Drones: How Obama Learned to Kill (Newsweek)

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anatta

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Drones: How Obama Learned to Kill
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/27/drones-the-silent-killers.html
May 28, 2012 1:00 AM EDT The Obama campaign touts a commander in chief who never flinches, but the truth is more complex. In an excerpt from his new book, Kill or Capture The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency, Daniel Klaidman reveals:
•The president's troubled reaction to a botched strike during his first month in office


•His uneasy acceptance of "signature strikes" in Pakistan, or the targeting of groups of men who bear characteristics associated with terrorism, but whose identities aren’t known. Obama didn't like the idea of "kill 'em and sort it out later," says one source


•The formation of a “special troika on targeted killings” that includes Obama, vice chairman of the Joint Chief James “Hoss” Cartwright, and counterterrorism aide John Brennan

•Top State Dept. lawyer Harold Koh wondering, “How did I go from being a law professor to someone involved in killing?"

•The president’s having “no qualms” about the fatal strike on American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki

•Obama’s resistance—and ultimate relenting—to the use “signature strikes” on Yemen’s al Qaeda branch this spring
 
the link is 4 pages of dense text, well worth the read, why we are droning Paki and Yemen with such ferocity.

this is a quicker read.
(WAPO) Yemen: "drone strikes more 'elastic' over time"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...y.html?hpid=z3
.......The quickening pace of the U.S. drone campaign in Yemen this year has raised new questions about who is being targeted and why. A review of strikes there so far suggests that the Obama administration has embraced a broader definition of what constitutes a terrorism threat that warrants a lethal response.

In more than 20 U.S. airstrikes over a span of five months, three “high-value” terrorism targets have been killed, U.S. officials said.
A growing number of attacks have been aimed at lower-level figures who are suspected of having links to terrorism operatives but are seen mainly as leaders of factions focused on gaining territory in Yemen’s internal struggle.
News accounts from inside the country — which vary in their reliability — also suggest that U.S. airstrikes have hit military targets, including a weapons storage facility near Jaar, a city in southern Yemen. In some cases, U.S. strikes appeared to be coordinated with Yemeni military advances on al-Qaeda positions in the southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwa.

Current and former U.S. officials familiar with the campaign said restrictions on targeting have been eased amid concern over al-Qaeda’s expansion over the past year. Targets still have to pose a “direct threat” to U.S. interests, said a former high-ranking U.S. counterterrorism official. “But the elasticity of that has grown over time.”

The adjustments in the drone campaign carry risks for the Obama administration, which had sought to minimize the number of strikes out of fears of radicalizing local militants and driving them into al-Qaeda’s ranks. Growing unrest in Yemen has blurred the boundaries between al-Qaeda cells plotting terrorist attacks and a broader insurgency that operates under the terrorist network’s brand.
A White House spokesman said the U.S. mission in Yemen remains narrow.
“We’re pursuing a focused counterterrorism campaign in Yemen designed to prevent and deter terrorist plots that directly threaten U.S. interests at home and abroad,” said Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council.
“We have not and will not get involved in a broader counterinsurgency effort
 
annata said:
the link is 4 pages of dense text, well worth the read, why we are droning Paki and Yemen with such ferocity.

this is a quicker read.
(WAPO) Yemen: "drone strikes more 'elastic' over time"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...y.html?hpid=z3
.......The quickening pace of the U.S. drone campaign in Yemen this year has raised new questions about who is being targeted and why. A review of strikes there so far suggests that the Obama administration has embraced a broader definition of what constitutes a terrorism threat that warrants a lethal response.

In more than 20 U.S. airstrikes over a span of five months, three “high-value” terrorism targets have been killed, U.S. officials said.
A growing number of attacks have been aimed at lower-level figures who are suspected of having links to terrorism operatives but are seen mainly as leaders of factions focused on gaining territory in Yemen’s internal struggle.
News accounts from inside the country — which vary in their reliability — also suggest that U.S. airstrikes have hit military targets, including a weapons storage facility near Jaar, a city in southern Yemen. In some cases, U.S. strikes appeared to be coordinated with Yemeni military advances on al-Qaeda positions in the southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwa.

Current and former U.S. officials familiar with the campaign said restrictions on targeting have been eased amid concern over al-Qaeda’s expansion over the past year. Targets still have to pose a “direct threat” to U.S. interests, said a former high-ranking U.S. counterterrorism official. “But the elasticity of that has grown over time.”

The adjustments in the drone campaign carry risks for the Obama administration, which had sought to minimize the number of strikes out of fears of radicalizing local militants and driving them into al-Qaeda’s ranks. Growing unrest in Yemen has blurred the boundaries between al-Qaeda cells plotting terrorist attacks and a broader insurgency that operates under the terrorist network’s brand.
A White House spokesman said the U.S. mission in Yemen remains narrow.
“We’re pursuing a focused counterterrorism campaign in Yemen designed to prevent and deter terrorist plots that directly threaten U.S. interests at home and abroad,” said Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council.
“We have not and will not get involved in a broader counterinsurgency effort
Click to expand...

What is that you find so abhorrent? If helicopter gunships were sent in to kill them, is that ok?
 
Aoxomoxoa said:
What is that you find so abhorrent? If helicopter gunships were sent in to kill them, is that ok?
Click to expand...

did you read the 4 pages? It shows how the "peace Prize " winner (Obama), went from being horrified on his first drone strike that caused "colateral damage" ( despite early denials), to ROUTINELY lumping all AQ together.

I.E. - Yemen. some are actually a threat to the US, but ( it's a civil war), many are just part of local insurrections.
Yet we treat them allthe same.
here's a quick report: 5/15/12


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two suspected US drone strikes killed up to 12 civilians in the south of Yemen on Tuesday.

Reports vary but between 14 and 15 people have been killed in a double air strike on the southern city of Jaar. Of these, as many as a dozen are being reported as civilians. Up to 21 civilians have also been reported injured.

Witnesses said the first strike targeted alleged militants meeting in a house. Civilians who had flocked to the impact site were killed in a follow-up strike. Although the attack is unconfirmed, if accurate this tactic would echo the grim hallmarks of US drone tactics in Pakistan.

Earlier this year the Bureau exposed a CIA practice of ‘follow-up’ strikes in an investigation with the Sunday Times. On at least a dozen occasions twin strikes killed at least 50 civilians. The civilians died when they rushed to help victims of an initial attack and were hit by a second, follow-up strike.


Civilians who had flocked to the impact site were killed in a follow-up strike.
While the CIA alone is responsible for the American drone campaign in Pakistan both the Agency and US special forces launch attacks with pilotless aircraft in Yemen.

Two to three suspected ‘al Qaeda militants’ were killed in the double strike which Xinhua initially reported as ‘a botched air strike carried out by Yemeni warplanes.’ But three Yemeni security officials have since told CNN it was a drone strike.

This is the highest number of civilians killed in a strike in Yemen attributed to the US since 30 died on 14 July 2011 in a strike on a Mudiya police station.

These are the first civilian strike victims reported killed in Yemen since March 30. The Bureau has recorded up to 746 people killed in US strikes in the country since 2002. As many as 117 are civilians, 24 of them children.
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com...ians-in-yemen
 
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e1a_1334352177

The largest US military attack on Yemen in history, part of a covert program code-named Indigo Spade, JSOC launched surveillance aircraft to survey the intended targets. The operation kicked off at dawn on December 17, 2009, as a Tomahawk cruise missile was fired from a submarine positioned in the waters off the coast of Yemen. Armed with cluster munitions, it slammed into a group of houses and other dwellings in Al Majalah, a village in the southern province of Abyan.

When word of the strikes got out, the Pentagon at first refused to comment, directing all inquiries to Yemen.

Saleh’s government issued a statement taking credit for carrying out “simultaneous raids killing and detaining militants.”

President Obama called Saleh reportedly to “congratulate” him and to “thank him for his cooperation and pledge continuing American support.” But as images of the Abyan strike emerged, some military analysts questioned whether Yemen had the type of weapons that were used.

Among those found at the scene were BLU 97 A/B cluster bomblets, which explode into some 200 sharp steel fragments that can spray more than 400 feet away. In essence, they are flying land mines capable of shredding human beings into small pieces.
The bomblets were equipped with an incendiary material, burning zirconium, to set fire to flammable objects in the target area. The missile used in the attack, a BGM-109D Tomahawk, can carry more than 160 cluster bombs. None of these munitions were in Yemen’s arsenal.

As outrage spread across Yemen, fueled largely by the assumption that it was a US bombing, the Yemeni Parliament dispatched a delegation to investigate. When the delegates arrived in the village, they “found that all the homes and their contents were burnt and all that was left were traces of furniture” along with “traces of blood of the victims and a number of holes in the ground left by the bombing…as well as a number of unexploded bombs,” according to their report.

The investigation determined that the strike had killed forty-one members of two families, including seventeen women and twenty-one children. Some of the dead were sleeping when the missiles hit.
Rimi was not among the dead, and survivors said they had no connection to Al Qaeda. The Saleh government insisted that fourteen Al Qaeda operatives had been killed, but the Yemeni investigators said the government could provide them with only one name.
Four days later, three more civilians were killed when they stepped on unexploded cluster bombs.
After the strike, a senior Yemeni official told the New York Times, “the involvement of the United States creates sympathy for Al Qaeda. The cooperation is necessary—but there is no doubt that it has an effect for the common man. He sympathizes with Al Qaeda.”


According to documents made available by WikiLeaks, Stephen Seche, the US ambassador to Yemen, sent a cable to Washington on December 21. Referring to the strikes, it said the Yemeni government “appears not overly concerned about unauthorized leaks regarding the U.S. role and negative media attention to civilian deaths.”

The cable said that Deputy Prime Minister Rashad al-Alimi told Seche that “any evidence of greater U.S. involvement such as fragments of U.S. munitions found at the sites—could be explained away as equipment purchased from the U.S.” Yemen, according to the cable, “must think seriously about its public posture and whether its strict adherence to assertions that the strikes were unilateral will undermine public support for legitimate and urgently needed CT operations, should evidence to the contrary surface.”

While praising the December strikes, Saleh “lamented” the use of cruise missiles, according to the Wikileaks cable, because they are “not very accurate.”
In the meeting, Petraeus claimed that “the only civilians killed were the wife and two children of an AQAP operative at the site,” which was blatantly false. Saleh told Petraeus he preferred “precision-guided bombs” fired from fixed-wing aircraft.
“We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” Saleh said. Deputy Prime Minister Alimi then joked that he had just “lied” by telling the Yemeni Parliament that the bombs in Arhab, Abyan and Shabwa were US-made but deployed by Yemen.
 
annata said:
did you read the 4 pages? It shows how the "peace Prize " winner (Obama), went from being horrified on his first drone strike that caused "colateral damage" ( despite early denials), to ROUTINELY lumping all AQ together.

I.E. - Yemen. some are actually a threat to the US, but ( it's a civil war), many are just part of local insurrections.
Yet we treat them allthe same.
here's a quick report: 5/15/12


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two suspected US drone strikes killed up to 12 civilians in the south of Yemen on Tuesday.

Reports vary but between 14 and 15 people have been killed in a double air strike on the southern city of Jaar. Of these, as many as a dozen are being reported as civilians. Up to 21 civilians have also been reported injured.

Witnesses said the first strike targeted alleged militants meeting in a house. Civilians who had flocked to the impact site were killed in a follow-up strike. Although the attack is unconfirmed, if accurate this tactic would echo the grim hallmarks of US drone tactics in Pakistan.

Earlier this year the Bureau exposed a CIA practice of ‘follow-up’ strikes in an investigation with the Sunday Times. On at least a dozen occasions twin strikes killed at least 50 civilians. The civilians died when they rushed to help victims of an initial attack and were hit by a second, follow-up strike.


Civilians who had flocked to the impact site were killed in a follow-up strike.
While the CIA alone is responsible for the American drone campaign in Pakistan both the Agency and US special forces launch attacks with pilotless aircraft in Yemen.

Two to three suspected ‘al Qaeda militants’ were killed in the double strike which Xinhua initially reported as ‘a botched air strike carried out by Yemeni warplanes.’ But three Yemeni security officials have since told CNN it was a drone strike.

This is the highest number of civilians killed in a strike in Yemen attributed to the US since 30 died on 14 July 2011 in a strike on a Mudiya police station.

These are the first civilian strike victims reported killed in Yemen since March 30. The Bureau has recorded up to 746 people killed in US strikes in the country since 2002. As many as 117 are civilians, 24 of them children.
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com...ians-in-yemen
Click to expand...

The spectre of Somalia and Black Hawk Down remains very real for politicians having to make difficult decisions.
 
starting to get the picture? we're "more elastic" ( read less discriminating) in our drone use ( this was a Tomahawk with clusterbombs.)

See how we're just creating more AQ? there was a report today "AQ #2 killed in Paki drone".
So does this mean we're winning the AfPak war? -No. How many times have we killed "#2"? yet the place is still a divided battle field, we back a corrupt Karzai
( like a corrupt Yemen gov't), and we RADICALIZE the populations.

This is perpetual war, it's no end, it just goes on and on, as long as we confront Muslim nations, or get in their civil wars; there will be blowback.
Consider it Crusades 2.0 if it helps you think of this.
 
annata said:
starting to get the picture? we're "more elastic" ( read less discriminating) in our drone use ( this was a Tomahawk with clusterbombs.)

See how we're just creating more AQ? there was a report today "AQ #2 killed in Paki drone".
So does this mean we're winning the AfPak war? -No. How many times have we killed "#2"? yet the place is still a divided battle field, we back a corrupt Karzai
( like a corrupt Yemen gov't), and we RADICALIZE the populations.

This is perpetual war, it's no end, it just goes on and on, as long as we confront Muslim nations, or get in their civil wars; there will be blowback.
Consider it Crusades 2.0 if it helps you think of this.
Click to expand...

I wonder if you would be happy if the Taliban took over in Pakistan?
 
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