FAIR:"Does Anyone Object to U.S. Drone Wars in Pakistan?"

From Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting back on Oct. 3, 2010 by Peter Hart

Apparently not, judging by the Washington Post's October 3 story ("Military Drones Aid CIA's mission") about the CIA's expansion of its drone war in Pakistan. It is "part of a high-stakes attempt by the Obama administration to deal decisive blows to Taliban insurgents," and also "a significant evolution of an already controversial targeted killing program."

Post readers get details from "a U.S. official"--who says things like, "Our intelligence has gotten a lot better." The only other perspective comes from Bruce Reidel at Brookings, who is "a former CIA analyst who led the Obama administration's initial overhaul of its Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy." In other words, not much of a critic.

There are obviously fundamental questions about this policy--such as whether it's legal, something Jim Lobe wrote about recently for Inter Press Service (4/2/10).

Tags: CIA, Jim Lobe, Pakistan

Inter Press Service story from April 2010 ...


Legality of Drone Strikes Still in Question
By Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Apr 2, 2010 (IPS) - While welcoming an initial effort by the administration of President Barack Obama to offer a legal justification for drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists overseas, human rights groups say critical questions remain unanswered.

In an address to an international law group last week, State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh insisted that such operations were being conducted in full compliance with international law.

"The U.S. is in armed conflict with al Qaeda as well as the Taliban and associated forces in response to the horrific acts of 9/11 and may use force consistent with its right to self-defence under international law," he said. "...(I)ndividuals who are part of such armed groups are belligerents and, therefore, lawful targets under international law."

Moreover, he went on, "U.S. targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war," which require limiting attacks to military objectives and that the damage caused to civilians by those attacks would not be excessive.

While right-wing commentators expressed satisfaction with Koh's evocation of the "right to self-defence" - the same justification used by President George W. Bush - human rights groups were circumspect.

"We are encouraged that the administration has taken the legal surrounding drone strikes seriously," said Jonathan Manes of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). "While this was an important and positive first step, a number of controversial questions were left unanswered."

"We still don't know what criteria the government uses to determine that a civilian is acting like a fighter, and can therefore be killed, and... whether there are any geographical limits on where drone strikes can be used to target and kill individuals," he told IPS.

"He didn't really say anything that we took issue with," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), who also complained about the lack of details.

"But it still leaves unanswered the question of how far the war paradigm he's talking about extends. Will it extend beyond, say, ungoverned areas of Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen? Because you don't want to leave a legal theory out there that could be exploited by a country like Russia or China to knock off its political enemies on the streets of a foreign city," he added.

Drone attacks, which have increased significantly under Obama, are widely considered to have become the single-most effective weapon in Washington's campaign disrupt al Qaeda and affiliated groups, especially in the frontier areas of western Pakistan.

In Obama's first year in office, more strikes were carried out than in the previous eight years under his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), they reportedly killed "several hundred" al Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban militants since Obama in 2009, forcing many of them to flee their border hideouts for large cities where precision attacks would be much harder to carry out without causing heavy civilian casualties.

But the strikes - as well as cruise-missile attacks carried out by the U.S. military against suspected terrorist targets in Yemen and Somalia - have drawn growing criticism from some human rights groups and legal scholars, notably the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings, Philip Alston, who have argued that several aspects of these operations may violate international law.

Their focus has been less on the use of drones in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Washington's forces are engaged in active hostilities and the Pentagon has implemented relatively transparent procedures to maximise compliance with the laws of war, than on the frontier areas of Pakistan and other "ungoverned" areas where al Qaeda and Taliban militants have gained refuge. The CIA, whose procedures remain secret, is in charge of drone operations.

The weapon itself "is one of the least problematic from a civilian-protection standpoint, because drones can hover over their targets and observe whether civilians are present before delivering a payload, and because they carry relatively small and precisely guided munitions," noted Malinowski.

"The question is a legal one: under what circumstances can you use lethal force at all? Our view has always been that it should be limited to zones of active armed conflict where normal arrest operations are not feasible."

A related question involves who may be targeted. While many authorities insist lethal force can be used under the laws of war against those who are actively participating in armed conflict, the U.S. has used defined participation in very broad terms, including membership in - or even financial support of - an armed group.

In his remarks to the American Society for International Law, Koh, who was one of the harshest and most outspoken critics of the Bush administration's legal tactics in its "global war on terror", acknowledged some of these concerns, noting that his speech "is obviously not the occasion for a detailed legal opinion."

"(W)hether a particular individual will be targeted in a particular location will depend upon considerations specific to each case, including those related to the imminence of the threat, the sovereignty of the other states involved, and the willingness and ability of those states to suppress the threat the target poses," he said.

Koh added that Washington will ensure the application of the principles of "distinction" and "proportionality" in the laws of war.

While noting criticism that the use of lethal force against some individuals far removed from the battlefield could amount to an "unlawful extra-judicial killing", he insisted that "a state that is engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defence is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force."

"Our procedures and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust, and advanced technologies have helped to make our targeting even more precise," he said.

Alston, the U.N. rapporteur, was far from satisfied with these assurances, however, calling Koh's statement "evasive".

He "was essentially arguing that 'You've got to trust us. I've looked at this very carefully. I'm very sensitive to these issues. And all is well,'" he told an interviewer on 'Democracy Now' Thursday.

"The speech did not provide essential information about the drone/targeted killing programme, including the number and rate of civilian casualties, and the internal oversight and controls on targeted killing, especially within the CIA," said Manes of the ACLU, which has filed a lawsuit to acquire that information.

Tom Parker of Amnesty International was more scathing about Koh's position, suggesting that it was one more concession - along with indefinite detention and special military tribunals for suspected terrorists - to the framework created by Bush's "global war on terror".

"The big issue is where the war is and whether it's a war, and we couldn't disagree more strongly as to the tenor of Koh's comments," he said. "It goes back to the idea of an unbounded global war on terror where terror is hardly defined at all."

*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/

New America Foundation raises unaddressed issues in U.S.-Pakistan military ops

Video from the New America Foundation, one of the groups taking action to inject debate into the largely closed and classified U.S. military pursuits within the borders of Pakistan presents a legal approach not previously offered on U.S.-Pakistan relations and campaigns.

This legal framework is directly related to the relegated priorities of arresting the occurrences of civilian victims and casualties, the unpopularity among the resident population of the attacks and their value in neutralizing terrorists, Pakistan's sovereign duty to its citizenry, frailty of legal arguments supporting the CIA's drone program and the prosecution of a classified and therefore supposedly covert war inside an overt one. Relegated, that is, beneath the priority of executing leadership in international terrorist cells or organizations (extrajudicial killing being a related issue of separate special importance) and implementing a technology that allows targets (and collateral victims) to be eliminated while soldiers prosecuting the attack operate from safety half the world away.

Featured Speaker
Christopher Rogers
Pakistan Field Fellow, Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
BACKUP LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9yQMj289Hg
In the event the embedded video won't work, please use the YouTube link above.

Pakistan erupts in the news; U.S. rift threatens West's policy in Central Asia

From a possible revision of ally status for Pakistan with the U.S. to the average Pakistani being sick to death of the CIA using robots to kill their children, Pakistani spies insisting the Taliban kill for purposes of intimidation to no chance for suggesting in U.S. media that drone attacks are not the best strategy, Pakistan is in the news and coming undone in America's unending quest to simplify the lines drawn by 9/11 into Us and Them, cowboys and radical religious guys who won't sleep or stop praying to play with their children until every last cowboy is dead.

Should the U.S. Give Up on Pakistan? The Atlantic Monthly online
By Max Fisher | October 07, 2010 4:25pm

Does Anyone Object to U.S. Drone Wars in Pakistan? Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
10/04/2010 by Peter Hart

Blasts kill 8 at Sufi shrine in Pakistan; Los Angeles Times
No one claims responsibility for the attacks in Karachi, which injured 65. Militants have targeted shrines and mosques serving adherents of non-orthodox Muslim doctrines.
By Alex Rodriguez, Los Angeles Times
October 8, 2010

Hamburg mosque which links 9/11 to the badlands of Pakistan; London Guardian
Ian Traynor reports from Germany on an abandoned prayer hall in the spotlight again after US terror alerts
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 October 2010 19.41 BST

Pakistan criticizes drone strikes
By the CNN Wire Staff
October 7, 2010 -- Updated 1709 GMT (0109 HKT)

Oct. 3 report on drone strike at funeral for drone strike victims

This illuminating article posted by the Denver chapter of an autonomous political action group, Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement (Denver). Note the lead to these compelling and utterly disturbing source stories:

CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones''They want to kill people with software that doesn't work'by Chris Williams, TheRegister.co.uk, Sept. 24

And also,

"CIA used pirated, inaccurate software to target drone attacks: lawsuit"by Daniel Tencer, RawStory.com, also dated Sept. 24

Drones kill 28 people, then hit the funeral

www.raimd.wordpress.com

A recent string of bombings, killing dozens in Pakistan, has the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or “drone,” making headlines once again. So-called “Predator Drones” have become one of imperialism’s favorite tools of oppression. Bombing attacks by these vehicles are being carried out consistently and more frequently than ever. (1).

Predator Drones are center stage as the US ups its assault on Pakistan’s northwest border region. At least 28 people were killed as a result of drone strikes in South Waziristan during the week of September 19 (2). The week’s two bloodiest attacks, responsible for more than a dozen deaths, took place on September 22. The initial strike launched two missiles at a targeted vehicle, killing seven. A funeral was arranged for the victims in the following hours; subsequently, this funeral was also targeted by a drone strike, resulting in more deaths yet. This absurd sequence mirrors an incident that took place last summer. On the morning of Tuesday 23 June 2009, unmanned drones killed more than 45 people in a series of bombings including a strike on a funeral procession for victims of the earlier assault (3).

Violence caused by drone missiles has sparked outrage in Pakistan, where drones have killed at least 1,700 people(4). The mutilation caused by the bombings makes compiling a solid count of the deaths all but impossible. Even so, it is clear that hundreds of those killed have been civilians (5). Drones have been a fixture in Pakistan for over five years; however, US officials do not officially comment on any drone activities. The attacks fall under the veil of CIA secrecy. It is clear, nonetheless, that using drones has become particularly attractive to decision-makers in the past two years. Estimated death tolls clearly show drone attacks being responsible for more deaths in 2009 alone than in the four years between 2004-2008 combined (6).

With mounting numbers of casualties, drone attacks have become known for their haphazard destruction. Missiles fired from the unpiloted vehicles are often grossly off-target. This, and general belligerence have contributed to the high civilian deaths which have, embarrassingly for the US, included Amerikan citizens (7).

Part of the cause of the vehicle’s reckless imprecision is being revealed in an ongoing lawsuit. Accusations and evidence depict the as CIA consciously utilizing faulty targeting software in the unmanned vehicles. IISI, a small, Massachusetts-based software company alleges that IT firm “Netezza” facilitated the CIA with a pirated, and knowingly-unreliable, version of their software to the CIA for use in US drone vehicles. The location-analysis software in turn may have produced locations up to 13 meters off target (8). IISI was pressured to meet a quick deadline to provide the software, when the company voiced reservations, Netezza allegedly went ahead and reverse-engineered the program themselves. The IISI Chief Technology Officer summarized his earliest feelings on the situation, stating, “they want to kill people with my software that doesn’t work” (9). The lawsuit aims to halt use of the pirated software by Netezza and its clients, including the CIA. IISI has expressed concern that the buggy software may lead to loss of innocent life. Unfortunately, the host of civilian deaths cannot be declared a mere “software issue.” Such recklessness is hardwired into the logic of imperialism.

Predator Drones are becoming a standard instrument in the oppression of Third World peoples by . As RAIM has noted (xhttp://raimd.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/imperialism-drones-on/), US drones are now deployed everywhere from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and recently on the militarized US/Mexico border. Israel used US-provided drones in attacks on Gaza in December 2008. The First World is looking to a high technology, impersonal approach of fighting their battles. These machines cause much destruction, but high-tech gadgetry will not defeat Third Wold resistance. As comrade Lin Biao wrote in “Long Live the Victory of People’s War!”

However highly developed modern weapons and technical equipment may be and however complicated the methods of modern warfare, in the final analysis the outcome of a war will be decided by the sustained fighting of the ground forces, by the fighting at close quarters on battlefields, by the political consciousness of the men, by their courage and spirit of sacrifice. Here the weak points of U.S. imperialism will be completely laid bare, while the superiority of the revolutionary people will be brought into full play. The reactionary troops of U.S. imperialism cannot possibly be endowed with the courage and the spirit of sacrifice possessed by the revolutionary people. The spiritual atom bomb which the revolutionary people possess is a far more powerful and useful weapon than the physical atom bomb. (10)

The Third World majority, collectively terrorized by imperialism, must collectively defeat imperialism. The enemy’s extravagant technology cannot hold up against People’s War.

Notes.

1. Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann’s drones database at the New America Foundation
xxhttp://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones
2. xxhttp://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/09/2010921181212227907.html
3. xxhttp://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/06/200962317958264507.html
3. Ibid. Protest
4.xxhttp://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones#2010chart
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. xxhttp://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/09/cia_drones_killed_us_citizens.html
8. xxhttp://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/cia-inaccurate-software-drone-attacks/
9. Ibid.

UK Guardian: U.S. Military drones lent to CIA program for "covert" ops in Pakistan

At least British newspaper editors believe nation-states are supposed to declare war formally and publicly before breezing into a so-called demilitarized zone (Federally Administered Tribal Areas or FATA; not unlike its meta-linguistic cousin, the convenient geographic designation, "Afpak") to drop 300-pound missiles on designated combatants and their families. In the place of working out a deal with an unstable regime operating in the militarized shell of a former dictatorship-avec-parliament (in reference to General Pervez Musharraf). Doesn't mean David Cameron's government is going to want to help impoverished people living in rural Pakistan.

A caveat: Extraordinary Edition would like to editorially acknowledge Islamabad's politicians ... are politicians. Thusly shall they slither and writhe between their constituents and unimaginable power offered them by their counterparts in stronger states. Guardian article appears below.


US secretly shifts armed drones to fight terrorists in Pakistan

The Pentagon and CIA are stepping up America's secret war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan by secretly diverting aerial drones and missiles from Afghanistan.

By Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 5:23PM BST 03 Oct 2010

Predator drones are flown over Pakistan and intelligence gained is passed to Islamabad

Predator and Reaper drones have been lent by the US military to the CIA as part of a shift in strategy that underlines the Obama administration's view that Pakistan is unable or unwilling to target Islamist sanctuaries on its own soil.

Tensions between the US and Pakistan have flared after a key route used to supply American troops in Afghanistan was shut after three Pakistani soldiers were killed in an attack by a Nato helicopter gunship.

On Friday, insurgents attacked fuel tankers in Pakistan in another indication of the increasing vulnerability of Western supply routes.

The additional drones enabled the CIA to increase the number of strikes in Pakistan in September, averaging five strikes a week that month, up from an average of two to three per week.

This increase in drone activity was partly aimed at disrupting a suspected terrorist plot to strike in Western Europe. Americans officials believe Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders are behind plots potentially aimed at Britain, France and Germany.

American surveillance drones are flown over Pakistan and intelligence gained passed to Islamabad. But Pakistan has formally banned US military operations on its soil, citing the country's sovereignty.

But the CIA has secretly conducted missile strikes launched from drones with Pakistani complicity. This has allowed Pakistan to condemn the strikes, which are strongly opposed by its predominantly anti-American population.

"You have to deal with the sanctuaries," said John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, told the Wall Street Journal. "I've pushed very, very hard with the Pakistanis regarding that." Mr Kerry discussed the issue with Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, in Washington last week.

The secret arrangement between the Pentagon and CIA underlines the consensus in the Obama administration that safe havens on Pakistani territory near the Afghan border is the major obstacle to success in the war in Afghanistan.

"When it comes to drones, there's no mission more important right now than hitting targets in the tribal areas, and that's where additional equipment's gone," an American official told the Wall Street Journal.

"It's not the only answer, but it's critical to both homeland security and force protection in Afghanistan."

The proposal for the CIA to use military resources emerged during last year's Afghanistan-Pakistan policy review. There was resistance from some at the Pentagon who argued that the drones were needed against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Since taking command in Afghanistan in July, Gen. Petraeus has placed greater focus on the tribal areas of Pakistan, according to military and other government officials.

CIA publicly announces its increase in drone attacks in Pakistan

C.I.A. Steps Up Drone Attacks on Taliban in Pakistan
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: September 27, 2010

WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. has drastically increased its bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan in recent weeks, American officials said. The strikes are part of an effort by military and intelligence operatives to try to cripple the Taliban in a stronghold being used to plan attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.

As part of its covert war in the region, the C.I.A. has launched 20 attacks with armed drone aircraft thus far in September, the most ever during a single month, and more than twice the number in a typical month. This expanded air campaign comes as top officials are racing to stem the rise of American casualties before the Obama administration’s comprehensive review of its Afghanistan strategy set for December. American and European officials are also evaluating reports of possible terrorist plots in the West from militants based in Pakistan.

The strikes also reflect mounting frustration both in Afghanistan and the United States that Pakistan’s government has not been aggressive enough in dislodging militants from their bases in the country’s western mountains. In particular, the officials said, the Americans believe the Pakistanis are unlikely to launch military operations inside North Waziristan, a haven for Taliban and Qaeda operatives that has long been used as a base for attacks against troops in Afghanistan.

Beyond the C.I.A. drone strikes, the war in the region is escalating in other ways. In recent days, American military helicopters have launched three airstrikes into Pakistan that military officials estimate killed more than 50 people suspected of being members of the militant group known as the Haqqani network, which is responsible for a spate of deadly attacks against American troops.

Such air raids by the military remain rare, and officials in Kabul said Monday that the helicopters entered Pakistani airspace on only one of the three raids, and acted in self-defense after militants fired rockets at an allied base just across the border in Afghanistan. At the same time, the strikes point to a new willingness by military officials to expand the boundaries of the campaign against the Taliban and Haqqani network — and to an acute concern in military and intelligence circles about the limited time to attack Taliban strongholds while American “surge” forces are in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials have angrily criticized the helicopter attacks, saying that NATO’s mandate in Afghanistan does not extend across the border in Pakistan.

As evidence of the growing frustration of American officials, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, has recently issued veiled warnings to top Pakistani commanders that the United States could launch unilateral ground operations in the tribal areas should Pakistan refuse to dismantle the militant networks in North Waziristan, according to American officials.

“Petraeus wants to turn up the heat on the safe havens,” said one senior administration official, explaining the sharp increase in drone strikes. “He has pointed out to the Pakistanis that they could do more.”

Special Operations commanders have also been updating plans for cross-border raids, which would require approval from President Obama. For now, officials said, it remains unlikely that the United States would make good on such threats to send American troops over the border, given the potential blowback inside Pakistan, an ally.

But that could change, they said, if Pakistan-based militants were successful in carrying out a terrorist attack on American soil. American and European intelligence officials in recent days have spoken publicly about growing evidence that militants may be planning a large-scale attack in Europe, and have bolstered security at a number of European airports and railway stations.

“We are all seeing increased activity by a more diverse set of groups and a more diverse set of threats,” said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano before a Senate panel last week.

The senior administration official said the strikes were intended not only to attack Taliban and Haqqani fighters, but also to disrupt any plots directed from or supported by extremists in Pakistan’s tribal areas that were aimed at targets in Europe. “The goal is to suppress or disrupt that activity,” the official said.

The 20 C.I.A. drone attacks in September represent the most intense bombardment by the spy agency since January, when the C.I.A. carried out 11 strikes after a suicide bomber killed seven agency operatives at a remote base in eastern Afghanistan.

According to one Pakistani intelligence official, the recent drone attacks have not killed any senior Taliban or Qaeda leaders. Many senior operatives have already fled North Waziristan, he said, to escape the C.I.A. drone campaign.

Over all the spy agency has carried out 74 drone attacks this year, according to the Web site The Long War Journal, which tracks the strikes. A vast majority of the attacks — which usually involve several drones firing multiple missiles or bombs — have taken place in North Waziristan.

The Obama administration has enthusiastically embraced the C.I.A.’s drone program, an ambitious and historically unusual war campaign by American spies. According to The Long War Journal, the spy agency in 2009 and 2010 has launched nearly four times as many attacks as it did during the final year of the Bush administration.

One American official said that the recent strikes had been aimed at several groups, including the Haqqani network, Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. The United States, he said, hopes to “keep the pressure on as long as we can.”

But the C.I.A.’s campaign has also raised concerns that the drone strikes are fueling anger in the Muslim world. The man who attempted to detonate a truck filled with explosives in Times Square told a judge that the C.I.A. drone campaign was one of the factors that led him to attack the United States.

In a meeting with reporters on Monday, General Petraeus indicated that it was new intelligence gathering technology that helped NATO forces locate the militants killed by the helicopter raids against militants in Pakistan.

In particular, he said, the military has expanded its fleet of reconnaissance blimps that can hover over hide-outs thought to belong to the Taliban in eastern and southern Afghanistan.

The intelligence technology, General Petraeus said, has also enabled the expanded campaign of raids by Special Operations commandos against Taliban operatives in those areas.

Rod Nordland and Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan.

Reminder from the desk of General Musharraf: don't criticize Pakistani military

Associated Press story

Pakistani minister resigns after criticizing army

By ZARAR KHAN (AP)

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan's federal minister for defense production resigned after being summoned by the prime minister to explain comments he made criticizing the army and accusing it of killing prominent politicians.

Abdul Qayyum Khan Jatoi accused the army of killing several high-profile Pakistani figures, including former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and ethnic Baluch tribal leader Nawab Akbar Bugti.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani later summoned Jatoi to explain his comments. He told reporters Sunday the minister made his statements "in his personal capacity, and within five or six hours he resigned."

Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira told local TV that Jatoi's comments were "against our policies."

The army is widely considered the most powerful institution in Pakistan and it is risky for officials to criticize it. The military has carried out three coups against civilian governments in Pakistan and has ruled the country for much of its 63-year history.

Bugti, the Baluch tribal leader, was killed in an August 2006 military operation. The 79-year-old's remote cave hide-out collapsed in an unexplained explosion while security forces were searching for tribal insurgents who fight for a larger share of natural resources extracted from impoverished Baluchistan. The exact details of Bugti's death are disputed.

Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007 after speaking at an election rally in a garrison city just outside Islamabad. The military-led government at the time blamed the killing on the Pakistani Taliban, which stage attacks throughout the country from their sanctuary in the tribal areas near the Afghan border. Critics in Pakistan speculated the nation's military or intelligence apparatus could have been involved in the killing, which the government refuted.

The tribal areas also host a range of militant groups focused on battling NATO troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. has stepped up pressure on these groups this month by carrying out 19 missile strikes, including two on Sunday — the most intense barrage since the attacks began in 2004.

In the first strike Sunday, a drone fired three missiles at a house in Datta Khel, part of the North Waziristan tribal area, killing three suspected militants, said Pakistani intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Minutes later, a drone fired two missiles at a vehicle in the same area, killing four suspected militants, the officials said.

The exact identities of the seven people killed in the attacks were not known, but most of this month's airstrikes have targeted forces led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a commander once supported by Pakistan and the U.S. during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Haqqani has since turned against the U.S., and American military officials have said his network — now effectively led by his son, Sirajuddin — presents one of the greatest threats to foreign forces in Afghanistan. Another militant commander, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, and his forces also hold sway in North Waziristan.

The U.S. wants Pakistan to launch an army offensive against insurgents in North Waziristan, but the government has resisted. Analysts believe Pakistan wants to maintain its historic relationship with the Haqqani network, which could be an ally in Afghanistan after foreign forces withdraw.

The 19 missile strikes this month have killed around 90 people, according to an Associated Press tally based on Pakistani intelligence reports.

U.S. officials do not publicly acknowledge the drone attacks but have said privately they have killed several senior Taliban and al-Qaida militants in the region, which is largely out of the control of the Pakistani state.

Pakistan often criticizes the attacks as violations of the country's sovereignty, but the government is widely believed to help the U.S. carry out the strikes. Criticism of the missile attacks has been more muted in recent months.

Associated Press writer Ishtiaq Mahsud contributed to this report from Dera Ismail Khan.

North Waziristan motorcyclists latest to be killed by UAV

From the Long War Journal ...

US Predators strike again in North Waziristan
By Bill Roggio September 20, 2010

Excerpts appear here—

"Four 'militants' were reported killed in the strike, but their affiliation to terror groups is unclear. No senior Taliban or al Qaeda commanders have been reported killed."

"The areas controlled by Bahadar and by the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani Network have been hit especially hard this year. Despite the fact that Bahadar and the Haqqani Network shelter al Qaeda and other South and Central Asian terror groups, the Pakistani government and military refuse to take action in North Waziristan. Bahadar and the Haqqanis are viewed as 'good Taliban' as they do not attack the Pakistani state."

Mainstream news mechanics evaluated, more money allocated to drone warfare for next year

From Ceasefire Magazine online Sept. 19, 2010

Piece by Musab Younis

An excerpt ...

The drone issue is an interesting one. A typical report from the BBC this week, for example, mentions that “twelve people were killed” in a drone strike, probably “militants”, in what is “the 12th drone strike this month in the region”, before adding: “The American military does not routinely confirm drone operations.”

The report is striking by virtue of omission. Nothing is mentioned of the civilian casualties of drone strikes – which were reported by Pakistani authorities to have reached 700 in January of this year (the figure now is surely higher), since the drone war began. Nothing is mentioned of the Gallup poll conducted for Al Jazeera which suggests that less than one in ten Pakistanis support the drone strikes. The same poll asked Pakistanis who they considered to be the greatest threat to their country – the Taliban, India, or the US. A majority of 59 percent said the US. 11 percent said the Taliban.

None of this is mentioned by the BBC. Why should we care what Pakistanis think about the military attacks taking place in their country? And the suggestion that most of them consider the US a greater threat than the Taliban is a difficult one, because it would undercut the central narrative of the news coverage of drone strikes: that though they at times entail unfortunate consequences, they are conducted for the security of the West and Pakistan. The idea that the US could be making the region less secure is, in this context, inconceivable.

Statistics have also vanished: such as the fact that this year, the US has allocated fifteen times more money to Predator drones than to the Pakistan floods relief effort ($2.2bn versus $150m). And there is no question of the reader being subjected to any uncomfortable suggestions, such as that made by the New Yorker last year that assassination, euphemistically termed “targeted killing”, is now “official US policy”, despite the violation of international law, and even the US constitution, that it entails.

$51.5 M contract for drone producer General Atomics

General Atomics gets $51.5 million Predator contract

By Gary Robbins

Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 10:34 a.m.

The Defense Department has awarded General Atomics Aeronautical Systems in Poway $51.5 million for spare parts, deployment readiness packages and ground support equipment for the MQ-9 Reaper, an unmanned aerial vehicle that’s also known as the Predator B drone. The company designs and develops the Reaper at its plants in Poway and Sabre Springs. The drone is heavily used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The new contract will be carried out behalf of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

It’s unclear whether the contract will affect General Atomic’s workforce, which now stands at 4,500 in San Diego County. But the company is in the midst of a hiring spree due to steady growth in the UAV market.

Tom Engelhardt on the Perfect American Weapon

"When we possess such weaponry, it turns out, there’s nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it. Today, in the American homeland, not a single smoking drone is in sight."

Tom Engelhardt

Article dates back to June 24, 2010

America Detached from War
Bush’s Pilotless Dream, Smoking Drones, and Other Strange Tales from the Crypt
Available on Tomdispatch.com

Admittedly, before George W. Bush had his fever dream, the U.S. had already put its first unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drone surveillance planes in the skies over Kosovo in the late 1990s. By November 2001, it had armed them with missiles and was flying them over Afghanistan.

In November 2002, a Predator drone would loose a Hellfire missile on a car in Yemen, a country with which we weren’t at war. Six suspected al-Qaeda members, including a suspect in the bombing of the destroyer the USS Cole would be turned into twisted metal and ash -- the first “targeted killings” of the American robotic era.

Just two months earlier, in September 2002, as the Bush administration was “introducing” its campaign to sell an invasion of Iraq to Congress and the American people, CIA Director George Tenet and Vice President Dick Cheney “trooped up to Capitol Hill” to brief four top Senate and House leaders on a hair-raising threat to the country. A “smoking gun” had been uncovered.

According to “new intelligence,” Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had in his possession unmanned aerial vehicles advanced enough to be armed with biological and chemical weaponry. Worse yet, these were capable -- so the CIA director and vice president claimed -- of spraying those weapons of mass destruction over cities on the east coast of the United States. It was just the sort of evil plan you might have expected from a man regularly compared to Adolf Hitler in our media, and the news evidently made an impression in Congress.

Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, for example, said that he voted for the administration's resolution authorizing force in Iraq because "I was told not only that [Saddam had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard."

In a speech in October 2002, President Bush then offered a version of this apocalyptic nightmare to the American public. Of course, like Saddam’s supposed ability to produce “mushroom clouds” over American cities, the Iraqi autocrat’s advanced UAVs (along with the ships needed to position them off the U.S. coast) were a feverish fantasy of the Bush era and would soon enough be forgotten. Instead, in the years to come, it would be American pilotless drones that would repeatedly attack Iraqi urban areas with Hellfire missiles and bombs.

In those years, our drones would also strike repeatedly in Afghanistan, and especially in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan, where in an escalating “secret” or “covert” war, which has been no secret to anyone, multiple drone attacks often occur weekly. They are now considered so much the norm that, with humdrum headlines slapped on (“U.S. missile strike kills 12 in NW Pakistan”), they barely make it out of summary articles about war developments in the American press.

And yet those robotic planes, with their young “pilots” (as well as the camera operators and intelligence analysts who make up a drone “crew”) sitting in front of consoles 7,000 miles away from where their missiles and bombs are landing, have become another kind of American fever dream. The drone is our latest wonder weapon and a bragging point in a set of wars where there has been little enough to brag about.

CIA director Leon Panetta has, for instance, called the Agency’s drones flying over Pakistan “the only game in town” when it comes to destroying al-Qaeda; a typically anonymous U.S. official in a Washington Post report claims of drone missile attacks, “We’re talking about precision unsurpassed in the history of warfare”; or as Gordon Johnson of the Pentagon's Joint Forces Command told author Peter Singer, speaking of the glories of drones: “They don't get hungry. They are not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes.”

Seven thousand of them, the vast majority surveillance varieties, are reportedly already being operated by the military, and that’s before swarms of “mini-drones” come on line. Our American world is being redefined accordingly.

In February, Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post caught something of this process when he spent time with Colonel Eric Mathewson, perhaps the most experienced Air Force officer in drone operations and on the verge of retirement. Mathewson, reported Jaffe, was trying to come up with an appropriately new definition of battlefield “valor” -- a necessity for most combat award citations -- to fit our latest corps of pilots at their video consoles. “Valor to me is not risking your life," the colonel told the reporter. "Valor is doing what is right. Valor is about your motivations and the ends that you seek. It is doing what is right for the right reasons. That to me is valor."

Smoking Drones

These days, CIA and administration officials troop up to Capitol Hill to offer briefings to Congress on the miraculous value of pilotless drones: in disrupting al-Qaeda, destroying its leadership or driving it “deeper into hiding,” and taking out key figures in the Taliban. Indeed, what started as a 24/7 assassination campaign against al-Qaeda’s top leadership has already widened considerably. The “target set” has by now reportedly expanded to take in ever lower-level militants in the tribal borderlands. In other words, a drone assassination campaign is morphing into the first full-scale drone war (and, as in all wars from the air, civilians are dying in unknown numbers).

If the temperature is again rising in Washington when it comes to these weapons, this time it’s a fever of enthusiasm for the spectacular future of drones (which the Air Force has plotted out to the year 2047), of a time when single pilots should be able to handle multiple drones in operations in the skies over some embattled land, and of a far more distant moment when those drones should be able to handle themselves, flying, fighting, and making key decisions about just who to take out without a human being having to intervene.

When we possess such weaponry, it turns out, there’s nothing unnerving or disturbing, apocalyptic or dystopian about it. Today, in the American homeland, not a single smoking drone is in sight.

Now it's the United States whose UAVs are ever more powerfully weaponized. It's the U.S. which is developing a 22-ton tail-less drone 20 times larger than a Predator that can fly at Mach 7 and (theoretically) land on the pitching deck of an aircraft carrier. It's the Pentagon which is planning to increase the funding of drone development by 700% over the next decade.

Admittedly, there is a modest counter-narrative to all this enthusiasm for our robotic prowess, “precision,” and “valor.” It involves legal types like Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions. He recently issued a 29-page report criticizing Washington’s “ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe.” Unless limits are put on such claims, and especially on the CIA’s drone war over Pakistan, he suggests, soon enough a plethora of states will follow in America’s footprints, attacking people in other lands “labeled as terrorists by one group or another.”

Such mechanized, long-distance warfare, he also suggests, will breach what respect remains for the laws of war. “Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield,” he wrote, “and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio-feed, there is a risk of developing a 'PlayStation' mentality to killing.”

Similarly, the ACLU has filed a freedom of information lawsuit against the U.S. government, demanding that it “disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas, as well as the ground rules regarding when, where, and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, and the number of civilian casualties they have caused.”

But pay no mind to all this. The arguments may be legally compelling, but not in Washington, which has mounted a half-hearted claim of legitimate “self-defense,” but senses that it’s already well past the point where legalities matter. The die is cast, the money committed. The momentum for drone war and yet more drone war is overwhelming.

It’s a done deal. Drone war is, and will be, us.

A Pilotless Military

If there are zeitgeist moments for products, movie stars, and even politicians, then such moments can exist for weaponry as well. The robotic drone is the Lady Gaga of this Pentagon moment.

It’s a moment that could, of course, be presented as an apocalyptic nightmare in the style of the Terminator movies (with the U.S. as the soul-crushing Skynet), or as a remarkable tale of how “networking technology is expanding a homefront that is increasingly relevant to day-to-day warfare” (as Christopher Drew recently put it in the New York Times). It could be described as the arrival of a dystopian fantasy world of one-way slaughter verging on entertainment, or as the coming of a generation of homegrown video warriors who work “in camouflage uniforms, complete with combat boots, on open floors, with four computer monitors on each desk... and coffee and Red Bull help[ing] them get through the 12-hour shifts.” It could be presented as the ultimate in cowardice -- the killing of people in a world you know nothing about from thousands of miles away -- or (as Col. Mathewson would prefer) a new form of valor.

The drones -- their use expanding exponentially, with ever newer generations on the drawing boards, and the planes even heading for “the homeland” -- could certainly be considered a demon spawn of modern warfare, or (as is generally the case in the U.S.) a remarkable example of American technological ingenuity, a problem-solver of the first order at a time when few American problems seem capable of solution. Thanks to our technological prowess, it’s claimed that we can now kill them, wherever they may be lurking, at absolutely no cost to ourselves, other than the odd malfunctioning drone. Not that even all CIA operatives involved in the drone wars agree with that one. Some of them understand perfectly well that there’s a price to be paid.

As it happens, the enthusiasm for drones is as much a fever dream as the one President Bush and his associates offered back in 2002, but it’s also distinctly us. In fact, drone warfare fits the America of 2010 tighter than a glove. With its consoles, chat rooms, and “single shooter” death machines, it certainly fits the skills of a generation raised on the computer, Facebook, and video games. That our valorous warriors, their day of battle done, can increasingly leave war behind and head home to the barbecue (or, given American life, the foreclosure) also fits an American mood of the moment.

The Air Force “detachments” that “manage” the drone war from places like Creech Air Force Base in Nevada are “detached” from war in a way that even an artillery unit significantly behind the battle lines or an American pilot in an F-16 over Afghanistan (who could, at least, experience engine failure) isn’t. If the drone presents the most extreme version thus far of the detachment of human beings from the battlefield (on only one side, of course) and so launches a basic redefinition of what war is all about, it also catches something important about the American way of war.

After all, while this country garrisons the world, invests its wealth in its military, and fights unending, unwinnable frontier wars and skirmishes, most Americans are remarkably detached from all this. If anything, since Vietnam when an increasingly rebellious citizens’ army proved disastrous for Washington’s global aims, such detachment has been the goal of American war-making.

As a start, with no draft and so no citizen’s army, war and the toll it takes is now the professional business of a tiny percentage of Americans (and their families). It occurs thousands of miles away and, in the Bush years, also became a heavily privatized, for-profit activity. As Pratap Chatterjee reported recently, “[E]very US soldier deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq is matched by at least one civilian working for a private company. All told, about 239,451 contractors work for the Pentagon in battle zones around the world.” And a majority of those contractors aren’t even U.S. citizens.

If drones have entered our world as media celebrities, they have done so largely without debate among that detached populace. In a sense, our wars abroad could be thought of as the equivalent of so many drones. We send our troops off and then go home for dinner and put them out of mind. The question is: Have we redefined our detachment as a new version of citizenly valor (and covered it over by a constant drumbeat of “support for our troops”)?

Under these circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that a “pilotless” force should, in turn, develop the sort of contempt for civilians that can be seen in the recent flap over the derogatory comments of Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal and his aides about Obama administration officials.

The Globalization of Death

Maybe what we need is the return of George W. Bush’s fever dream from the American oblivion in which it’s now interred. He was beyond wrong, of course, when it came to Saddam Hussein and Iraqi drones, but he wasn’t completely wrong about the dystopian Drone World to come. There are now reportedly more than 40 countries developing versions of those pilot-less planes. Earlier this year, the Iranians announced that they were starting up production lines for both armed and unarmed drones. Hezbollah used them against Israel in the 2006 summer war, years after Israel began pioneering their use in targeted killings of Palestinians.

Right now, in what still remains largely a post-Cold War arms race of one, the U.S. is racing to produce ever more advanced drones to fight our wars, with few competitors in sight. In the process, we’re also obliterating classic ideas of national sovereignty, and of who can be killed by whom under what circumstances. In the process, we may not just be obliterating enemies, but creating them wherever our drones buzz overhead and our missiles strike.

We are also creating the (il)legal framework for future war on a frontier where we won’t long be flying solo. And when the first Iranian, or Russian, or Chinese missile-armed drones start knocking off their chosen sets of "terrorists," we won’t like it one bit. When the first “suicide drones” appear, we’ll like it even less. And if drones with the ability to spray chemical or biological weapons finally do make the scene, we’ll be truly unnerved.

In the 1990s, we were said to be in an era of “globalization” which was widely hailed as good news. Now, the U.S. and its detached populace are pioneering a new era of killing that respects no boundaries, relies on the self-definitions of whoever owns the nearest drone, and establishes planetary free-fire zones. It’s a nasty combination, this globalization of death.

Some history on General Atomics and its Predator drone

A little background on brothers Neil and Linden Blue, owners and operators of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and manufacturers of the majority of predator drones. Keen emphasis on the Blues' friendship throughout the '80s with Nicaraguan then-president Anastasio Somoza, who brought you the Contra in Iran-Contra scandal and crack cocaine in Los Angeles (see Dark Alliance, a prize-winning book of journalism by the late Gary Webb). Today's piece is compelling, and adds a curious chapter to a story told in Cover-up, a documentary detailing the subterfuge beneath the story of the Iran-Contra Congressional hearings in 1987.

From Death and Taxes

Predator Drones: The All-Seeing Eye
By DJ Pangburn Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Excerpt-

While the Predator drones are generally considered a success by the Blues, General Atomics, other defense contractors and the U.S. government, their missile-strike record is horrific. According to the Brookings Institution’s Daniel Byman:

“Critics correctly find many problems with this program, most of all the number of civilian casualties the strikes have incurred. Sourcing on civilian deaths is weak and the numbers are often exaggerated, but more than 600 civilians are likely to have died from the attacks. That number suggests that for every militant killed, 10 or so civilians also died.”

Playing catchup with drone attack stories

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sept. 14, 2010

Record level of US airstrikes hit Afghan militants

By ASIF SHAHZAD AND KIMBERLY DOZIER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS

Excerpt-

ISLAMABAD -- Drone aircraft unleashed two missile attacks in a lawless tribal region on the Afghan border Tuesday, making September the most intense period of U.S. strikes in Pakistan since they began in 2004, intelligence officials said.

The stepped-up campaign is focused on a small area of farming villages and mountainous, thickly forested terrain controlled by the Haqqani network, a ruthless American foe in Afghanistan, U.S. officials say. There is some evidence the network is being squeezed as a result, one official said.

American officials said the airstrikes were designed to degrade the Haqqanis' operations on the Pakistani side of the border, creating a "hammer-and-anvil" effect as U.S. special operations forces carry out raids against their fighters across the frontier in Afghanistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing classified operations.

The missiles have killed more than 50 people in 12 strikes since Sept. 2 in the Pakistani region of North Waziristan, according to an Associated Press tally based on Pakistani intelligence officials' reports. Many struck around Datta Khel, a town of about 40,000 people that sits on a strategically vital road to the Afghan border.


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From Huffington Post Sept. 10, 2010

CIA May Send Predator Drones Into Yemen

Excerpt-

WASHINGTON — The White House, in an effort to turn up the heat against al-Qaida's branch in Yemen, is considering adding the CIA's armed Predator drones to the fight, two U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The drones are among CIA resources that could be assigned to an existing mission by U.S. special operations forces, a senior U.S. official told The Associated Press. The official said such options were in the planning stages and would be done only with the cooperation of the Yemeni leadership in Sanaa.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

The fact that the White House is considering supplying CIA weapons and other resources to the clandestine counterterrorist fight in Yemen was first reported in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

Yemen is the base of operations for al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, the militant group that claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner last Christmas Day and counts American-born rebel cleric Anwar al-Awlaki among its leadership. The U.S. military has been working with the Yemeni counterterrorist forces for years, and that cooperation has increased under the Obama administration.

But officials say the U.S. hasn't yet brought as much pressure to bear against AQAP as they have against its parent organization, Osama bin Laden's Pakistan-based al-Qaida, and that a range of tools and tactics were being considered.

Among the CIA's most lethal tools, armed Predator drones are already hunting high-value militant targets in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions. The idea is to reassign some of those to the U.S. special operations forces assisting local counterterrorist forces in Yemen.

But U.S. officials may have a hard time selling the concept to the Yemeni government in Sanaa, where reports of the potential use of drones has already touched off controversy.

A CIA drone strike made headlines in Yemen, in November 2002, when it killed an American citizen along with a group of al-Qaida operatives. Drones became shorthand in Yemen for a weak government allowing foreign forces to have their way.

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A previously referenced New Yorker article from October, 2009 ...

The Predator War: What are the risks of the C.I.A.’s covert drone program? by Jane Mayer

A brief excerpt of note ...

"Before September 11th, the C.I.A., which had been chastened by past assassination scandals, refused to deploy the Predator for anything other than surveillance. Daniel Benjamin, the State Department’s counterterrorism director, and Steven Simon, a former counterterrorism adviser, report in their 2002 book 'The Age of Sacred Terror' that the week before Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. George Tenet, then the agency’s director, argued that it would be 'a terrible mistake' for 'the Director of Central Intelligence to fire a weapon like this.'

Yet once America had suffered terrorist attacks on its own soil the agency’s posture changed, and it petitioned the White House for new authority. Within days, President Bush had signed a secret Memorandum of Notification, giving the C.I.A. the right to kill members of Al Qaeda and their confederates virtually anywhere in the world. Congress endorsed this policy, passing a bill called the Authorization for Use of Military Force. Bush’s legal advisers modeled their rationale on Israel’s position against terrorism, arguing that the U.S. government had the right to use lethal force against suspected terrorists in “anticipatory” self-defense. By classifying terrorism as an act of war, rather than as a crime, the Bush Administration reasoned that it was no longer bound by legal constraints requiring the government to give suspected terrorists due process."

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Still Killing Without Regard to Target

Article posted to Counterpunch September 9, 2010

Excerpted below are three reasons to read this article on civilians injured and killed by drones while U.S. military and political policy continues to be an increase in the use of drones and acquiesce to charges of human rights violations.

A Ground Zero Reflection
Indefensible Drones

By KATHY KELLY

"Corporate media does little to help ordinary U.S. people understand that the drones which hover over potential targets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen create small 'ground zeroes' in multiple locales on an everyday basis."

"Following an alleged Taliban attack on a nearby police station, NATO forces flew overhead to "engage" the militants. If the engagement includes bombing the area under scrutiny, it would be more apt to say that NATO aimed to puree the militants. But in this case, the bombers mistook the children for militants and killed six of them, aged 6 to 12. Local police said there were no Taliban at the site during the attack, only children."

"General Petraeus assures his superiors that the U.S. is effectively using drone surveillance, sensors and other robotic means of gaining intelligence to assure that they are hunting down the right targets for assassination. But survivors of these attacks insist that civilians are at risk. In Afghanistan, thirty high schools have shut down because the parents say that their children are distracted by the drones flying overhead and that it's unsafe for them to gather in the schools."

Excellent blog post on ABC News tribute to the murderous glory of UAV drones

Nice work from whoever is behind http://www.spider-topihitam.com
This excerpt cuts to the core of the issue (at this point I wish there was one):

"In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable 'restraint.' They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?"

By David Walsh
14 January 2010

American television news becomes more and more unwatchable, especially in its reports on the expanding wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Perfectly coiffed, interchangeable news and anchor people repeat White House and Pentagon lies. “In-depth” reports provide nothing in the way of meaningful commentary or analysis. In general, everything is done to hide the truth from the American people.

Diane Sawyer, promoted to hosting ABC’s prime time evening news program a few weeks ago, and the rest of that network’s news personalities are in the forefront of the government’s disinformation campaign. it is worth noting that Sawyer, who began her television career doing the weather in Louisville, Kentucky, went to work for the Nixon administration in 1970 in the midst of the Vietnam War and stayed with the disgraced former president through his forced resignation, helping him write his memoirs.

US drone in flight On Tuesday night’s evening news, Sawyer and two colleagues, David Muir and bill Weir, spent six or seven minutes extolling the merits of the US Air Force’s Predator drones and their deadly attacks in Afghanistan. The Predators, according to Pakistani government and media sources, murdered some 700 civilians in that country in 2009, but the CIA-US military program of killings by drone attack on that side of the border is “covert,” without the official sanction of the Islamabad regime (emphasis ExEd).

Thus, Sawyer and company had to be satisfied with covering the US military’s increased use of drones in Afghanistan. According to a companion piece by Weir on its web site, ABC News was “granted exclusive access to the ground control station at the California [Air Force] base, one of six in the country where the planes are flown.” In other words, the broadcast report was a component part of the military’s official propaganda effort, prepared and vetted with the collaboration of Pentagon officials. A drone control station Sawyer introduced the story from Kabul, alerting her viewers to “the war you do not see, the skyrocketing use of drones.”

She went on to explain in Orwellian fashion that the “potentially lethal” drones were “another new strategy against the rising tide of violence in this country.” Yesterday, Sawyer told her audience, “drones assisted in taking out 16 of the enemy.” she noted that airmen 8,000 miles from Afghanistan were pushing the buttons, sending 500-pound bombs or Hellfire missiles hurtling to the ground. The Obama administration has overseen a sharp increase in the drone program, notes ABC, to “400 hours a day, a 300 percent increase.” From 100 three years ago, the number of drones in use has jumped to 1,200.

Muir writes on the ABC web site: “On this one California base alone, over the last six months, not one hour has gone by when Air Force pilots haven’t been watching over Afghanistan through the eyes of a at least one Predator drone. the technology has been such a game-changer that over the next year, the Air Force will now train more drone pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined.”

Sawyer proudly tells us that the drone is a “high-tech symbol of American might.”

About one minute of the segment is devoted to the moral issues involved in bombing people from halfway around the world. it raises, the ABC anchorwoman notes, “new questions about what’s right and wrong,” before she quickly passes on to the “exclusive” footage shot in the California control center. Here, Muir explains, “Each drone is controlled by a two-man team, seated in front of a video screen clutching a joystick. On the screens, the men see live video from the drones in Afghanistan, picking out armed enemies on the ground who have no idea they’re being watched. The pilot can launch a missile simply by pulling a trigger. “The drones send back images in the blink of an eye—it takes just 1.7 seconds for the imagery to travel through 12 time zones. The video travels from the drone to a satellite and then down to a classified location in Europe. From there, it flows through a fiber optic nerve across the Atlantic Ocean to reach the California base. But it’s not finished—the signal then branches out to other bases, the Pentagon, and right back to the ground commander in Afghanistan.” He goes on: “We watched as a pilot monitored insurgents planting an IED [improvised explosive device] in northern Afghanistan. It made a good target, and with the punch of a button, a Hellfire missile launched, taking the insurgents out.”

As the WSWS has noted on more than one occasion in recent years, US government officials and media personalities have had no difficulty in adopting the lingo of the Mafia. ABC’s Weir reports on efforts by the American military team on the ground to determine whether a given group of Afghans seems an appropriate target to be wiped out. In the particular instance highlighted in Tuesday’s report, the drone spots a number of individuals carrying heavy objects. Weir, somewhat disappointed that the suspicious Afghans are not immediately blown to bits, comments on the military’s remarkable “restraint.” They turn out to be four boys and a girl collecting firewood. They were fortunate on this occasion. how many have not been?

As a final comment, Weir declares, “Even if he could have proven it [the potential slaughter of the children] was an honest mistake, the captain tells me that killing these five children would have undone months of work winning over local elders, and that has become the key battle in this war.”

What can one say? This is the moral state of the American media: the murder of poverty-stricken children by missiles or bombs might, after all, be no more than an “honest mistake” (and therefore pardonable), but, on the downside, it could prove an inconvenience to US war aims (and therefore should be avoided, if possible).

Bill Weir’s résumé indicates that he is well suited to deal with life-and-death questions in Central Asia. A graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California (where a typical student, according to one commentator, “tends to be devoutly Christian, right-wing, Republican,” and wealthy), Weir began his career as a weekend sportscaster at a radio station in Austin, Minnesota. He worked his way up to sports anchor at KABC-TV in Los Angeles from 1998 to 2002, where he hosted a weekly program that aired after Monday Night Football. He has also written and developed three television pilots for the USA and FX networks.

On the ABC web site, Muir concludes that “the drone pilots know their work is important. Every minute in the cockpit helps defend their military colleagues on the battlefield and improve their chances of getting home alive.” The entire “news report” Tuesday was nothing more nor less than a defense of neo-colonial warfare and mass murder by well-paid hirelings of the American establishment.

Catching up: Pakistan, drones and international law

Running a bit behind the calendar, from Foreign Policy magazine's AfPak Channel.

Just to point out: Gul is here concerned with Pakistan's split policy on the legal ramifications of drone attacks. First off, 'split'describes Pakistan as Islamabad does not seem to reach all the way to the Islamist militant groups described below or average folks living in the Federally Administrated Tribal Region. Second, the concern among average Pakistanis is not whether the UAV strikes are legal: it's that they kill civilians indiscriminately in the hunt for suspected militants. Third, the CIA is the primary operator of the drone program. Islamabad has expressed interest in running its own drone programs, but that gesture addresses none of the above as the Central Intelligence Agency would likely continue on its present course rather than relinquish control of a program to Pakistan.



Pakistan's dueling drones debate

By Imtiaz Gul, July 2, 2010

While Pakistan's security forces battle al Qaeda-inspired Pakistani Taliban militants in the volatile tribal regions of Bajaur and Orakzai, CIA-operated drones continue chasing foreign al-Qaeda operatives hiding in the wild Waziristan region. The latest such strike on a hide-out in South Waziristan tribal area near the Afghan border took out eight militants earlier this week, including an Egyptian allied with al-Qaeda, Hamza al-Jufi.

Believed to be operating out of Forward Operating Base Chapman, located across the border in Khost, Afghanistan, drones have struck targets inside Pakistan at least 141 times since 2004, including 45 attacks already this year so far. Regardless of how effective drones may be against al-Qaeda and its affiliates, their use is the subject of widespread debate, due in large part to questions about the legality of the drones.

Condemnation of such attacks and their characterization as a violation of the "sovereignty, solidarity, integrity and defense of Pakistan," in the words of Pakistani parliamentarian Imran Khan, is primarily rooted in the context of the global war against terrorism that began in October 2001 under President George Bush. This association with Bush has in part led many conservative Pakistanis and right-wing political groups such as the Jamaat-i-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam to openly oppose the drone strikes.

Even the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Waziristan-based group that is spearheading the insurgency in the northwestern regions, has justified attacks as a reaction to the drone strikes.

Others object not to the drones, but to Pakistani public opinion on their use. For instance, Ayaz Ameer, an analyst-turned-politician, and an MP from the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N, said at a recent conference hosted by my Islamabad think tank that Pakistani officials take two contradictory positions on drone strikes: publicly condemning them while endorsing them privately.

Chriss Rogers, research fellow at Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), said at the forum, "Since Pakistan formally never raised the issue at any international forum nor did it formally and officially issue statement against it, there seemed to be a tacit understanding between the United States and Pakistan over it."

But covert Pakistani consent does not necessarily make the strikes legal. According to Ahmar Bilal Soofi, an expert in international law, "The United States is applying drones in the name of self-defense and the war on al-Qaeda, but even this is a violation of international law and Pakistani sovereignty." Furthermore, he argues, "These means become even more objectionable because the CIA is operating drone strikes, thereby compromising issues such as transparency and accountability."

Some observers have also suggested that a Pakistani operation of the drones could significantly blunt criticism of the strikes. Indeed Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and army leaders have frequently asked that the technology be transferred to Pakistan, and has said that such a transfer would blunt criticism of the strikes..

Increasingly, Pakistani critics have also relied on arguments made by Philip Alston, a New York University law professor and the U.N. special representative on extrajudicial executions, who in a June report recommended that the U.S. military handle drone strikes against the Taliban and al-Qaeda-related militants in Pakistan, and also wrote that, "[i]f a State commits a targeted killing in the territory of another State, the second State
should publicly indicate whether it gave consent, and on what basis."

Set against the backdrop of the recent command change in Afghanistan, U.S. policy on the drone attacks may perhaps also undergo some qualitative changes. Particularly in view of Obama's search for rapid success in Afghanistan, for which Pakistan's support is crucial, the Obama administration may work out a mechanism that, while eliminating al-Qaeda members, also addresses Pakistani concerns on the legality of drone strikes. This change could also erase quite a bit of mistrust of the U.S. in Pakistan and help improve bilateral cooperation. But Pakistan's government must first end its dueling public and private positions on drones and state clearly where it stands on this simmering issue.

Imtiaz Gul heads the Center for Research and Security Studies, Islamabad and is the author of The Most Dangerous Place (Viking Penguin USA/UK).

Competition from Lockheed Martin in UAV arms race

As evidenced by a photo of the prototype named Skunk Works, Lockheed Martin may be getting into the drone business with General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Northrup Grumman.

With so many hands working to assemble (not to mention market) these devices, it's going to take enormous public outcry to even raise questions about the ethics of using these craft and producing more of them.

Dug up industry story on drone manufacture

The following story is a business story, meaning ...

NO ETHICAL ANALYSIS SO LONG AS THE NUMBERS LOOK GOOD--YEAAAAAA!!!

Please keep in mind while you read that there are some potentially negative effects to filling the sky with unmanned drones with electronic eyes and radio signal receiver/transmitters on board. How bout a world where 90 percent of the population starves and 10 percent live to get more robots onto the battlefield so they can be on the side of the conflict with the most robots that haven't been destroyed? Personally, I'd like to see that kind of reality safely assigned to science fiction.

The following San Diego Union-Tribune story contains some indispensable facts about unmanned aerial vehicles and the weapons contractors General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Northrup Grumman.

Prowling for profit
As demand rises for unmanned surveillance drones, Poway’s General Atomics Aeronautical among companies positioned to benefit

By Mike Freeman, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Every minute of every day, about 40 Predator-series unmanned aircraft are flying worldwide, providing “constant stare” surveillance over everything from war zones to U.S. borders to piracy-plagued shipping lanes.

With the U.S. military preparing to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan next year, the number of Predator-family aircraft flying at any given moment is likely to increase. Air Force officials said last week that more drones will be added in Afghanistan as part of the troop buildup. The Army is also fast-tracking its schedule for deploying unmanned vehicles.

All of which has focused a spotlight on Poway-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the maker of the Predator and its more advanced siblings, the Reaper, Sky Warrior and Avenger.

Three years ago, the Predator group had logged 80,000 total flight hours since the first one flew in the mid-1990s.

Today, these aircraft have flown close to 1 million hours — a good portion of that over Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the process, the drones have helped change the battlefield by giving service members — even small groups in isolated areas — their own spy plane. Not only do these aircraft provide surveillance for miles in every direction, they also can pick up enemy communications and transmit video feeds to soldiers’ handheld devices on the ground as well as to operations centers halfway around the world.

“The Predator may be the single most popular new military product introduced in this generation,” said Loren Thompson, chief operating officer with the Lexington Institute, a military think tank. “The versatility and transformational nature of the Predator allows war-fighting ideas that just weren’t feasible in the past.”

Drones have changed the battlefield to the point that insurgents in Iraq have been hacking into video feeds to see what the Predators are monitoring, according to Wall Street Journal reports last week. But U.S. officials said there’s no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights.

Although General Atomics is getting the most attention, it’s not the only one in the drone business operating in San Diego.

Northrop Grumman has a significant unmanned-aircraft division in Rancho Bernardo. Although its aircraft are assembled elsewhere, the company’s San Diego unit provides software, systems integration, business development and other functions for the high-altitude Global Hawk, the Fire Scout unmanned helicopter, a Navy version of the Global Hawk called BAMS and the stealthy, early-stage drone designed to land on aircraft carriers called the X-47 UCAS, among others.

These two companies have put San Diego near the center of a sea change in military aviation with the rise of ever-more-capable drones.

“They are the two largest by far” in the unmanned-aircraft industry, said Phil Finnegan, director for corporate analysis for The Teal Group, a defense industry research firm.

Teal estimates that the market for drone aircraft will double in the next decade, reaching $8.7 billion in annual sales worldwide. That’s just for the planes. It doesn’t include sensor systems, which often increase costs significantly.

Neither Northrop Grumman nor General Atomics provides specific revenue figures.

The companies control different market segments. Northrop Grumman’s larger, more capable and more expensive Global Hawk dominates the high-altitude, long-endurance segment. It can fly at 60,000 feet for more than 36 hours. No drone competes with it, analysts say.

Northrop Grumman has made roughly 25 of the planes to date, and they’ve flown hundreds of missions over Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force eventually plans to buy 54. The company won’t reveal the cost of the Global Hawk, but a Government Accountability Office report in 2006 said the drones cost more than $100 million each, including ground equipment, support, testing and spare parts. Northrop Grumman says that estimate is too high.

General Atomics’ Predator series dominates the medium-altitude, long-endurance market segment. The company has made more than 380 of the planes, mostly for the Pentagon. But they also are being used by the Department of Homeland Security to patrol borders, by NASA for research and by foreign military customers.

“It comes down to this: If I was trying to cover the world with an unmanned surveillance drone, I would definitely pick the Global Hawk,” said Thompson of the Lexington Institute. “But if I was trying to cover the northwest corner of Afghanistan, I would probably pick the Predator.”

Drone aircraft are less expensive to operate than manned aircraft. They also keep pilots out of harm’s way by performing some of the dull but dangerous work on the battlefield.

Some drones, such as the Predator family, can be fitted with missiles and circle a potential target for more than day. Most, though, are used only for surveillance.

Inside its San Diego-area factory, General Atomics builds Predator-series planes from scratch. Frank Belknap, director of composite manufacturing, said local workers who lost their aerospace industry jobs in the early-’90s recession — many of whom found work making composite golf shafts and tennis rackets — are now returning to aerospace to build Predators.

In 1999, Belknap was the 16th employee of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, an affiliate of privately held General Atomics. Today, the company employs more than 4,000 workers.

Over the past decade, Pentagon procurement spending on unmanned aerial vehicles has surged from $500 million to $3.5 billion. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he wants more drones in the field. He told the military to move faster to get those systems deployed, even if they have only 75 percent or 80 percent of their expected features ready for action, military officials said.

General Atomics got into the drone business after acquiring a small company out of bankruptcy in the early 1990s that had been working on the aircraft. By the mid-’90s, it had perfected the technology enough to build prototype planes.

Thomas Cassidy Jr., a retired admiral who heads General Atomics Aeronautical, went ahead without waiting for the Pentagon to come out with specifications for what it wanted. That’s unusual in the defense business, analysts say.

“Tom picked absolutely the sweetest spot in the technology,” said Dave Fulghum of Aviation Week, an aerospace industry magazine. “He essentially made a platform that you can stick almost anything into. That has been the perfect answer, and it’s the cheapest of the high-performance platforms that are out there.”

Predators, Reapers and Sky Warriors — the Army’s version of the aircraft — generally cost $4 million to $12 million each. Sometimes costs are higher, depending on sensors, communications and weapons payloads.

General Atomics makes money not only on building the planes, ground stations and some radar systems, but also gets paid for maintaining the drones.

That has become a lucrative business as use of the aircraft soared in Iraq and Afghanistan, analysts say.

“They understood the importance of the life-cycle part of the business,” said Lindsay Voss, an industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan. “These aircraft are being used at such a high rate and in such extreme environments. General Atomics can make a killing on the back end by supporting it and providing the services that are required to keep these aircraft going.”

The company is repeating the blueprint that worked in the Predator for the next generation of drone. This year, it flew the Avenger for the first time — even though it doesn’t have a customer.

The Avenger has a jet engine, a first for the Predator family, It also has other features for better performance in more contested airspace.

“General Atomics is trying to continue its ‘first mover’ advantage,” said Ryan Peoples, an associate principal with Charles River Associates, a defense industry research firm. “With the Predator, they did all this development on their own dime, so they were best positioned to capture (the Air Force contract) when it came along. And they’re just continuing that trend with the Avenger.”

The Air Force hasn’t set a firm time frame for seeking proposals for the next generation of medium-altitude drone. When it does, however, the Avenger is likely to have competition, analysts say. For example, a previously unknown stealth drone recently was spotted in Afghanistan. It has been declassified as a Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works”-designed plane. Others such as AAI Corp. and Northrop Grumman also could compete, analysts say.

“That program will be really important in the way the future of UAVs is shaped,” said Voss of Frost & Sullivan. “They could really mix it up if they choose a vendor other than General Atomics. It’s pretty unlikely, but it’s something everybody is going to be talking about.”

Mike Freeman: (760) 476-8209; mike.freeman@uniontrib.com

Drones at home: FAA approves Predator drone to monitor Texas border

Dallas Morning News AirlineBiz blog
12:53 PM Wed, Jun 23, 2010
by Dave Michaels

Quick note: If we get drones in domestic operation, why would any of us think they wouldn't be used to hunt US: on a bad license plate number in a search for a fugitive or any other number of police operations conducted on poorly gathered intelligence, clerical errors and the like. Blackhawk helicopters are used to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border now, which I have seen with my own eyes east of San Diego. That doesn't mean those helicopters aren't used for other domestic purposes directed at civilians. For the details of my view on drones, do a quick search on this site ... or watch the Terminator movies again. Every action has an equal an opposite reaction. Your government is hunting foreigners with machines. I don't want to be hunted with machines, do you?

Full text ...

We reported earlier today that Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, had held up the nomination of the FAA's #2 official over aerial surveillance of Texas border. It seems that hold is now moot: the FAA today approved an unmanned aircraft to monitor 1,200 miles of the border, from El Paso to Brownsville, according to Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo.

"Today marks a critical next step in securing the Texas-Mexico border. By permanently positioning this aircraft in Texas, CBP can further combat illegal activity along our southern border," Cuellar said in a statement. "For five years, other southern border states have benefited from this technology and this will ensure Texas has the same tools in the box to combat the spectrum of threats we face."

Cuellar's press release says the plane will be based in Corpus Christi. Read on for more from the congressman about the FAA's decision:

Earlier this month, CBP began flying a remotely-piloted aircraft based in Arizona over a portion of West Texas. FAA's most recent approval will allow CBP to fly over the remainder of the Texas-Mexico border between El Paso and Brownsville along the Rio Grande.

In addition, CBP will patrol the state's coastline along the Gulf of Mexico. The remotely-piloted aircraft, known as a Predator B, can fly for up to 20 hours and provide to CBP real-time critical intelligence information from attached cameras, sensors and radar systems.

"Increasingly these aircraft will become a familiar means for providing homeland security," said Congressman Cuellar. "By putting eyes in the sky, we can provide real-time information to our law enforcement on the ground. This combination of technology and manpower keeps our law enforcement a cut above the challenges they face."

According to CBP, since 2005 Predator Bs have flown more than 1,500 hours in support of border security missions and have assisted in the apprehension of more than 4,000 illegal aliens, in addition to the seizure of more than 15,000 pounds of marijuana.

For more information on the CBP UAV program, visit cbp.gov

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.'"