woensdag 12 mei 2010

The Empire 549

Ook hier is het extremisme uiteindelijk contraproductief.

Via Paul

Georgetown Professor: 'Drones Are Not Killing Innocent Civilians' in Pakistan

By Jeremy Scahill

May 11, 2010 "The Nation" - -I'm
not sure how many of you caught the segment last Friday on the Dylan Ratigan show on MSNBC featuring Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a 25 year army veteran and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency's Task Force STRATUS IVY and Georgetown University professor Christine Fair of the Center for Peace and Security Studies (CPASS). The two were discussing the alleged failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad and potential connections to the Taliban in Pakistan. In the discussion, Lt. Col. Shaffer raised the issue of US drone strikes against Pakistan, which Shahzad reportedly has said were part of his motivation for the attempted bombing. "The Taliban are more motivated than ever to come at us," said Shaffer, saying that "the Predator program is having the same effect in Afghanistan two years ago in killing innocents" that it is now having in Pakistan.

Professor Fair, who has also worked for the RAND Corporation and as a political officer to the United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, acted dumbfounded at the idea that the US drone strikes kill any civilians. "I take extreme exception top the way my colleague characterized the drones," Fair said. "Actually the drones are not killing innocent civilians. Many of those reports are coming from deeply unreliable and dubious Pakistani press reports, which no one takes credibly on any other issue except for some reason on this issue. There've actually been a number of surveys on the ground, in FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas]. The residents of FATA generally welcome the drone strikes because they know actually who's being killed. They're very much aware and who's being killed and who's not."

Here is video of the segment:

Some estimates, most of which are indeed Pakistani sources, suggest that the vast majority of Pakistanis killed are civilians. In an Op-Ed [1] for The New York Times last year, David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum, called for a moratorium on the strikes, saying they had "killed some 700 civilians. This is 50 civilians for every militant killed, a hit rate of 2 percent." They relied on "Pakistani sources," which are apparently offensive to Professor Fair. But Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the New America Foundation recently did a meticulous review [2] of the strikes, citing the following methodology:

"Our analysis of the drone campaign is based only on accounts from reliable media organizations with substantial reporting capabilities in Pakistan. We restricted our analysis to reports in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, accounts by major news services and networks--the Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, CNN, and the BBC--and reports in the leading English-language newspapers in Pakistan--The Daily Times, Dawn, and The News--as well as those from Geo TV, the largest independent Pakistani television network."

Bergen and Tiedemann concluded that "the real total of civilian deaths since 2006 appears to be in the range of 250 to 320, or between 31 and 33 percent." They concluded that under President Obama Under President Obama, who has used the drones with much greater frequency than Bush, "about a quarter [of drone-inflicted deaths] appear to have been civilians."

I expect that Professor Fair, if confronted on this, will have to retract her definitive statement "the drones are not killing innocent civilians." It just simply is false.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25418.htm

4 opmerkingen:

Paul zei

Mensenrechtenbeleid in oorlogsgebied onder Obama sterk verbeterd

The journalist who helped break the story that detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were being tortured by their US jailers told an audience at a journalism conference last month that American soldiers are now executing prisoners in Afghanistan.

New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh also revealed that the Bush Administration had developed advanced plans for a military strike on Iran.

At the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Geneva, Hersh criticized President Barack Obama, and alleged that US forces are engaged in "battlefield executions."

"I'll tell you right now, one of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, to those we capture in Afghanistan," Hersh said. "They're being executed on the battlefield. It's unbelievable stuff going on there that doesn't necessarily get reported. Things don't change.:

"What they've done in the field now is, they tell the troops, you have to make a determination within a day or two or so whether or not the prisoners you have, the detainees, are Taliban," Hersh added. "You must extract whatever tactical intelligence you can get, as opposed to strategic, long-range intelligence, immediately. And if you cannot conclude they're Taliban, you must turn them free.
Story continues below...

"What it means is, and I've been told this anecdotally by five or six different people, battlefield executions are taking place," he continued. "Well, if they can't prove they're Taliban, bam. If we don't do it ourselves, we turn them over to the nearby Afghan troops and by the time we walk three feet the bullets are flying. And that's going on now."
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0512/hersh-battlefield-executions-continue-obama/

Paul zei

Red Cross confirms 'second jail' at Bagram, Afghanistan

''The US airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan contains a facility for detainees that is distinct from its main prison, the Red Cross has confirmed to the BBC.

Nine former prisoners have told the BBC that they were held in a separate building, and subjected to abuse. ''

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8674179.stm

http://chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/1968-sympathy-for-the-oval-seeking-shreds-to-cover-the-naked-truth-of-power.html#comments

Paul zei

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5098

Paul zei

Militair vraagt hulp aan kerk bij opkomende twijfels,kerk zegt dat conflict OK is
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5079

Peter Flik en Chuck Berry-Promised Land

mijn unieke collega Peter Flik, die de vrijzinnig protestantse radio omroep de VPRO maakte is niet meer. ik koester duizenden herinneringen ...