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168 Children Killed in Drone Strikes in Pakistan Since Start of Campaign
New research to send shockwaves through Pakistan
In an extensive analysis of open-source documents, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that 2,292 people had been killed by US missiles, including as many as 775 civilians.
A boy stands at the site of suspected U.S. drone attacks in the Janikhel tribal area in Bannu district of North West Frontier Province in Pakistan, November 19, 2008 The strikes, which began under President George W Bush but have since accelerated during the presidency of Barack Obama, are hated in Pakistan, where families live in fear of the bright specks that appear to hover in the sky overhead.
In just a single attack on a madrassah in 2006 up to 69 children lost their lives.
Chris Woods, who led the research, said the detailed database of deaths would send shockwaves through Pakistan, where political and military leaders repeatedly denounce the strikes in public, while privately allowing the US to continue.
"This is a military campaign run by a secret service which raised problems of accountability, transparency and you have a situation where neither the Pakistanis nor Americans are clear about any agreements in place and where the reporting is difficult," he said.
"All of this means that when things go wrong there is simply no redress for the families of those who have been mistakenly killed."
The research, culled from more than 2,000 news reports, leaked documents and witness statements, show how the drones gradually moved from a rarely used tool, beginning with a single strike in 2004, to a frontline weapon of war.
Notable successes include the death of Baitullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistan Taliban, in 2009. Ilyas Kashmiri, a senior al-Qaeda figure viewed as a possible successor to Osama bin Laden, is believed to have died in a drone strike in June.
However, under President Obama the strikes have been used to target low-level foot soldiers as well as senior commanders.
Today the attacks are running at a rate of one every four days, mostly centered on North Waziristan from where members of the Haqqani network launch cross-border attacks on international forces in eastern Afghanistan.
With Pakistan so far unwilling to bow to US pressure to launch a military offensive against the bases and with Islamabad ruling out any suggestion that American troops be deployed, that leaves the CIA's drones, said Imtiaz Gul, an analyst who has written extensively on the region.
At the same time, he added, they mean a president elected on a manifesto promising to close Guantanamo Bay does not have hundreds more detainees to process.
"As long as these peoples sit in jails they remain a problem, a living liability, so there seems to be a drive to kill them," said Mr Gul.
Human rights campaigners have long argued that drones represent extra-judicial killings.
Sam Zarifi, Asia-Pacific director of Amnesty International, said: "The Obama administration must explain the legal basis for drone strikes in Pakistan to avoid the perception that it acts with impunity.
"The Pakistan government must also ensure accountability for indiscriminate killing, in violation of international law, that occurs inside Pakistan." The US refuses to acknowledge the existence of its drones program.
A spokesman for the US embassy in Islamabad declined to comment.
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51 Comments so far
Show AllOne more thing that is highly classified is that our leaders, mostly CEOs of big business and those who manage the Pentagon personnel, are really secretly enviromentalists who are very concerned about over population of the planet, so they are taking steps to resolve that problem... Pakistan is a test.
Is there anything we have done right lately?__ Mayve one thing?
.
Things like this are going to come back to bite us in the ass. I mean all of us, not just the psychopathic mass killers you mention. We are all part of the United States, like it or not. We tout ourselves as being a representative democracy. If we let these killers proceed with their 'agenda'--that is creating more wealth and power for themselves, no matter at what 'collateral' cost--we are all going to be held responsible.
The fact is, we are NOT a representative democracy. We are a corporate run oligarchy with a very corrupt 'show government'. We cannot do anything by voting or wasting our time trying to change this corrupt government. That's too bad. I wish we could. But I can't think of any way of dealing with this situation but by an armed revolt. We have to get control of the armed services and have a revolution. Take it or leave it. We are probably going to leave it. We haven't been called a 'nation of sheep' for nothing.
Sorry, George, count me out. I live in this wonderful land, but have nothing to do with the criminals that live here, haven't paid for a single bullet since 2000. I am not a sheep and follow no flock, more like a coyote (small dog barely scratching out a living by its wits) but not as handsome.
If a revolution starts, I will do more than howl in the moonlight. But, there aren't enough hungry people yet and those with full refrigerators and cable tv don't care.
I just saw a whole row of very expensive houses that were barely completed, then abandoned. The windows are broken and the weather is moving in. Things can happen very fast--even to sheep.
To the self righteous god fearing, "Christian" United States they don't count because they were no longer fetuses, and they weren't "Christian"...
Wow, the US must hate them for their freedom.
That won't prevent Obama from describing the United States as The Greatest Country on Earth.
It's true!
The best country AND it's actually blessed by God himself AND it still has a lovely AAA credit rating no matter what anybody says!
It doesn't get any better than this.
Good times, good times!
168 children murdered in drone attacks in Pakistan. Can you imagine the outcry if Pakistan drones murdered 168 American children in the U.S. !
ObomberCorp would probably attack Iran.
Paul Revere,
You really think so? I really doubt it will raise any outcry. If there is, the outcry will be at the republican. Many of millions Americans lose their home since 2008 and continue. How many directly and indirectly died of it and where are the outcries? The Banks and US companies are sitting on 3.13 trillion in cash and other non liquid assets as of the end of March anytime in recorded history and reporting huge profits. Where are the outcries? None. 71% of the liberals still support Obama and continue to blame Republicans. Even Obama blames the Republican yesterday.
Die-hard progressive or Liberal Democrats continue posting here and elsewhere with rage at the Republican are common. Paul, who do you blame?
Yeah, unfortunately sivasm you are probably correct. I do not blame the corrupt parties as much as I blame the insanity of the American sheeple that vote for the same two corrupt parties over and over again and expect a different result. If your figures are correct, that 71% of the liberals still support Obama, (and I would add that figure probably also applies to many Republicans ); then that tells you all you need to know about who is to blame! "How fortunate for the Government that the people they administer don't think". Adolf Hitler.
pfft, so what? 168 little brown-skinned apes in some foreign sandbox get wasted as we "protect our freedoms." Nobody in the U.S. gives a rat's ass. Nor for the 1 MILLION Iraqis who we have wasted. The U.S. is God's Chosen People (right beside Israel, dontchaknow), and we can quite literally Do No Wrong (tm). When the U.S. kills children, it is "regrettable but necessary." When any other nation does it, it is Evil Incarnate.
We are the ultimate hypocritical, terrorist organization on the Earth. Anyone who thinks God "blesses" this evil, disgusting country is in a self-delusional coma and needs to take a good hard look in the mirror. Absolutely disgusting what the U.S. - and its sycophants and frenzied supporters - does to the peoples of the earth every hour of every day. Talk about a nation that needs to be wiped from the face of the earth.
Reminds me of how this all started in Afghanistan when we were sending B-52's to drop huge loads on Afghan villages and the countryside.
----------------------------------------------------------------
After the Tonkin Gulf hoax which precipitated the bombing of North Vietnam, we watched the footage of B-52's dumping their staggering loads of bombs on Vietnamese cities. As with all saturation bombing, it only made the survivors vow more strongly to carry on against an implacable enemy. Something which should have been learned by the same tactics in World War II.
As we watched the bombing of Afghan villages, with even more sophisticated weapons, Impersonal or Personal took form. We destroyed many villages in Afghanistan and killed the people to save them from the Taliban, or al Qaeda if you wish, as we did the villagers of North and South Vietnam, to save them from the evils of Communism. And, as usual, if they are dead, they are terrorists, not innocent villagers. It plays better in the press. Now, we also have uncounted “collateral damage.”
---------------------------------------------------------------
Impersonal or Personal
In days of old, when knights were bold
War was a personal thing.
Hacker and hackee stood face to face,
And skill wore the blood of the loser.
We are modern, now, and war to us
Is a distant thing of interest.
We watch the box, the press debriefed,
And kills tallied up on the screen.
Bomber pilots from eight miles up
Remark upon the air,
How the bombs they drop, like flowers bloom,
In a garden far below.
We seldom hear from the target zone;
Those peasant lands below,
Where death rains down without a sound
Then shakes the ground with wrath.
Nowhere to run and no place to hide
Collateral damage, they died.
Firestorms rage and suck the air
From the child who can’t even scream.
And later the village rubble is strewn
With calcined bones in the sun.
And no one knows which belonged to whom;
The wind scatters the ash to the hills.
The Pentagon proudly reports to us all
That still more terrorists are dead.
And we all must believe what we’re told, you see,
For we hear no protest from the ground.
Then a distant echo from Vietnam days
Breathes quietly into my ear.
“It’s sad, but we had to destroy that town,
To save it from the evils of Communism.”
Steve Osborn
1 September 2003
Here's what then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had to say in a CBS news interview of 1996 about the subject of murdering children in foreign countries:
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."
God Bless Amerikkka.
Yes, Albright's quote is one of the most monstrous, disgusting, and evil words ever spoken by a U.S. politician. Just shows how wicked and completely devoid of any empathy these psychotic fuckers are - must be a qualification for holding high office in the U.S. If a bomb levelled her ritzy neighborhood and she had to walk through a streetful of American children's corpses to get to her destroyed Mercedez, I'm sure "that would be different," because American children are superior to Pakistani or Iraqi children. Unless they are poor and their mothers are on welfare, in which case she wouldn't even notice them.
But the problem is not what she said it's what she- and Clinton did, were doing, and continued to do after she said that.` If you want to know monstrous, see if you can find pictures of all those kids dying slowly because the sanctions did not allow medicine or vaccines or water treatment or any kind of equipment into Iraq.
So for 12 plus years the us. killed a trade center worth of toddlers evry month. And it went on after she was on that show, for at least seven more years.So the "price" was more like a million. i wish Stahl had asked her what she meant by "it". the price was worth.... what? what did she get for all those dead kids?
it turns my stomach every time i see her show up acting as if she is a human, like being a part of obomber's team
I have been posting this most egregious quote from Mad and not Bright ever since she said it, but it cannot be posted too many times. Paul
Amen.
Courtesy of u n c o v e r I r a q . c o m:
________________
Albright's apology
In Albright's autobiography (Madam Secretary by Madeleine Albright with Bill Woodward, Miramax Books (Hyperion), New York, NY, 2003), she apologized for the remark (p. 174-175):
" I regret to say that I aggravated our public relations problems during a 1996 interview on the CBS program 60 Minutes. The segment included a visual tour of Iraqi health care facilities, with pictures of starving children and denunciations of UN policy by Iraqi officials. Little effort was made to explain Saddam's culpability, his misuse of Iraqi resources, or the fact that we were not embargoing food medicine or food. I was exasperated that our TV was showing what amounted to Iraqi propaganda. Near the program's end, Lesley Stahl asked me, 'We have heard that half a million childrean have died [as a result of sanctions]. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?'
I must have been crazy; I should have answered the question by reframing it and pointing out the inherrent flaws in the premise behind it. Saddam Hussein could have prevented any child from suffering by simply meeting his obligations. Instead, I said the following: 'I think that this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.' As soon as I had spoken, I wished for the power to freeze time and take back those words. My reply had been a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy and wrong. Nothing matters more than the lives of innocent people. I had fallen into a trap and said something that I simply did not mean. That was no one's fault but my own. There are many times in everyone's life when the mouth works faster than the brain; there was no more regrettable example in my own career than this ill-considered response to Lesley Stahl."
________________
Shorter Albright: Why, it was merely a slip of the tongue.
* http://home.comcast.net/~dhamre/docAlb.htm
A liar to the end. She spoke the truth as internalized by Imperialists everywhere--The ends always justify the means. Hopefully a modicum of justice will be served when all of her children die before her.
Slightly-less-short Albright: " . . . and how dare that Stahl b**ch ask me such an improper question!"
Do we have our pound of flesh yet?
no. We're Americans; our bloodlust is never satisfied.
I suspect that the figure of 168 is much higher, and, of course, it doesn't speak to the larger number of victims who are physically maimed and psychologically scarred for life. Sadly, this satanic, indiscriminate killing of innocents in the ME will be a previously agreed upon non-issue in the coming months of nauseating political "debates" -- just as it was in the last dog and pony show election. Yes, Demonstorm, psychopathy IS a qualification for high office in the USA.
What does one do? So terribly sad.
Father Metcalf
* 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.'*
Raymond Seitz , us ambassador to nicaraqua
*''let me tell you something kid. In war, innocent people always suffer*
http://tinyurl.com/3hvsp23
Harold Pinter Nobel Lecture
http://academic.evergreen.edu/curricular/ppandp/PDFs/Harold%20Pinter%20Nobel%20Lecture.pdf
Any wonder why the United States is hated around the world ????????
Baby killers. All soldiers are baby killers. All people who support the troops are baby killers. We need to return terms such as baby killer to the daily lexicon. When you hear people praise the troops, speak out and say you disagree, that you believe they are baby killers, that living Muslims have every bit the "right to life" the unborn fetuses have.
We all must speak out. Not just on internet forums, but to friends, family, acquaintances, people on the street, people in grocery lines. Have the courage to say what you say here in every day life. Don't fear alienating your friends and relatives. If they love you, they will listen to you. They may not agree right away, but don't give up.
Words have more power than anything else in human society. The plutocrats know this, so they gained control over most media outlets. The plutocrats know how to buy shills who will spew pseudo humanist jargon over the air waves, but then urge us to vote for the demons among us.
Show the Madeline Albright video to your friends. Youtube has multiple copies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIX1CP9qr4
"2,292 people had been killed by US missiles, including as many as 775 civilians."
So how were the other 2292 - 775 = 1517 people categorized?
It seems the Daily Telegraph is framing those other 1517 killings from the heavens of dirt poor villagers in their own homes and fields as fully justified and noble murders.
Oh wait...
963 "terrirists"
877 "militants"
181 "illegal combatants"
103 women
168 babies
That make a grand total of 2292!
Why is there no criticism of the cowardice of officers of an organization that plans attacks on "Western" nation hide behind the shield of women and children?
Probably because the commenters are, by and large, intelligent and perceptive, and don't uncritically buy into reactionary wingnut talking points.
I have been trying to talk or write to people about the injustices of this country for years. Recently I wrote about the cruelty of the deaths of children in Iraq during the sanctions to someone I thought was a good friend and I was told that I am a causal friend only and if I want to be a close friend I must not talk about religion or politics. I think the horror of the Mad story is that the killing of the children continued after she apologized for her slip of the tongue, in spite of the fact that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction to give up. The weapons inspectors reported that and then the excuse for killing the thousands of children every month was regime change.
Look who the killers are, not mired in their own relatives flesh and bloods.
Its the goons of Mr nice guy Obama, wearing their clean white hoods.
Hiding their faces. Not politicians in the States and NATO,
who okayed the armies of their spectacular technology show.
They do not write the terror and suppression orders every day,
but have techo-bureaucrats who pick the targets for their pay.
Anonymous and safe, far away in comfort, ranked and uniformed,
the killers never need to pray, that they never come home one day
to find their house exploded, their loved ones remains blended,
with the dust, nor find them raped and shot,
or disappeared, taken, tortured, incarcerated but never forgot.
Having the power of gods to make terror, flesh and blood spills,
to the soldier techo-bureaucrat , its just a job to help pay the bills.
For if they do let awareness seep past the barriers of denial,
nightmares come alive, inside their souls, demons of eternal trial.
How about this, good during the Vietnam war:
“Hey, hey, Obama, how many kids did you kill today?”
VERY appropriate.
This has got to stop. I knew this was going on, but confronted by the total numbers makes me physically sick. Everyone who realizes that this is immoral demonic behaviour needs to emmigrate from the US and take your tax money away from these murderers. The Wars and the American death machine motivated my emmigration from the US. This is difficult to comprehend that any human being could take part in this, and go home like nothing happened every day.
I would like to suggest we all stop using pentagonspeak like "collateral damage". when you drop bombs on people or shoot hellfire missiles there is nothing accidental or collateral about the people you kill. It's called premeditated murder. Or a heinous war crime. It's always done on purpose. don't let them act surprised. and don't use their obscene euphemisms.
Yes it is murder. Yes it is premeditated. Yet people still take offense when one suggests those committing the acts are murderers.
Now I really do not care that people are "offended" by the term murderer when applied to Soldiers that commit murder. We should be much more concerned about those victims of the murderers.
I quite agree with your point. We must stop trying to change the language when describing these actions.
A person here in Vancouver was convicted of 5 counts of first degree murder in a court of law. He had barred up the exits of a house and set it aflame. 4 Children and their mother burned to death. The person claimed he did not intend to kill the mother or the children as another person lived there. This other person apparently had threatened him but was not at the home when the fire was set,
The thug remains a MURDERER. The act was premeditated. The Judge ruled it made no difference that he was targeting another as "No reasonable person could commit such a barbaric act and not believe that others living in the home would be harmed"
I fail to see how dropping bombs on houses is any different.
collateral:
noun
1 something pledged as security for repayment of a loan, to be forfeited in the event of a default.
2 a person having the same descent in a family as another but by a different line.
adjective
1 descended from the same stock but by a different line
2 additional but subordinate; secondary
• situated side by side; parallel : collateral veins.
Yes, don't let the publishers,editors and presstitutes that whore for their fascist, madams in the MSM get away with: Obscene euphemisms, red herrings, doublespeak, obfuscation, canards, persiflage, casuistry, non sequiturs, facile calumny; oh wait a minute! I need to stop----- because that would mean no more fascist, obscene, main stream news!
So the rioters in London are "sheer criminals," but the killer in the White House is a peace laurette.
Go figure.
These drone bombings need to be understood as war crimes and crimes against humanity. It should have been stopped when they killed the first child.
War is peace is insane.
0 continued this wanton killing by drone almost on day one of his term.
he actually escalated the rate.
and people wonder why I don't "give him a chance."
HORRENDOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well its a start. Its only 168 future terrorist. I say lets use ATOMIC weapons on North Waziristan and get the whole thing over with.
That is completely idiotic.
Among other reasons, the drone killings are practice. Field testing.
One of the other reasons is rabid right-wing faux-"Christians", the infidel-hating, Crusades-admiring, Rapture-believing kind- are apparently running the military.
A third reason is immense profits, which used to be called profiteering, a serious crime.