WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE IN OUR NATION??
IN AFGHANISTAN GUYS SITTING IN COMFORTABLE CHAIRS IN FLORIDA ARE CONTROLLING THE KILLING DRONES?
... Consider: for the first time ever, a civilian intelligence agency is manipulating robots from halfway around the world in a program of extrajudicial executions in a country with which Washington is not at war.
Consider, too: the drone wars were initiated under the presidency of George Bush. But it is the Democrat Barack Obama who has given them flight and stumped up sufficient funding to spark serious debate on the end of the ''Top Gun'' era of the fighter-pilot.
And there is this: despite decades of American disquiet about assassinations abroad and a shrill Republican critique of him as a security wuss, the professorial Obama is the new killer on the block, authorising more drone attacks in the first year of his term in office than Bush did in his entire presidency.
At the White House these days they hold their breath, praying for a turnaround in the war in Afghanistan to vindicate Obama's gamble in dispatching 50,000 more young Americans to a conflict some deem unwinnable.
But confidence in the use of state-sanctioned lethal force in the undeclared American war in neighbouring and nuclear-armed Pakistan borders on the giddy. "The only game in town" was how CIA director Leon Panetta described it last year.
Forty-four countries now use unmanned aircraft for surveillance - only the US and Israel deploy them as killers.
The US Air Force now has more drone operators in training than fighter and bomber pilots ...
http://www.smh.com.au/world/americas-deadly-robots-rewrite-the-rules-20100212-nxjk.html
Reuters | Pakistan officially objects to the attacks on suspected al Qaeda and Taliban militants along its border with Afghanistan, saying they violate its sovereignty.
 | A photograph of the Beast of Kandahar, the classified stealth UAV first reported in April, has emerged on a blog linked to left-wing French newspaper Liberation. |
Monday December 7, 2009 4:59 a.m.
The White House has made a large, public presentation to the American people on the War in Afghanistan. Operation Cobra's Anger, as the current offensive tactic is named, is already underway. But amid the Administration's public stance on that war, an escalating secret war in Pakistan is mostly going without comment.
The New York Times reports that the CIA plans to increase the number of drone attacks used in Pakistan and since the CIA not part of our military, this is technically not an expansion of the Afghanistan War nor is it grounds for politicians to openly address.
But its not just the CIA who is taking part in the drone bombing campaign. Jeremy Scahill of the Nation reports that a secret part of the military called the US Joint Special Ops Command is working with infamous military contractor Blackwater to carry out their mission.
Here to discuss the matter publicly with Rachel is New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Princeton's Melissa Harris-Lacewell, and NY Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner.
Source:
http://airamerica.com/therachelmaddowshow/blog/12-07-2009/watch-secret-life-drones/
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