The War Drones On

punditman says... 

In past wars, there was some measurable degree of moral outrage  when it came to killing civilians. But nowadays, it seems this little inconvenience is considered by many people to be...well...a little inconvenience—if they notice  at all. Instead, there seems to be more concern about the misdeeds of Lindsay Lohan or the fact that LeBron James decided to play basketball for another city and he announced it by doing an hour-long  TV "tweet" to promote his brand. The shock! The horror! Fans are burning James' jersey while giving a pass to the Pentagon's killer drones that kill 10 civilians for every "bad guy." Has society become this pathetic, shallow and ignorant? Punditman hopes not...

By Robert Koehler

"Complaints about civilian casualties have also stirred concern among human rights advocates."

The problem is that a sentence like this — arguably a dead sentence, with a few quasi-facts entombed in an inert moral sensibility — parades as serious news. I mean, it’s lifted straight from the New York Times: from a story about drones, the CIA hit list and our cool new PlayStation way of killing bad dudes (and everyone else in the vicinity). Someone with an active conscience could come upon a sentence like that, in the middle of a painfully ill-focused story on the endless war, and think she must be going insane.

As an archeological find, it’s worth examining in closer detail, but first let me put it in context. The use of pilotless aircraft in Pakistan and Afghanistan to assassinate Taliban or al-Qaeda leaders and other Islamic, America-hating insurgents — with missiles, no less — seems to have hit a snag of legal controversy lately because of the news that one of the people on the list of targets, Anwar al-Awlaki, was born in New Mexico. He’s an American citizen.

Keep Reading...

Protests as US Air Strike Kills Four Civilians in Afghanistan’s Kandahar

punditman says... A glimpse of reality: the sheeple's governments continue to kill and maim innocent people halfway across the world in an ill-fated war and for no damn good reason. But don't worry, sheeple. NATO has once again promised to investigate. You can get back to your fake reality (show) now.

By Jason Ditz

www.antiwar.com

Residents of Kohat Village in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province marched into Kandahar City with the bodies of four civilians, including three children, to protest their killings in an overnight US Air Strike. The four were relatives, three brothers and an adult cousin.

Witnesses say that a helicopter attacked the four in their sleep. Another brother and the father of the cousin were also wounded in the strike on the family’s compound. The US denied any knowledge of the incident but claimed that four “insurgents” had been killed in the area.

The father of the slain children, who was among the protesters, said two missiles were fired at his home, and asked “what was the fault of my innocent children? They were not Taliban.”

Such incidents have become all too common as the international military effort in Afghanistan has escalated, but this one is particularly embarrassing as it came during the visit of new NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, an advocate of continung the war. NATO has promised to investigate the incident.

Should the US also Suppress Evidence of Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan?

The simple truth is the "allied forces" in Afghanistan don't care who they kill, or how many they kill. Watch the embedded video. Lieberman and Graham have been front and centre on the tv defending neo con policies, actions and consequences for more than a decade. Peacenik first heard of Lieberman when he criticized Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinski. WOW. Peacenik knows how these hypocrits keep getting elected, but Peacenik still can't believe it. Has anything changed? Did a Democrat get elected President? Do Democrats control both houses of congress? And lets not forget Canada's unfortunate role. How many Afghani "citizens" have been killed by Canadian troops? Peacenik says its time to exit Afghanistan. Bring the troops home now.

by Glenn Greenwald

Something that has happened repeatedly in Afghanistan over the last eight years happened yet again this week:

After U.S. Strike, Dispute Over Afghan Deaths

KABUL, Afghanistan - Sharply conflicting reports on an American airstrike this week continued to trickle out Friday from American military and Afghan officials as to whether the attack killed civilians.

The airstrike in Ghor Province in western Afghanistan Tuesday had targeted a local Taliban militant, Mullah Mustafa, but instead killed 10 civilians and 12 insurgents, according to Sayed Iqbal Munib, the governor of Ghor Province.

But American officials Friday said the strike killed up to 16 militants and no civilians.

I obviously don't know what the truth is about this latest incident, but let's assume just for the sake of argument that -- as has been true so many times before -- it is the claim of local Afghan officials, rather than the U.S. military, that is accurate, and Afghan civilians, once again, really were killed by our airstrike.

Read on...

Report: US Air Strikes in Iraq Kill Mostly Women, Children

39 Percent of Those Killed Were Children

www.antiwar.com

In a report to be published in tomorrow’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers have concluded that air strikes by US-led coalition forces have killed mostly women and children. 39 percent were children, while 46 percent were women.

Interestingly enough, though the high-tech weaponry used by the invading forces killed a disproportionately large number of (presumably mostly non-combatant) women and children, it showed that among victims of suicide bombings only 12 percent were children.

The researchers used a database of 60,481 civilians violently killed during the first five years of the war, which was compiled by Iraq Body Count. They say that the shocking number of women and children killed are a function of using air strikes in urban combat settings, and the report may have policy implications elsewhere, where US air strikes seem to be killing large numbers of innocent civilians as well.

punditman says...

A reminder of what modern warfare is all about. How can it not be considered a crime when a powerful state undertakes military aggression with full knowledge that the death, maiming and terrorizing of innocent people will result? Hey, punditman is no international law scholar, but it stands to reason that it no longer becomes an accident when such foreknowledge is involved. Instead, we get doublespeak about "collateral damage" and wingnuts throughout media and government defending the perpetrators. It's an unjust world...

Robert Fisk’s World: When did we stop caring about civilian deaths during wartime?

The mere monitoring of bloody conflict assumes precedence over human suffering

I wonder if we are "normalising" war. It's not just that Israel has yet again got away with the killing of hundreds of children in Gaza.

And after its own foreign minister said that Israel's army had been allowed to "go wild" there, it seems to bear out my own contention that the Israeli "Defence Force" is as much a rabble as all the other armies in the region. But we seem to have lost the sense of immorality that should accompany conflict and violence. The BBC's refusal to handle an advertisement for Palestinian aid was highly instructive. It was the BBC's "impartiality" that might be called into question. In other words, the protection of an institution was more important than the lives of children. War was a spectator sport whose careful monitoring – rather like a football match, even though the Middle East is a bloody tragedy – assumed precedence over human suffering.

I'm not sure where all this started. No one doubts that the Second World War was a bloodbath of titanic proportions, but after that conflict we put in place all kinds of laws to protect human beings. The International Red Cross protocols, the United Nations – along with the all-powerful Security Council and the much ridiculed General Assembly – and the European Union were created to end large-scale conflict. And yes, I know there was Korea (under a UN flag!) and then there was Vietnam, but after the US withdrawal from Saigon, there was a sense that "we" didn't do wars any more. Foreigners could commit atrocities en masse – Cambodia comes to mind – but we superior Westerners were exempt. We didn't behave like that. Low-intensity warfare in Northern Ireland, perhaps. And the Israeli-Arab conflict would grind away. But there was a feeling that My Lai had been put behind us. Civilians were once again sacred in the West.

Keep Reading...

punditman says...
It's amazing what the politics of fear can do. For awhile after 9-11, people were afraid of terrorists popping out from under their beds and putting anthrax in their pajamas. White powder scares brought out SWAT teams in the most obscure locations. Some idiots even bought duct tape to protect their homes from chemical attack. Remember...WTF?

Now with this economic mess, people are turning inward again, afraid of losing their jobs, houses and savings, so they're hoarding lima beans and raising chickens on their balconys. Hmmm...perhaps this crisis is yet another way to keep people afraid and insular so that they won't band together for real change? In other words, it's an engineered crisis. 9-11 has lost its desired affect. WMDs was 99% poppycock. Punditman will have to think about that a little more.

Yet still, the war machine marches on, gobbling up precious resources while bringing death and destruction in its wake. Innocent people are being killed in our names. Does anyone care anymore? Robert Fisk does. Peacenik does. Punditman does.

Robert Fisk: Leaders lie, civilians die, and lessons of history are ignored

We've got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don't care any more – providing we don't offend the Israelis. It's not clear how many of the Gaza dead are civilians, but the response of the Bush administration, not to mention the pusillanimous reaction of Gordon Brown, reaffirm for Arabs what they have known for decades: however they struggle against their antagonists, the West will take Israel's side. As usual, the bloodbath was the fault of the Arabs – who, as we all know, only understand force.

Ever since 1948, we've been hearing this balderdash from the Israelis – just as Arab nationalists and then Arab Islamists have been peddling their own lies: that the Zionist "death wagon" will be overthrown, that all Jerusalem will be "liberated". And always Mr Bush Snr or Mr Clinton or Mr Bush Jnr or Mr Blair or Mr Brown have called upon both sides to exercise "restraint" – as if the Palestinians and the Israelis both have F-18s and Merkava tanks and field artillery. Hamas's home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course.

The blood-splattering has its own routine. Yes, Hamas provoked Israel's anger, just as Israel provoked Hamas's anger, which was provoked by Israel, which was provoked by Hamas, which ... See what I mean? Hamas fires rockets at Israel, Israel bombs Hamas, Hamas fires more rockets and Israel bombs again and ... Got it? And we demand security for Israel – rightly – but overlook this massive and utterly disproportionate slaughter by Israel. It was Madeleine Albright who once said that Israel was "under siege" – as if Palestinian tanks were in the streets of Tel Aviv.

By last night, the exchange rate stood at 296 Palestinians dead for one dead Israeli. Back in 2006, it was 10 Lebanese dead for one Israeli dead. This weekend was the most inflationary exchange rate in a single day since – the 1973 Middle East War? The 1967 Six Day War? The 1956 Suez War? The 1948 Independence/Nakba War? It's obscene, a gruesome game – which Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, unconsciously admitted when he spoke this weekend to Fox TV. "Our intention is to totally change the rules of the game," Barak said.

Keep Reading...

punditman says...
If there is one debate that trumps all others in terms of mainstream media bias, it is the question of Israel and Palestine. This article by Robert Fisk in Britain's Independent is the exception by a wide margin in that is strives for balance and objectivity.

Put simply, in the eyes of Western media, the Israelis can do no wrong; they merely act in self defence. The Palestinian leadership (and by implication, all Palestinians, are always the instigators); Israel acts 'humanely,' Arabs have no respect for human life, etc., etc. We hear this ad nasuem in each round of this tragic conflict. This is the narrative at work throughout the 'liberal media,' and it is has become a sick joke to try to find some balanced reporting each time this prolonged clash flares up.

Given the power of the Israeli lobby (see AIPAC), this should come us no surprise. Even Jimmy Carter can't criticize Israel without encountering the establishment's wrath while being shunned by his own party's orthodoxy. Thank God for Mr. Fisk who at least attempts to give us a proportioned perspective.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to find some links for the above comment, but what the hell is wrong with the internet? Who cut the damn underwater cables this time?

The U.S. Military's Assassination Problem

Software like "Bugsplat" is supposed to keep decapitation attacks precise. So why do we keep blowing up Iraqi wedding parties?

By David Case

March/April 2008 Issue

IN 2004, when an American missile fired from a Predator drone killed Taliban leader Nek Mohammed, an observer told a journalist that the bombing was so exact it "didn't damage any of the buildings around the lawn where Mohammed was seated." It was an endorsement, if ever there was one, of the Bush administration's post-9/11 efforts at assassinations using what are known as decapitation attacks.

The practice, which is shrouded under a veil of intense secrecy, is generally regarded as warfare's answer to laser surgery: clean and accurate, cheaper than waging a protracted ground battle, and less risky for American troops. But in reality, these premeditated and narrowly focused air bombings often fail to kill their intended foe and hit civilians instead. "It's much more difficult to hunt people with a 2,000-pound bomb than people realize," says Marc Garlasco, who until 2003 was one of the Pentagon's leading analysts of air strikes, including assassinations.

During the invasion of Iraq, Garlasco's job was to analyze targets with an eye toward minimizing collateral damage using a software program called Bugsplat. Days after Baghdad fell, Garlasco, intent on examining firsthand the military's success or failure in sparing civilians, accepted a position with Human Rights Watch (hrw) and traveled to Iraq to do just that. Among the sites he studied was a Basra neighborhood where the United States dropped bombs meant for Lt. General Ali Hassan al-Majid—nicknamed Chemical Ali because of his role in gassing tens of thousands of Kurds. Garlasco had watched the bull's-eye attack live on video transmitted from a Predator drone. "We cheered when the bomb went in," he says.

But Chemical Ali survived, and witnesses told Garlasco that they'd never seen him in the targeted location. As part of his investigation for hrw, the analyst met a 50-year-old laborer whose home was destroyed in the attack, killing seven family members. He found that 10 neighbors had also died. "When I stood in the crater and I was talking to the survivors," Garlasco says, "it wasn't so cool anymore."

Keep Reading...

punditman says...Software like "Bugsplat"? I'm speechless.

Bereaved Iraqi Mother Vows Revenge on US

By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Thursday, 13 March 2008

Um Saad, a middle-aged woman living in the Sunni district of Khadra in west Baghdad, blames the Americans for the death of her husband and two of her sons and threatens revenge.

"They are monsters and devils wearing human clothes," she exclaims vehemently. "One day I will put on an explosive belt under my clothes and then blow myself up among the Americans. I will get revenge against them for my husband and sons and I will go to paradise."

Just as the White House and the Pentagon were trumpeting the success of "the surge" – the dispatch of extra American troops to Iraq last year – and the wire services' claim that the country has enjoyed "months of relative calm", Um Saad saw Saif, her second son, shot dead as he opened the door of her house.

Keep Reading...

punditman says: Winning hearts and minds, in the usual fashion. Sorta like this story or this story, or this story, or...for some Canadian flavour, this story...
On and on it goes...