Lahore - The top adviser to the US army chief in Afghanistan, David Kilcullen, has observed that the US drone strikes in Pakistan are creating more enemies than eliminating them, and hence, needed to be "called off."
Responding to a congressman on what the US government should do in Pakistan, he said: "We need to call off the drones."
The Daily Times quoted Kilcullen, as saying that he has no objection to killing "bad guys" in Pakistan.
However, he added that the strikes were creating more enemies than they eliminate.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Around 30,000 people in northwest Pakistan have been displaced by a military offensive to flush out Taliban militants, a provincial minister said Tuesday.
"Up to 30,000 people have left Maidan in Lower Dir district over the past few days," Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister in the government of North West Frontier Province, told a news conference.
"We are making arrangements for them in Peshawar, Nowshera and Timargarah districts."
Yesterday's NYT editorial expresses, yet again, the concern within America's corridors of power regarding the threat of the Taliban's imminent advance upon Islamabad and its intention to take over a nation which isn't simply trying to acquire nuclear energy for peaceful endeavors (as Iran claims), but actually possesses nuclear weapons. The article repeats Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton's concern that Pakistan was "abdicating to the Taliban," and that the U.S.
WASHINGTON - The U.S. program of drone aircraft strikes against higher-ranking officials of al Qaeda and allied militant organizations, which has been touted by proponents as having eliminated nine of the 20 top al Qaeda leaders, is actually weakening Pakistan's defence against the insurgency of the Islamic militants there by killing large numbers of civilians based on faulty intelligence and discrediting the Pakistani military, according to data from the Pakistani government and interviews with senior analysts.
As our warrior robot drones eradicate evil - or at least "militancy" - from above, the Suicide Army of the East vows to keep blowing itself up until we call them off.
This is not the plot of a bad sci-fi thriller. It's page one of the New York Times, described, as ever, with a sober politeness that doesn't quite do justice to geo-insanity's latest thrilling mutation:
In 1984, Skynet, the supercomputer that rules a future Earth, sent a
cyborg assassin, a "terminator," back to our time. His job was to
liquidate the woman who would give birth to John Connor, the leader of
the underground human resistance of Skynet's time. You with me so far?
That, of course, was the plot of the first Terminator
movie and for the multi-millions who saw it, the images of future
machine war -- of hunter-killer drones flying above a wasted landscape
-- are unforgettable.
WASHINGTON - Despite threats of retaliation from Pakistani militants, senior administration officials said Monday that the United States intended to step up its use of drones to strike militants in Pakistan's tribal areas and might extend them to a different sanctuary deeper inside the country.
AMERICAN drone attacks on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are causing a massive humanitarian emergency, Pakistani officials claimed after a new attack yesterday killed 13 people.
The dead and injured included foreign militants, but women and children were also killed when two missiles hit a house in the village of Data Khel, near the Afghan border, according to local officials.
"Now, I'd like to speak clearly and candidly to the
American people . . ."
