“Drones also targeting mourners and rescuers”
DAWN.COM | February 5, 2012
An investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed that the CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to rescue victims or were attending funerals.
The report was published days after US President Barack Obama claimed that the drones had “not caused a huge number of civilian casualties” in Pakistan.
However, according to research by the Bureau, it was stated that since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children. The report claims that: “A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.”
The first confirmed attack on rescuers took place in North Waziristan on May 16, 2009. According to Mushtaq Yusufzai, a local journalist, Taliban militants had gathered in the village of Khaisor and at least 29 people died in total.
The Bureau reports that along with Taliban militants, locals said that six ordinary villagers also died that day. They were identified by Bureau field researchers as Sabir, Ikram, Mohib, Zahid, Mashal and Syed Noor.
Interestingly, the reports also reveal that often when the US attacks militants in Pakistan, the Taliban seal off the site to retrieve the dead. However, “an examination of thousands of credible reports relating to CIA drone strikes also shows frequent references to civilian rescuers. Mosques often exhort villagers to come forward and help, for example – particularly following attacks that mistakenly kill civilians.”
Quoting Christof Heyns, a South African law professor who is United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra- judicial Executions, the report states that “Allegations of repeat strikes coming back after half an hour when medical personnel are on the ground are very worrying. To target civilians would be crimes of war.” Heyns is calling for an investigation into the Bureau’s findings.
The Bureau’s report also states that according to Peter Singer, director of the 21st Century Initiative at the Brookings Institution, the US now has 7,000 drones operating and 12,000 more on the ground.
Aside from Pakistan, there is also debate over the use of drones in Yemen, Somalia and Libya. The Bureau’s report in the Sunday Times claims that three US citizens were also killed by missiles fired from drones in Yemen last September.
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February 5, 2012 - Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistan, Sunday Times
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Containing the United States
By Edward S. Herman | Z Magazine | September 2016
“Containing the United States” is, of course, a ridiculous and self-contradictory idea in the U.S. and Western ideological and propaganda system. We all know that the United States had to “contain” the Soviet Union from 1945 to 1991, and since then has had the task of containing Russia and China. Only they threaten, bully, aggress and worry countries like Poland and Vietnam. Obama has had to reassure them both of our steadfast stand against Russian and Chinese military attacks. NATO has, of course, expanded greatly over the past several decades, despite the deaths of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, but only to contain the renewed Russian — and Iranian, Libyan, Syrian and other — military threats; and we have “pivoted” to Asia, supported Japanese rearmament, bolstered our own forces in that area and jousted with the Chinese in their coastal waters solely to contain China. Earlier we had been obliged to contain North Vietnam, or was it the Soviet Union in Vietnam? Or China? Or “communism”? Or maybe all of them? Or none of them, but just needing an excuse to enlarge power?
The parallel propaganda has taken many forms. One is accepting as a premise that the United States only acts defensively and has no internal forces and interests that drive it to enlarge its sphere of control. I noted in an earlier article how Paul Krugman claims that internal Russian problems may well be the explanation of Russian “aggression,” but how at the same time it never occurs to him that the huge U.S. transnational corporate interests and “defense” establishment, and the pro-Israel lobby’s activities, might possibly make for an expansionist dynamic here.2 This reflects the standard establishment perspective that we are good and only react to evil. This was the view sustaining and justifying the invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003. That attack was taken here as not evil but a response to evil, even if involving lies and mistakes, hence not describable as “aggression.” … continue
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