killed Tuesday in what residents and a Pakistani security official said was a U.S. drone strike in the South Waziristan tribal area near this country's Afghan border.

The United States has intensified its campaign of drone attacks against suspected militants in the border areas of Pakistan, but most have been concentrated in North Waziristan, an area that Western officials consider the most important refuge for militants with al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Tuesday's attack was the second within a few weeks in South Waziristan after a lull that lasted months. Last October, Pakistan invaded part of South Waziristan to drive out militants; many who fled north are now returning south.

The drone was believed to have fired two missiles at a compound in a village near Wana, the regional capital. The Egyptian, Hamza al-Jufi, had lived in Wana for many years, said a fighter in the area who visited the site after the attack and spoke by telephone. Most of the other militants killed in the strike lived nearby, though two came from another province, Punjab, the fighter said.

According to security officials, the militants were working under Jufi, a well-known figure in South Waziristan who was said to have survived a drone attack in 2008.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Whiteman AFB near Columbia, MO is thrilled about the Predator

"Whiteman Lands Drone Assignment" is the title of T.J. Greaney's piece in the Columbia Daily Tribune. An excerpt of excellent reporting on the details of drone operation appears below.

"The MQ-1 Predator is known as a system, not an aircraft. The system consists of four aircraft with sensors, a ground control station and a Predator Primary Satellite Link, along with operations and maintenance crews deployed for 24-hour operations. Each system is valued at about $20 million.

The basic crew for the Predator includes a pilot, sensor operator and mission intelligence coordinator. The aircraft is equipped with a color nose camera used by the pilot for flight control, a high-resolution TV camera, an infrared camera and other sensors.

Capt. Matthew Reese, public affairs officer for Air Combat Command in Langley, Va., said the team involved in missions is a unique blend of mechanics, pilots and intelligence analysts working in war zones and in the U.S.

'The pilot and sensor operator are only one piece of the puzzle,' Reese said. 'The big picture is that it takes maintainers downrange to keep these in the air, the people who are keeping the mechanical aspects of the birds flying are all downrange.'"

Getting Out in 2011

From The Nation magazine's The Dreyfuss Report by Robert Dreyfuss, June 17, 2010

Here's the excerpt ...

"Now we know, if Alter [Jonathan, author of The Promise: President Obama, Year One] is right, that Obama sought and won a pledge from the brass that 'no one is going to suggest we stay' if McChrystal can’t succeed in turning over the war to the Afghans by 2011. On Capitol Hill, there’s growing disenchantment with the whole war effort, although the establishment Democrats haven’t yet broken with the White House. That disenchantment will grow as it dawns on official Washington that the Afghan National Army and the police are never, ever going to be able to take control of the war. So the main issue between now and next summer is to hold Obama to his pledge to pull US forces out of Afghanistan starting next July.

[Vice President Joe] Biden told Alter: 'In July of 2011 you're going to see a whole lot of people moving out. Bet on it.'"

Monday, June 21, 2010

Pakistan pledges to abide by US sanctions on Iran

Agence France Press story dated June 21, 2010

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani Monday said that his country would abide by US sanctions on Iran which could hit a 7.6-billion-dollar gas pipeline project.

"Pakistan as a member of the international community will follow any sanctions imposed by the US," Gilani told reporters in southern Sindh province in response to a question.

US special envoy to Pakistan Richard Holbrooke Sunday said he had warned Islamabad against signing a deal with Iran on the gas pipeline, saying the US was preparing laws that could affect the project.

Iran and Pakistan last week formally signed an export deal which commits Tehran to selling natural gas to its eastern neighbour from 2014.

Iran has already constructed 907 kilometres (564 miles) of the pipeline between Asalooyeh, in southern Iran, and Iranshahr, which will carry natural gas from Iran's giant South Pars field.

The pipeline was originally planned to connect Iran, Pakistan and India, but the latter pulled out of the project last year.

Pakistan plans to use the gas purchased from Iran for its power sector.

The Obama administration last week added Iranian individuals and firms to a blacklist as part of US and European efforts to tighten the screws on Iran a week after UN approved sanctions against its nuclear programme.

The new US sanctions target insurance companies, oil firms and shipping lines linked to Iran's nuclear or missile programmes as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Iran's defence minister Ahmad Vahidi.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi also said on Sunday that if the project came under sanctions then Pakistan "will not violate the international law."

US cautions Pakistan over gas deal with Iran

So it's just legal advice, then? Richard Holbbrooke is saying something like, "You don't know what sanctions against Iran are going to entail, and we need your help with a lot of work in central Asia, so just wait and see before rushing into an agreement with a country where the U.S. has worked strenuously and publicly for regime change."

Something like this, I am imagining. But if you look at all the official instruction Islamabad has received from Washington this year alone--step up the hunt for Taliban leaders in North Waziristan and receive $3 billion in mixed-use aid (military and civilian applications), we are talking about the region where the U.S. military's material is already assembled and countless indications to expand the conflict into surrounded Iran.

Two questions here: The first is about power: who needs whom more? Does the U.S. need Pakistan's cooperation worse than Pakistan needs Washington? The second question is about money: who stands to become (even more) extraordinarily wealthy from the construction of this pipeline? Are they the "right" people, in the eyes of the Washington Consensus?


BBC story posted 5:02 GMT, Monday, June 21 2010

US special envoy Richard Holbrooke has warned Pakistan against committing itself to a gas pipeline project with Iran because of anticipated American sanctions against Tehran.

Mr Holbrooke said Islamabad should wait until it received more details on new US legislation that could affect the multi-billion dollar project.

Iran signed a deal with Pakistan to supply it with natural gas from 2014.

Pakistan says it needs the gas from Iran to ease its growing energy crisis.

The original plan was to carry gas from Iran to Pakistan and then to India, but Delhi withdrew from the project due to differences over prices and transit fees, and also apparently due to pressure from the US.

The US Congress is preparing new legislation which will impose more sanctions on Iran because of concerns over Tehran's nuclear programme.

Mr Holbrooke, who is on a visit to Pakistan, cautioned the country against going ahead with the gas pipeline project.

"We cautioned the Pakistanis to try to see what the (congressional) legislation is before deciding how to proceed because it would be a disaster if... we had a situation develop where an agreement was reached which then triggered something under the law," he said.

He admitted that Pakistan "has an obvious major energy problem" and that the US was "very sympathetic to it".

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that the pipeline deal with Iran did not violate existing sanctions against Iran.

Iran signed a deal with Pakistan last week to supply it with natural gas from 2014.

The pipeline was originally planned to transport gas from Iran to India through Pakistan.

The deal with India was stalled by disputes over transit fees and security issues.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Obama Administration Keeping Blackwater Armed and Dangerous in Afghanistan

Nation magazine story Jeremy Scahill dated June 19

An excerpt appears below ...

"Blackwater is up for sale and its shadowy owner, Erik Prince, is rumored to be planning to move to the United Arab Emirates as his top deputies face indictment for a range of alleged crimes, yet the company remains a central part of President Obama's Afghanistan war. Now, Blackwater's role is expanding.

On Friday, the US State Department awarded Blackwater another 'diplomatic security' contract to protect US officials in Afghanistan. CBS News reports that the $120 million deal is for "protective services" at the US consulates in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif. Blackwater has another security contract in Afghanistan worth $200 million and trains Afghan forces. The company also works for the CIA and the US military and provides bodyguards for US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry as well as US lawmakers and other officials who visit the country. The company has four forward operating bases in Afghanistan and Prince has boasted that Blackwater's counter-narcotics forces have called in NATO airstrikes."

Most recent drone attack in June

Missile in Pakistan Kills 16 Militants
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH

New York Times piece dated June 19, 2010

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A missile strike in North Waziristan killed at least 16 militants on Saturday as they were making plans to go fight NATO forces in Afghanistan, residents and an intelligence official said.

They said a single missile, believed to have been fired from a drone aircraft, struck a government water-supply plant in the village of Haider Khel, near the town of Mir Ali, where the group was meeting.

Most of the concrete, government-built structures in the area, like schools, hospitals and water plants, have been occupied by militants, who use them to meet and for training.

The residents said that 11 of the dead were foreigners, mostly Arabs and some Uzbeks. An additional 19 people were wounded.

The compound is near the border of Haider Khel and Hassu Khel, two villages that are militant strongholds.

The North Waziristan tribal area borders Afghanistan and is a base of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of an insurgent network blamed by the Americans for recent attacks in Kabul, the Afghan capital. North Waziristan is also the place where the American authorities say that Faisal Shahzad, who is accused of trying to bomb Times Square, was trained in explosives.

U.N. report on Afghanistan notes surge in attacks, killings

Washington Post story by Ernesto Londoño
Sunday, June 20, 2010

As a new U.S. military operation deploys in Afghanistan, reports overwhelmingly reflect a historical quagmire with recurrent insurrmountable challenges in Afghanistan. Excerpt appears below.

"The U.N. report said that at least 395 people died as a result of armed conflict between April and June, a decrease of 1 percent compared with the same period in 2009. Insurgent attacks caused about 70 percent of those deaths, the United Nations said, slightly more than during the last reporting period. The agency recognized NATO's efforts to avoid civilian casualties, which include more judicious use of airstrikes.

However, NATO forces continue to rely on airstrikes. On Saturday, officials said that troops fired "precision airstrikes" in self-defense during clashes with the Haqqani insurgent group along the border of Khost and Paktia provinces, which border Pakistan. The Haqqani group, which has close ties to the Afghan Taliban, has emerged as one of the biggest threats to NATO troops."

Friday, June 18, 2010

Errata: Roston writing for The Nation, in place of Scahill

Thursday I posted a Nation magazine article from early last October.

Jeremy Scahill was not the investigative reporter and writer of that piece.

Aram Roston, as you can see when you follow the link, is.

Apologies to all for the mistake.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

U.S. showed Pakistan evidence on militant faction

Reuters story by Adam Entous, reporter and Doina Chiacu, editor.

Haqqani faction in the tribal border region of North Waziristan has been linked by the Pentagon to political violence in May.

"Suicide bombers carrying rockets and grenades launched a brazen predawn attack on the base on May 19, killing an American contractor and wounding nine U.S. troops. About a dozen militants, many wearing suicide vests packed with explosives, were killed, the Pentagon said at the time.

A day earlier, a suicide bomber attacked a military convoy in Kabul, killing 12 Afghan civilians and six foreign troops."

The U.S. is insisting Islamabad place more pressure on its military to seek out members of Haqqani and prevent future attacks.

A dimension of complexity presents itself to Pakistan's leadership as future negotiations might be undermined by military missions against Taliban factions.

"But there are strategic reasons for Pakistan's hesitancy to attack the Haqqanis.

Pakistan sees the group as a strategic asset that will give it influence in any peace settlement in Afghanistan so Islamabad will want those militants on its side."

Insistence by the U.S. with Pakistan follows the May 1 attempted bombing in New York City's Times Square.

It's not news; it's just astounding: How U.S. Funds Taliban

"US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon's logistics contracts--hundreds of millions of dollars--consists of payments to insurgents."

—Aram Roston, The Nation magazine

This information is from November 9, 2009. I just don't understand why it's outside public consciousness that the United States has been paying its enemy to fight our own people in uniform for years while the popular support of the U.S. war in Afghanistan hangs by a tiny thread of the last half-successful hunt for a terrorist or "high-value target." If citizens of the U.S. were told by CNN, Fox, MSNBC and the rest that the Taliban in Afghanistan was being paid by the U.S. to not attack supply convoys, how would there be support for the war? It's like betting against the champ in a boxing match when you've already heard the champ is going to throw the fight. Which, when all of your social programs have been shut down, unemployment is in double-digits, consumer lending has stalled and twenty percent of homes are worth less than the amount owed to the bank, Afghanistan (not even getting into Iraq and saber-rattling plans to invade Iran) seems like a summer vacation that should have been canceled because this year, kids, we just can't afford it.

If you follow the link, you'll see the entire (old) story at thenation.com

Saturday, June 12, 2010

NPR, Brookings Institution discuss drone ethics and strategy

"CIA, Military Rely Heavily On Predator Drones" NPR, June 11, 2010

Audio or transcript available at npr.org

"One issue that Defense Secretary Gates has been pressed on during his global tour, has been drones. Those are unmanned aircraft used to target suspected terrorists along Pakistan's border. A critical U.N. report raised questions about a weapon that is a key part of U.S. war fighting. Peter Singer, of the Brookings Institution, tells Deborah Amos that Predadors are being used more and more."

Bizarro subcontractor situation at BP spill "command center"

I have an alternative media rule, a personal rule, that when the work of journalists Jeremy Scahill and Naomi Klien lead them to bump into each other--when the topics they are investigating converge--readers are going to get a peek at the seedy underbelly of power, greed and intimidation that lead to questions about what kind of world we actually live in set against an ideal image of the one we think we live in.

Thusly, through their work we encounter the security contractor Wackenhut, AKA British G4S, AKA Danish Group 4 Falck and future-named G4S Secure Solutions--Wackenhut is successful, so a bigger fish swallowed by a bigger fish--swallowed them in 2002. From Wikipedia, "In the U.S., Wackenhut has appeared in the federal courts 62 times since 1999, largely resulting from prisoners' claims of human rights abuses."

If you can figure out from reading this article what might be going on in the Gulf besides a relentless gush of oil and a mega-corporation with no plan to stop it, please share.

An excerpt ...

This is from Jeremy Scahill's column in The Nation magazine, but I found it on naomiklein.com

BP and US Government 'Command Center' Guarded by Company From Afghan Embassy Hazing Scandal
By Jeremy Scahill - May 28th, 2010
Published in The Nation

I just got off the phone with my friends Naomi Klein, author of "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," and her husband Avi Lewis, host of al Jazeera English's popular program Fault Lines. They are traveling around the devastated US Gulf reporting on the horrific disaster caused by BP's massive oil spill. They described to me a run in that they just had with the private security company Wackenhut, which apparently has been hired to do the perimeter security for the "Deepwater Horizon Unified Command." The "Unified Command" is run jointly by BP and several US government agencies including the US Coast Guard, the Department of Defense, the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security.

Wackenhut, of course, is the notorious private security company that operates in the US and around the globe. It recently became part of the huge British mercenary network G4S. Most recently, Wackenhut gained global infamy for the conduct of guards from its subsidiary Armor Group after it was revealed by whistleblowers that the company created a "Lord of the Flies environment" at the embassy "in which guards and supervisors are 'peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks... [drunken] brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity." According to the Project on Government Oversight, "Multiple guards say this deviant hazing has created a climate of fear and coercion, with those who declined to participate often ridiculed, humiliated, demoted, or even fired. The result is an environment that is dangerous and volatile. Some guards have reported barricading themselves in their rooms for fear that those carrying out the hazing will harm them physically."

In other words, Wackenhut is the perfect choice to "guard" the joint BP-US government-US military operation in the Gulf.

Lewis told me that for two weeks his crew has attempted to interview officials from the Unified Command's Joint Information Center. "We had been shut down or dodged for 2 weeks of official requests," he said. Finally, Lewis and Klein, who is on assignment for The Guardian, decided to go to the information center in person "to try to nail something down."

When they pulled up to the front gate, they were greeted by a private security guard working for Wackenhut, the massive security company. "We said we were media and he said, 'No no no. You're going to have to turn around and go back," recalls Lewis. Klein added, "The Wackenhut guard said we couldn't come in without permission, but wouldn't tell us who we needed permission from. When we didn't leave, he radioed for back up and a Wackenhut truck arrived to escort us off the grounds."

[photo of a suspiciously unofficial looking guard turning away said investigative team appears in original story]

... Klein, who spent extensive time in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina documenting the widespread disaster profiteering and privatization that endures to this day said the fact that Wackenhut is guarding a joint operation of the US government and BP is not surprising given what is happening in the Gulf right now. "The whole Gulf Coast is a corporate oil state," she told me. "It's like BP broke it, so now they own the entire Gulf Coast." She added: "We might accept the premise that BP is best positioned to know how to fix the blow up at 5,000 feet, but that also seems to mean they think they should control media access and the entire clean up of a massive national emergency. BP is in charge of everything. We were on the water in open seas the day before the Wackenhut incident and a boat pulls up next to us and asked if we worked for BP and we said, "No," and they said, 'You can't be here.'" It is completely sci-fi. It's a corporate state."

One-fifth of U.S. mortgages "underwater"

From Bloomberg News; writer is Brian Louis

Amid all this attention on AfPak and the drone strikes, a reminder that the war abroad IS the war at home. Every million we spend "over there" could have been part of the economy "over here." Terrorist threat or no, this is a maxim of war that dates at least to Persia and Greece.

Forgive me if this is oversimplification, but when the banks create a financial crisis (ability to make payments on debts disrupted; said payments still due), homeowners lose their homes and either move in with family or start renting elsewhere, lose the equity that was coming from home ownership (plus any consumer lending power that comes with said equity: see "decreased demand for goods and services") and the government intervenes to help the banks continue to lend, to create more consumer debt ... and who becomes the new property holder (even if the property is sold off to a hatchet man repossession company who re-sells repossessed homes, the owner is still ...): Banks.

Big bank, little bank, most banks are owned by ... other banks. Who ignited the fire? Mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps ... Banks.

It's kind of like paying taxes to maintain a military that, instead of defending the borders within which you live (relying on someone else to protect your property and the lives of your family), armed men come to your house and haul some family members away to camps while shooting the others. "Sorry, your lease on being alive and free ... has expired. We have come to collect."

Agreed that's a little reactionary, but who is protecting these banks from regular people who have nothing left to lose? More importantly, why is a fifth of the population so disenfranchised and disunited that they aren't desperately defending their lives--AND BLAMING THE BANKS?!! Are they clinically depressed and overly medicated? Is every service shut off except for 150 channels of cable? Upon this I dwell, and this confuses me.

Here's an excerpt of the Bloomberg piece:

May 10 (Bloomberg) -- More than a fifth of U.S. mortgage holders owed more than their homes were worth in the first quarter as repossessions climbed to a record, according to Zillow.com.

Twenty-three percent of owners of mortgaged homes were underwater during the period, up from 21 percent in the previous three months, the Seattle-based property data provider said today in a report. More than one in 1,000 homes were repossessed by lenders in March, the highest rate in Zillow data dating back to 2000.

Underwater homes are more likely to be lost to foreclosure because their owners have a harder time refinancing or selling when they fall behind on loan payments. U.S. home values dropped 3.8 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the 13th straight period of year-over-year declines, Zillow said.

“Having a lot of underwater homeowners will add to the downward pressure on house prices,” said Celia Chen, senior director at Moody’s Economy.com in West Chester, Pennsylvania. “We do expect that home prices will fall a bit more.”

Bank repossessions in the U.S. rose 35 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier to a record 257,944, according to RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California-based company.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

A discussion between two people regarding U.S. drone strikes.

The individual who tipped ExEd off to the Newsy.com drone ethics debate video had this to say in referencing said video ...

"I agree with questioning the ethics in the use of UAV's. Drones are used to kill "the enemy," while the flyers of the drones are clear and out of any danger. It creates an unfair fight to be "hunted by robots," as you say. No longer is this man against man, but man against machine. It doesn't seem fair for the civilians that lose their lives to this kind of sneak-attack warfare ..."

"The video debates the recent drone attacks in Pakistan. It debates the effectiveness of the drones in finding the enemy, and whether they working to resolve conflicts or just create more anger and hate. The failed Time Square bombing by Faisal Shahzad obviously answers this question. The drone attacks in Pakistan directly influenced his decision to bomb Time Square. He certainly cannot be the only example of this, as I am sure similar images of hate is simmering in the minds of other people who have lost family members to US attacks."

These thoughtful and concerned comments prompted my response, which after writing, I thought worthwhile to share with everyone else here--

"You raise a notion I don't think gets any play at all in the media. You hear an argument that goes, "Attacking civilians in regions where terrorists lives inevitably gives rise to recruitment of more terrorists and attacks like Times Square and the Detroit Christmas attempt." This one sort of fades into the din of "We must stop the terrorists at all costs, never letting up at any point in the day," which is more like what our servicemen and women get to hear all the time.

What you do not hear is a theory or line of reasoning that goes, 'Terrorists [those who use violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims--Oxford English Dictionary] use their precious resources to strike where they can, when they can based on the support they have from populations outside their group dependent on public opinion and recent developments. They cannot strike anywhere they want whenever they want.' What happens when that public support dwindles to a whisper and their resources dry up too far for them to raise airfare for one person beyond 500 miles? These ideas you do not see in the media much of anywhere.

The drone ethics debate, as you've seen, is highly marginalized at present. Why is the debate relegated to blips on the horizon of mainstream media coverage and deep fringes of internet fora? There are reasons. Typical reasons but not necessarily good ones. Military actions are subsidized by taxpayer and citizen support, but they are not beholden to it. Most military actions are classified, and discussing troop movements publicly is speech unprotected by the First Amendment under the definition of sedition. But drone missions come with a special controversy: they are moved further and further from public purview. From U.S. military operations in Afghanistan away to JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command at the forward operating base in Bagram. From JSOC to the CIA. And we are told CIA agents have a different exposure to U.S. law than U.S. soldiers. And finally from the CIA, who administers the flights into Pakistan, to private contractors like Blackwater/Xe and similar companies, some of Pakistani and Afghan origin.

The way I see it, the push for accountability to the public on killing civilians in the hunt for terrorists whose "high value" is actually quite disputable, profiles of the victims doled out to the media on a need-to-know basis, has to come from the public.

If the public says, 'Drones kill bad guys, our soldiers don't come into harm's way,' then that's the world we live in now. I think it sounds like the last Terminator movie for reasons not rooted in science fiction. But that's my piece.

If the public says, 'I really don't want more women and children killed by unmanned missile strikes, no matter who you're targeting, because I wouldn't want that to happen to me or to my children,' then enough public outcry could actually get the drone program decommissioned and put a stop to some of this Fox News type spin with might-makes-right, the Empire will emerge victorious, the ends justify the means always and we're mandated by our God to win in the Middle East mindless silliness that keeps us damning the torpedoes and lodging U.S. presence further into central Asia and the Middle East with no end in sight."

I welcome readers to this discussion. If you feel moved to post a comment, please help continue the thread and thank you.

U.N. Report: U.S. Drones Do More Harm than Good

On a tip from a reader who monitors Newsy.com for multiple reverse angles on the same story appearing in television, print and online news media, this video contributes to opening further the debate on the use of drones in situations listed and described on this site.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

U.N. official urges U.S. to stop CIA drone attacks on al-Qaeda and Taliban

This is the battle of our time, between international law and the laws of strongest nations as determined by the powerful (who wield the strength, economic and political) in those nations. International law's only advantage is unity--bringing the strength of all the other represented nations to bear in opposition to some convenient view of justice held by the most powerful people in the most powerful nations and the economic interests their voices represent. The voices of the great masses governed by both the national and international governing bodies sound outside this nexus of power and are able to push into these powerful entities for recognition and cooperation. The question, then, becomes, "How many of us side with international law (typically framed as human rights), how many with national law (typically property rights framed as individual rights) and to what end?"

The legal community within the national government will make skillfully administered attempts to thwart these arguments of human rights against their unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with anti-personnel bombs and do their best to be dismissive of concerns as people meddling in business that isn't theirs, the business of special operations, classified missions, dangerous individuals and hunting irreparably bad people to their deaths. But the unmanned drone program--not just a robotic eye in the sky with no human operator, but an aircraft armed with 300-pound Hellfire missiles and vision limited to optics, a radio signal and available light--is subject to far more debate than it's been made to undergo since its implementation.


Washington Post story; excerpt appears below

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 3, 2010

A senior U.N. official said Wednesday that the United States should halt the CIA's drone campaign against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan, charging that the secrecy surrounding the strikes violates the legal principle of international accountability.

But a report by Philip Alston, the United Nations' special rapporteur for extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, stopped short of declaring the CIA program illegal.

He presented a 29-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday that focused on "targeted killings" by countries such as Russia and Israel as well as the United States.

"It is an essential requirement of international law that States using targeted killings demonstrate that they are complying with the various rules governing their use in situations of armed conflict," Alston said in a news release. "The greatest challenge to this principle today comes from the program operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. . . . The international community does not know when and where the CIA is authorized to kill, the criteria for individuals who may be killed, how it ensures killings are legal, and what follow-up there is when civilians are illegally killed."

Alston said some commentators have argued that CIA personnel involved in drone killings are committing war crimes because, unlike the military, they are "unlawful combatants." But, he said, "this argument is not supported" by international humanitarian law.