Posts Tagged "drone"

Fighting back against the CIA drone war

Source: english.aljazeera.net
US Predator drones have played a large role in the CIA’s extrajudicial killing program in Pakistan, where some 2,500 people in Pakistan, mostly civilians, have been killed by US forces since June 2004

They call it “bug splat”, the splotch of blood, bones, and viscera that marks the site of a successful drone strike. To those manning the consoles in Nevada, it signifies “suspected militants” who have just been “neutralised”; to those on the ground, in most cases, it represents a family that has been shattered, a home destroyed.

Since June 18, 2004, when the CIA began its policy of extrajudicial killings in Pakistan, it has left nearly 250 such stains on Pakistani soil, daubed with the remains of more than 2,500 individuals, mostly civilians. More recently, it has taken to decorating other parts of the world.

Since the Pakistani government and its shadowy intelligence agencies have been complicit in the killings, the CIA has been able to do all this with complete impunity. Major human rights organisations in thrall to the Obama Administration have given it a pass. So have the media, who uncritically accept officials’ claims about the accuracy of their lethal toys.

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Armed Drones: A Diabolical Revolution in the “Art of War”

Source: globalresearch.ca
The UK Ministry of Defence, in common with the defence policies of other states, is increasing its development, manufacture and use of armed drones. In a report published earlier this year, it stated that ‘a technological tipping point is approaching that may well deliver a genuine revolution in military affairs’. The revolution is happening in and because of a climate of enormous and escalating government debt. Most states that follow the militaristic path have paupered their citizens in their desire to go to war and to suppy themselves with more and more weapons with which to fight those wars.

Both the US and the UK, and by association all the other NATO countries, have vastly overspent on their invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and now Libya, not to mention all the other areas of overspill. Where Iraq and Afghanistan are concerned, one result has been a steady return to our shores of severely damaged soldiers. The medical and social support that these people and their families will need for many years to come is already a drain on the public purse, something we can barely pay for now. But – we will not give up fighting wars.

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Risk-Free And Above The Law: U.S. Globalizes Drone Warfare

Source: globalresearch.ca
Last week the Washington Post, the New York Times and other major American newspapers reported that the U.S. launched its first unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) missile attack inside Somalia.

The strike was the first acknowledged Pentagon military attack inside the Horn of Africa nation since a helicopter raid staged by commandos in 2009 and the first use of an American drone to conduct a missile strike there. Drones had earlier been used in the country in their original capacity, for surveillance, including identifying targets for bomb and missile attacks, one being shot down in October of 2009. But as Britain’s The Guardian reported on July 30, the strike in Somalia marked “the expansion of the pilotless war campaign to a sixth country,” as the remote-controlled aircraft have already been employed to deadly effect in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and most recently Libya.

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