Oilybomber is a moron he took a bad war and made it worse.

Is that the $40 per gallon ( 0r is it $400) fuel the Pashtuns are setting ablaze?

As if almost everyone with half a brain did not tell Oilybomber that Afghanistan = Vietnam.

Looks like Pakistan is starting to choose ethics over bribes.

Well, here is why this long long war can't end yet according to the plan: You see before anyone in the world does damage or an act of terror in the USA or Europe they must first travel to AfPak to get training and orders, so only then can we fight them over there so there can be no terror here.

Problem is this is insanity because War is not how you defeat terrorism... War is fucking terrorism!

I thought it was Afghanistan = "tar baby".

No shit, the United States should "revisit the policy" of using Predator drone attacks (and special ops death squads) as a standard operating procedure in waging a global "war on terror." No shit, the repeated missle strikes on Pakistani soil or in the tribal border areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan are "counterproductive" and a flagrant violation of well established international law defining Pakistan's sovereignty.

The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution, rushed through Congress at the height of the post-9/11 hysteria and anthrax scare, specifically limited the use of US military force to the individuals who took part in the terrorist attack of September 11th, 2001, and any nation state or other entity harboring those individual conspirators. The AUMF as written, and as perfunctorily "debated" by the Congress in the fall of 2001 before it passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, was not an open ended authorization for the Pentagon and/or the CIA to kill terrorist evil doers in general, wherever they might be lurking, anywhere on the globe.

Clearly, mission creep has taken on a life all its own. Sending clandestine special ops "kill or capture" teams onto another nation's soil is an act of war, regardless of whether the commandoes are spies dressed up like soldiers, or soldiers dressed up like spies. Pressing the button to launch a cruise missle strike on another nation's soil, too, is an act of war, whether the button is pushed in Afghanistan, Creech Air Force base, or at Langley. That the affected nation's government may tacitly approve the military intrusions by the US with a wink and a nod (or not) is beside the point.

The formal winding down and eventual withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan is an important component of restoring the rule of law - US constitutional law as well as international law. Yet what sort of trade off is it if Uncle Sam the superpower instead creates a dystopian landscape in which the distinction between acts of war and acts of murder have been consciously blurred beyond all recognition?

What the RAND and Pentagon think tank strategists label "low intensity warfare" such as that going on in the northwest frontier border regions, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, and elsewhere needs to be openly debated by the Congress. Commission of murder (or "targeted assassination") across international borders is not simply a foreign policy "option on the table" for the Commander-in-Chief to pick up, or to leave in place, as a matter of executive whim.

If the United States government continues to use its soldiers, its spies, and its hi tech drone gadgetry to kill people abroad (with or without deniability, with or without Congressional authorization), what sort of blowback should we all expect in return for the world we are creating?

Bill from Saginaw

Drone on American empire !

We have a hopelessly ignorant western media, and an ignorant and criminal U.S. military and government.

An interesting example of this ignorance is that the tribal regions of Pakistan are often referred to a "lawless".

But in fact, the traditional tribal laws and Islamic laws of this region are more tightly structured than law and social practices in Amerika. And our government becomes more criminal every day.

The ancient Pashtun code of law and honor called Pashtunwali, is very exacting law covering every aspect of life from birth to death and governs the 40 million Pashtuns in Afghanistan and western Pakistan. And there are also Pashtuns in the Pakistani military.

Kill someone in the Pashtun family or clan or tribal group and you have made enemies of everyone interrelated by this system. Pashtunwali code demands an eye for an eye, with no time limits, and is also supported by similar Islamic ethics.

More drone strikes mean more resistance and an endless supply of motivated Pashtun fighters to bleed the criminal American corporate empire.

But of course the drones are very expensive and turn a profit for the MIC. I would imagine the sociopaths who make the drones have a very active lobby in Washington.

The endless wars continue because the military-industrial-infortainment complex and their whores in WARshington are making money. Wikipedia reports that each one of those predator drones costs $4.5 million.

Insanity... Utter insanity.

Can you imagine the reaction of the us government if it were Cuban drones that were bombing Florida based anti-Castro 'terrorists'?

The reaction of the Pakistani government is very mild considering the gross violation of its nation's sovereignty. Almost any European country would have declared war by now.

How quickly the drone has become the leading symbol of death and all that is sinister. The Republicans and the Democrats should jettison the elephant and the donkey and adopt the drone as their symbol. The Republicans can add shark's teeth like the Flying Tigers of WWII. The Democrats can add a smiley face.

I am not a cost expert on the drones, but I would bet that the estimate of $4.5 million per drone is just the current manufacturing cost of the drone itself minus all the research and development costs leading to the creation of drones.

Then there are the missiles they fire and the cost of deploying and maintaining this system around the globe and the control centers and communication systems involved and the manpower needed every step of the way including so-called military intelligence.

This might be the most expensive dollars per human killing machine in history. And some estimates say ten civilians are killed for every suspected "insurgent". This is billions and billions of dollars robbed from the taxpayer.

Duh, how about using our tax dollars for real national health care like the rest of the developed world or affordable higher education or clean alternative energy ?

And of course the whole mess is in violation of international law and and making more and more enemies. This means very expensive blowback in many forms in the future.

What a human and economic price to pay for a private corporate Pipelineistan ! Big Oil has their sights set on providing oil and natural gas to the one billion consumers and growing economy of India and other Asian nations. This energy is now confined within Central Asia.

How strange, due to wasteful war oriented spending to further corporate agendas, the American economy and energy consumption are in decline ! Big Oil is looking to expand their global international markets and bottom line.

But it appears for now that the drone is the weapon of choice for the globalized corporate war criminal puppets in Washington.

Al Qaeda supports the continuation of drone warfare because attacks against Muslim civilians are good for recruitment. Is this why the US continues with the drones?

US drone attacks in Pakistan are state sponsored terrorism. Every citizen, myself included is guilty of funding this terrorism with federal tax dollars.