Predator Drones controlled by PRIVATE CARLYLE SUB-CONTRACTORS used in US
bigron:
US military looks at supplying troops with drones
Wed Dec 9, 7:41 pm ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091210/pl_afp/usmilitaryaviationafghanistandrones
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US military is taking a serious look at resupplying combat troops in Afghanistan using unmanned aircraft, an Air Force general said Wednesday.
Faced with the task of delivering vast amounts of supplies by land and by air to troops in the mountainous, land-locked country, senior officers were considering using pilotless aircraft to help with the job, said US Transportation Command chief General Duncan McNabb.
After talks with the US Marines Corps, McNabb said his command had acquired a number of drones for possible supply missions.
"We bought some, to see how that would work," he told a gathering of defense writers.
The general said drones could ferry smaller-scale cargo and retrieve global positioning system (GPS) receivers left behind when supplies are airdropped.
"You might be able to, for instance, not only deliver medicines and smaller kinds of cargo, you could also use it to bring back out the GPS receiver," he said.
Pallets dropped from military aircraft are guided to ground using GPS receivers and sophisticated software. But retrieving the receivers can pose a headache.
With the amount of airdropped cargo growing, using drones could make "the cost of an air drop pretty cheap" and offered an "exciting" prospect, according to McNabb.
But the general did not say when his command might be ready to launch drone supply missions.
The military and spy agencies have dramatically expanded the use of unmanned aircraft in recent years, using them mainly for intelligence gathering, as well for attacks on insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan.
luckee1:
Quote from: Anti_Illuminati on December 08, 2009, 08:54:33 AM
That photo with the American flag behind that terrorist industrial complex creation is the most blatant illustration that it now stands for a totally fascist, criminal police state.
MIC NCIS conditioning for false flag-AFRL/GIG-UAV's to murder Americans
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=118525.0
With that being said, allow me to rewrite the OP article to reflect some real truth:
PALMDALE, Calif. (Rewritten by Anti_Illuminati) — To help spot and track defenders of the criminal Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, Bill of rights, those preparing to defend themselves against our forced vaccination intentions, the Homeland Security Department is expanding its use of drones, the unmanned aircraft widely used in Iraq and other war zones, beyond the Mexican and Canadian borders to the Caribbean and possibly other seas, as well as nationwide, domestically in every state in the U.S.
The department, through its Customs and Border Protection division, already operates five of the aircraft, known as the Predator B, along the Southwest border from a base in Arizona and the Canadian border from an installation in North Dakota.
Like the drones used by the military, these drones can fly long ranges at high altitudes and are difficult to detect. But the drones that have been used at the border since 2005 are for surveillance and tracking and can be outfitted with tactical nuclear weapons, or hellfire missiles, etc. for false flag terrorist attacks which may be blamed on Iran, or a "homegrown" "cyber criminal/hacker/terrorist" that would actually be carried out by DHS and/or Northcom, or the Air Force Research Laboratory.
The department on Monday unveiled a new drone loaded with special radar, cameras and sensors. Built for $13.5 million by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems here, it is designed for maritime use. It features wide-range radar that gives a more sweeping view of the ocean than any of the government’s fleet of manned aircraft.
The first maritime drones, about the size of a small turbo-prop commuter plane, will start flying in January off Florida, a smuggling hotbed.
A second drone is scheduled to take flight by summer in the Gulf of Mexico.
Both ultimately will also be used to patrol off the coast of Central America and Mexico, where drug traffickers use watercraft to bring cocaine from South America. We are claiming that we give a damned about these drug traffickers--which we do only if they are competing with our CIA drug trafficking. But otherwise we hope that this will help condition the public that our UAV's are in use for military operations other than war, because we always need a replacement for the cold war, and even the "war on terror" with these new "contingency operations" which we already revealed even in 1995 in the Pentagon/DoD document titled "Defense Mapping for Future Operations"--our own admission that the "war on terror" was slated to be the full blown preparation to make the United States our future battleground--to rape, torture, and blow the guts out of children, women, and men who dare oppose globalization and the total evisceration of their inalienable human rights. All this, we openly admitted a full 6 years before our grand false flag attack to accelerate our World Government agenda.
Officials are not sure if the drones will be used off or over Southern California. While there has been an increase recently in the smuggling of drugs and people on the seas there, congested airspace from several commercial airports and military bases could make use of the drone difficult, which is why we are supplanting even the FAA's current NAS Architecture version 6, with a globally integrated Ptech based artificial intelligence, fully global information grid internetworked air traffic management system.
A Customs drone — like all others controlled by human pilots from a remote location — that was flying over a sparsely populated area crashed into an Arizona hillside about 100 yards from a house in 2006, causing no injuries or property damage. The National Transportation Safety Board attributed the crash to human error and made several recommendations to make the program safer, most but not all of which were adopted by Customs and Border Protection.
Still, Homeland Security officials praised the aircraft as a safe and important tool that over land has contributed to the seizing of more than 22,000 pounds of marijuana and the apprehension of 5,000 illegal immigrants. Internal FUOU, classified documents reveal that these drones will be used to help apprehend millions of those who oppose United Nations laws, and oppose eugenics, and our totally tyrannical, fascist global supply chain monopolistic infrastructure.
“This is an extraordinary step forward,” said Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, which will join Customs and Border Protection on drone missions. “It will help us immeasurably, because we serve the bankers, and I have been integrated into Northern Command to increase our chances of killing the remaining patriots who are not killed by our bosses bio-engineered RNA chemtrail super flu components when it merges with the already globally dispersed 1st half from our bioterror vaccines that we are prepared to blame American citizens with carrying out should we be forced to go that route if there is too much awareness that the flu pandemic coming to the U.S. is not a natural occurrence. It is a damned good thing that we have pulled off false flag terror attacks like 911 and the Anthrax attacks, because we are confident that at least a fair number of people could be convinced that we have been hit with bio terror (and cyber terror) to have a way to get the American People fight with each other (propagandizing that deaths from our bioweapon are caused by other Americans who refused to take our vaccine), so that less of our Northcom mercenaries will get shot and killed in self defense by U.S. citizens defending their inalienable rights.
Michael C. Kostelnik, an assistant commissioner at Customs and Border Protection, said the drones could fly more than 20 hours at a time, more than double the typical manned mission of about 10 hours.
They travel 275 miles an hour and, Mr. Kostelnik said, are far quieter than conventional aircraft to the point of being virtually imperceptible to anyone on the ground or seas below them.
“Right out of the chute they could do things nothing else could do,” said Mr. Kostelnik, standing next to the whale-gray aircraft, which was formally presented to his agency at an afternoon ceremony here.
The drones do have limitations. They operate under what is known as visual flight rules, which means the weather must be clear enough for controllers to see where it is going, somewhat limiting its use.
The program has its critics. The union for Border Patrol agents has criticized the drones as costly and inefficient and has suggested the money would be better spent on adding workers and equipment on the ground.
“Unmanned aircraft serve a very useful role in military combat situations, but are not economical or efficient in civilian law enforcement applications,” said T. J. Bonner, president of the Border Patrol union. “There are a number of other technologies that are capable of providing a greater level of usefulness at a far lower cost. It appears that the contractors have once again managed to sell a bill of goods to the politicians and bureaucrats who oversee the procurement of technology designed to secure our borders.” But of course, the aforementioned is a complete psyop, to provide some level of skepticism to the public. We are glad that the general public has virtually never heard of our CWID drills, for if they stumbled upon that, and researched it thoroughly, we would be completely exposed and would not be able to sell our agenda--in the same way that those cyber terrorists revealed extremely damaging information about us in CLIMATEGATE.
Dude be careful doing that, they may want to hire you for their internal papers. Some of that made me shudder. I can see the evil smirks of the bastards reading that!
NWOSCUM:
Quote from: Anti_Illuminati on December 08, 2009, 08:54:33 AM
That photo with the American flag behind that terrorist industrial complex creation is the most blatant illustration that it now stands for a totally fascist, criminal police state.
MIC NCIS conditioning for false flag-AFRL/GIG-UAV's to murder Americans
http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=118525.0
With that being said, allow me to rewrite the OP article to reflect some real truth:
PALMDALE, Calif. (Rewritten by Anti_Illuminati) — To help spot and track defenders of the criminal Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, Bill of rights, those preparing to defend themselves against our forced vaccination intentions, the Homeland Security Department is expanding its use of drones, the unmanned aircraft widely used in Iraq and other war zones, beyond the Mexican and Canadian borders to the Caribbean and possibly other seas, as well as nationwide, domestically in every state in the U.S.
The department, through its Customs and Border Protection division, already operates five of the aircraft, known as the Predator B, along the Southwest border from a base in Arizona and the Canadian border from an installation in North Dakota.
Like the drones used by the military, these drones can fly long ranges at high altitudes and are difficult to detect. But the drones that have been used at the border since 2005 are for surveillance and tracking and can be outfitted with tactical nuclear weapons, or hellfire missiles, etc. for false flag terrorist attacks which may be blamed on Iran, or a "homegrown" "cyber criminal/hacker/terrorist" that would actually be carried out by DHS and/or Northcom, or the Air Force Research Laboratory.
The department on Monday unveiled a new drone loaded with special radar, cameras and sensors. Built for $13.5 million by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems here, it is designed for maritime use. It features wide-range radar that gives a more sweeping view of the ocean than any of the government’s fleet of manned aircraft.
The first maritime drones, about the size of a small turbo-prop commuter plane, will start flying in January off Florida, a smuggling hotbed.
A second drone is scheduled to take flight by summer in the Gulf of Mexico.
Both ultimately will also be used to patrol off the coast of Central America and Mexico, where drug traffickers use watercraft to bring cocaine from South America. We are claiming that we give a damned about these drug traffickers--which we do only if they are competing with our CIA drug trafficking. But otherwise we hope that this will help condition the public that our UAV's are in use for military operations other than war, because we always need a replacement for the cold war, and even the "war on terror" with these new "contingency operations" which we already revealed even in 1995 in the Pentagon/DoD document titled "Defense Mapping for Future Operations"--our own admission that the "war on terror" was slated to be the full blown preparation to make the United States our future battleground--to rape, torture, and blow the guts out of children, women, and men who dare oppose globalization and the total evisceration of their inalienable human rights. All this, we openly admitted a full 6 years before our grand false flag attack to accelerate our World Government agenda.
Officials are not sure if the drones will be used off or over Southern California. While there has been an increase recently in the smuggling of drugs and people on the seas there, congested airspace from several commercial airports and military bases could make use of the drone difficult, which is why we are supplanting even the FAA's current NAS Architecture version 6, with a globally integrated Ptech based artificial intelligence, fully global information grid internetworked air traffic management system.
A Customs drone — like all others controlled by human pilots from a remote location — that was flying over a sparsely populated area crashed into an Arizona hillside about 100 yards from a house in 2006, causing no injuries or property damage. The National Transportation Safety Board attributed the crash to human error and made several recommendations to make the program safer, most but not all of which were adopted by Customs and Border Protection.
Still, Homeland Security officials praised the aircraft as a safe and important tool that over land has contributed to the seizing of more than 22,000 pounds of marijuana and the apprehension of 5,000 illegal immigrants. Internal FUOU, classified documents reveal that these drones will be used to help apprehend millions of those who oppose United Nations laws, and oppose eugenics, and our totally tyrannical, fascist global supply chain monopolistic infrastructure.
“This is an extraordinary step forward,” said Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard, which will join Customs and Border Protection on drone missions. “It will help us immeasurably, because we serve the bankers, and I have been integrated into Northern Command to increase our chances of killing the remaining patriots who are not killed by our bosses bio-engineered RNA chemtrail super flu components when it merges with the already globally dispersed 1st half from our bioterror vaccines that we are prepared to blame American citizens with carrying out should we be forced to go that route if there is too much awareness that the flu pandemic coming to the U.S. is not a natural occurrence. It is a damned good thing that we have pulled off false flag terror attacks like 911 and the Anthrax attacks, because we are confident that at least a fair number of people could be convinced that we have been hit with bio terror (and cyber terror) to have a way to get the American People fight with each other (propagandizing that deaths from our bioweapon are caused by other Americans who refused to take our vaccine), so that less of our Northcom mercenaries will get shot and killed in self defense by U.S. citizens defending their inalienable rights.
Michael C. Kostelnik, an assistant commissioner at Customs and Border Protection, said the drones could fly more than 20 hours at a time, more than double the typical manned mission of about 10 hours.
They travel 275 miles an hour and, Mr. Kostelnik said, are far quieter than conventional aircraft to the point of being virtually imperceptible to anyone on the ground or seas below them.
“Right out of the chute they could do things nothing else could do,” said Mr. Kostelnik, standing next to the whale-gray aircraft, which was formally presented to his agency at an afternoon ceremony here.
The drones do have limitations. They operate under what is known as visual flight rules, which means the weather must be clear enough for controllers to see where it is going, somewhat limiting its use.
The program has its critics. The union for Border Patrol agents has criticized the drones as costly and inefficient and has suggested the money would be better spent on adding workers and equipment on the ground.
“Unmanned aircraft serve a very useful role in military combat situations, but are not economical or efficient in civilian law enforcement applications,” said T. J. Bonner, president of the Border Patrol union. “There are a number of other technologies that are capable of providing a greater level of usefulness at a far lower cost. It appears that the contractors have once again managed to sell a bill of goods to the politicians and bureaucrats who oversee the procurement of technology designed to secure our borders.” But of course, the aforementioned is a complete psyop, to provide some level of skepticism to the public. We are glad that the general public has virtually never heard of our CWID drills, for if they stumbled upon that, and researched it thoroughly, we would be completely exposed and would not be able to sell our agenda--in the same way that those cyber terrorists revealed extremely damaging information about us in CLIMATEGATE.
HA HA HA Good stuff......
bigron:
Our Murderers in the Sky
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/our_murderers_in_the_sky_20091210/
Posted on Dec 10, 2009
By Scott Ritter
War is hell, as the saying goes. Murder, on the other hand, is a crime. In this age of the “long war” pitting the United States against the forces of global terror, it is critical that the American people be able to distinguish between the two. The legitimate application of military power to a problem that manifests itself, directly or indirectly, as a threat to the legitimate national security interests of the United States, while horrible in terms of its consequences, is not only defensible but mandatory.
The true test of a society and its leaders is the extent to which every effort is made to both properly define a problem as one worthy of military intervention and then exhaust every option other than the use of force. It is true that President Barack Obama inherited the war in Afghanistan from his predecessor and therefore cannot be held accountable for that which transpired beyond his ability to influence. But the president’s recent decision to “surge” 30,000 additional U.S. military troops into Afghanistan transfers ownership of the Afghan conflict to him and him alone. It is in this light that his decision must be ultimately judged.
In many ways, Obama’s presentation before the Long Gray Line at West Point, in which he explained his decision to conduct the Afghanistan surge, represented an insult to the collective intelligence of the American people. The most egregious contradiction in his speech was the notion that the people of Afghanistan, who, throughout their history, have resisted central authority whether emanating from Kabul or imposed by outside invaders, would somehow be compelled to embrace this new American plan.
At its heart, the strategy requires a fiercely independent people to swear fealty to a man, Hamid Karzai, whose tenure as Afghanistan’s president has been marred by inefficiencies and corruption (even Obama was forced to acknowledge the fraudulent nature of the recent election which secured Karzai’s second term in office). Trying to reverse centuries of adherence to local authority and tribal loyalty with the promise of effective central government would represent a monumental challenge for the most efficient and honest of Afghan leaders. That we are attempting to do so behind the person of Karzai represents the height of folly.
For any military-based solution to have a chance of succeeding, we would need to deploy into Afghanistan an army of social scientists capable of navigating the complex reality of intertribal and interethnic relationships. They would require not only astute diplomatic skills that would enable them to bring together Hazara Shiite and Pashtun Sunni, or Uzbek and Tadjik, or any other combination of the myriad of peoples who make up the populace of Afghanistan, but also an understanding of multiple native languages and dialects. But the reality is we are instead dispatching 20-year-old boys from Poughkeepsie whose skill set, perfected during several months of predeployment training, is more conducive to firing three rounds center mass into a human body.
The nation-building or “civilian strategy” envisioned by President Obama, impossibly ambitious even under the most ideal conditions, simply cannot be achieved with the resources at hand, whether in 18 months or 18 years. That he has chosen to place at risk the lives of even more American troops, and by extension the citizens of Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the pursuit of such unattainable ambition is inexcusable.
The American military is unmatched in its ability to wage war. If the problem of Afghanistan was able to be defined in military terms alone, then perhaps Obama’s surge would provide the basis of a solution. But the Afghan problem has never been a military problem. The United States has, from the very beginning of its Afghanistan misadventure, sought to define the mission within the overall context of a “war on terror.” But the real mission revolves more around bringing to justice the perpetrators of mass murder and building international consensus to help prevent another such crime than it does any variation of closing with and destroying an enemy through firepower, maneuver and shock effect, which is the traditional core of any military operation.
The events of Sept. 11, 2001, created problems best dealt with through diplomacy, law enforcement and intelligence. That the United States chose to define it instead as an act of war means that we have never assembled the tool set necessary to solve the Afghan problem, which explains a recent admission by U.S. military officers that, after eight years of war, America was at “square one” in Afghanistan.
Obama’s characterization of the threat faced by the United States and its allies in the expanded Afghanistan-Pakistan (Af-Pak) theater of operations is as misleading as it is inaccurate. There is no singular, homogeneous enemy to be confronted by a surging U.S. military. The notion that the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida fighters operating in both countries are part of an overarching Islamic fundamentalist movement seeking to export violence to the shores of America is fundamentally wrong. While the president may in fact have seen intelligence information (of undetermined veracity) that shows that some individuals or groups operating in the Af-Pak area of operations have in fact plotted such attacks, to characterize these players and their actions as representing a majority (or even significant minority) opinion among the thousands of fighters opposing the United States and its allies is just plain wrong. Yet, having accepted the definition of the Af-Pak problem in military terms, Obama had no choice but to accede to the solutions put forward by such charismatic military leaders as Gen. David Petraeus (the commander of U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM) and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
It is not just that generals such as Petraeus and McChrystal dominate the public face of military leadership in America today. The real problem is that the organization they represent, CENTCOM, dominates the entire U.S. military—and, by extension, the U.S. military-industrial-congressional complex—as no other unified command has done in U.S. history. Even at the height of the Vietnam War, the demands of the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam (MACV) on the U.S. military establishment had competition from U.S. European Command, U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Pacific Command, because of the Cold War. Today, the only show in town is CENTCOM, given that its theater of operations encompasses the principal zones of operation in the “war on terror.”
The requirements of CENTCOM drive nearly every aspect of the U.S. military today, including training, procurement and operations. Even strategic nuclear forces have had their work impacted by the need of CENTCOM to strike deep underground targets associated with Iran’s nuclear program. Given the inherently militarized nature of the “war on terror,” CENTCOM has supplanted the Department of State as the “face” of America in terms of official interaction between the United States and the nations of an area of operations ranging from Africa to Pakistan.
CENTCOM therefore dominates issues such as economic assistance and other nation-to-nation interaction not normally associated with military operations. The combined military-diplomatic-economic activity associated with the work of CENTCOM provides it with unmatched leverage at home and abroad. While not intended as a direct result of the “war on terror,” CENTCOM has morphed into a virtual nation-state, operating largely independent of traditional checks and balances associated with the functioning of unified military commands.
Despite the command’s unprecedented power and influence, it would not have been all that difficult for Obama to stand up to the pressures brought to bear by CENTCOM in regard to Afghanistan. He is, after all, the commander in chief. The fact is, Obama opted out of any serious opposition to the plan for the most base of reasons—politics. Any serious effort on the part of Obama to meaningfully contest the CENTCOM-backed surge in Afghanistan would have triggered a contentious political struggle with both the military and Congress at a time when the president is pushing for passage of health care reform, the centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda. The reality is that, yet again, American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are being sacrificed for the political advantage of an American politician. This was a charge that was all-too-popular during the administration of George W. Bush. That such an accusation can so readily be applied to Barack Obama, after only a year in office, underscores the magnitude of the failure of leadership and imagination he has exhibited when it comes to the Af-Pak surge.
This lack of imagination was most evident in how the president sought to justify the Af-Pak surge. “This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al-Qaida,” he said in his West Point speech. In addition to his gross oversimplification of the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and its relationship with al-Qaida, Obama felt compelled to press the same fear-induced 9/11 buttons that were the trademark of his predecessor. “It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak.”
The continued focus on hunting down Osama bin Laden further underscores the lack of sophistication of his strategy. It is likely that bin Laden was not the central force behind the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States, contrary to popular opinion. That honor goes to Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s Egyptian associate whose radical Islamic fundamentalist credentials trump even those of his better-known Saudi Arabian partner, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaida operations chief currently in U.S. custody awaiting trial in New York.
That bin Laden was complicit in the 9/11 attacks, and should be held to account for his crimes, is not a question. But the notion that by somehow “getting” bin Laden the United States would break the back of al-Qaida today is absurd. People should start thinking about the day after bin Laden dies. Al-Qaida cells will continue to function as they did the day before bin Laden died. The biggest measurable change will be the level of popular support for al-Qaida worldwide—it will skyrocket as bin Laden’s myth and demise inspire many thousands to join in a global jihad against the West and encourage fundamentalist Muslims from state and nonstate players alike to contribute countless more millions of dollars to underwriting this effort. There can be no greater boost to bin Laden’s cause than America’s continued singular focus on bringing him in, “dead or alive.” The exclusive militarization of the ongoing “hunt” for bin Laden plays directly into the Saudi terrorist’s game plan.
Revenge is not a defensible motive for a nation like the United States. Justice is. De-linking our hunt for bin Laden from the failed (and flawed) vehicle of the “war on terror” would be a wise move, but one that sadly is not going to happen in the foreseeable future if the rhetoric of Obama at West Point serves as a guide. And, in a nation that continues to be gripped (and manipulated) by the horrors of 9/11, it remains to be seen whether the concept of justice, as defined by American law, ideals and values, can ever be applied to the perpetrators of that crime. The trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will serve as a litmus test in this regard. Given America’s track record to date in handling the alleged 9/11 mastermind (the water-boarding of Mohammed 183 times continues to boggle the mind), it is hard to anticipate his exposure to the American legal system as anything but a kangaroo court.
The “war on terror” has shredded the concept of the rule of law, at least as applied by the United States within the context of this struggle. While Obama has made moves to fix some of the symptoms of the flawed policies of his predecessor, the underlying foundation of American arrogance and exceptionalism from which such policies emerged remains unchanged. There is no more telling example of this than the current program of targeted assassination taking place under the guise of armed unmanned aerial drones (also known as remotely piloted vehicles, or RPVs) operating in the Af-Pak theater of operations.
All pretense of either Afghan or Pakistani sovereignty disappears when these drones take to the air. Ostensibly used for intelligence gathering and lethal direct-action operations against so-called high-value targets (i.e., senior al-Qaida or Taliban leadership), RPV missions have become increasingly popular within the U.S. military and intelligence communities as a risk-free means of bringing maximum harm, in highly discriminatory fashion, to the enemy. Expansion of the United States’ RPV effort in Af-Pak has become a central part of the surge ordered by Obama, complementing the 30,000 combat troops he has ordered deployed to the region. But exactly who is targeted by these RPV operations? While the U.S. military and intelligence community maintains that every effort is made to positively identify a target as hostile before the decision to fire a missile or drop a bomb is made, the criteria for making this call are often left in the hands of personnel ill-equipped to make it.
In the ideal world, one would see the fusion of real-time imagery, real-time communications intercept and human sources on the ground before making such a call. But in reality this “perfect storm” of intelligence intersection rarely occurs. In its stead, one is left with fragmentary pieces of data that are cobbled together by personnel far removed from the point of actual conflict whose motivations are geared more toward action than discretion. Often, the most critical piece of intelligence comes from a human source who is using the U.S. military as a means of settling a local score more than furthering the struggle against terror. The end result is dead people on the ground whose demise has little, if any, impact on the “war on terror,” other than motivating even more people to rise up and struggle against the American occupiers and their Afghan or Pakistani cohorts.
Supporters of the RPV program claim that these strikes have killed over 800 “bad guys,” with a loss of only about 20 or so civilians whose proximity to the targets made them suspect in any case. Detractors flip these figures around, noting that only a score or more kills of “high-value targets” can be confirmed, and that the vast majority of those who have died or have been wounded in these attacks were civilians. In a conflict that is being waged in villages and towns in regions traditionally prone to intense independence and religious fundamentalism, distinguishing good from bad can be a daunting task. Given the U.S. track record, under which tribal gatherings and family functions such as weddings have been frequently misidentified as “hostile” gatherings and thus attacked with tragic results, one is inclined to doubt the official casualty figures associated with the RPV strikes.
Rather than furthering the U.S. cause in the “war on terror,” the RPV program, which President Obama seeks to expand in the Af-Pak theater, in reality represents a force-enhancement tool for the Taliban. Its indiscriminate application of death and destruction serves as a recruitment vehicle, with scores of new jihadists rising up to replace each individual who might have been killed by a missile attack. Like the surge that it is designed to complement, the expanded RPV program plays into the hands of those whom America is ostensibly targeting. While the U.S. military, aided by a fawning press, may seek to disguise the reality of the RPV program through catchy slogans such as “warheads through foreheads,” in reality it is murder by another name. And when murder represents the centerpiece of any national effort, yet alone one that aspires to win the “hearts and minds” of the targeted population, it is doomed to fail.
Scott Ritter was a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He is the author of “Target Iran” (Nation Books, 2007).
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