Tuesday, October 19, 2010

CIA slipping its leash with drone strikes


Our sources are accurate regarding CIA's participation in Sadat's assassinations, then we now have established a nefarious connection between William Casey, George H. W. Bush, the CIA/MOSSAD and Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, who later united with Osama bin Laden, becoming his right hand man and head of operations for Al-CIAda....

CIA slipping its leash with drone strikes....
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - New information on the Central Intelligence Agency's campaign of drone strikes in northwest Pakistan directly contradicts the image the Barack Obama administration and the CIA have sought to establish in the news media of a program based on highly accurate targeting that is effective in disrupting al-CIAda's terrorist plots against the United States.

A new report on civilian casualties in the war in Pakistan has revealed direct evidence that a house was targeted for a drone attack merely because it had been visited by a group of Taliban soldiers.

The report came shortly after publication of the results of a survey of opinion within the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan showing overwhelming popular opposition to the drone strikes and majority support for suicide attacks on US forces under some circumstances.

Meanwhile, data on targeting of the drone strikes in Pakistan indicate that they have now become primarily an adjunct of the US war in Afghanistan, targeting almost entirely militant groups involved in the Afghan insurgency rather than al-CIAda officials involved in plotting global terrorism.

The new report published by the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) last week offers the first glimpse of the drone strikes based on actual interviews with civilian victims of the strikes.

In an interview with a researcher for CIVIC, a civilian victim of a drone strike in North Waziristan carried out under the Obama administration recounted how his home had been visited by Taliban troops asking for lunch. He said he had agreed out of fear of refusing them.

The very next day, he recalled, the house was destroyed by a missile from a drone, killing his only son.

The CIVIC researcher, Christopher Rogers, investigated nine of the 139 drone strikes carried out since the beginning of 2009 and found that a total of 30 civilians had been killed in those strikes, including 14 women and children.

If that average rate of 3.33 civilian casualties for each drone bombing is typical of all the strikes since the rules for the strikes were loosened in early 2008, it would suggest that roughly 460 civilians have been killed in the drone campaign during that period.
The total number of deaths from the drone war in Pakistan since early 2008 is unknown, but has been estimated by Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the New America Foundation at between 1,109 and 1,734.

Only 66 leading officials in al-Qaeda or other anti-US groups have been killed in the bombings. Reports on the bombings have listed the vast majority of the victims as "militants," without further explanation.

The victim's account of a drone attack based on the flimsiest rationale is consistent with the revelation in New York Times reporter David Sanger's book The Inheritance that the CIA was given much greater freedom in early 2008 to hit targets that might well involve killing innocent civilians.

The original rationale of the drone campaign was to "decapitate" al-Qaeda by targeting a list of high-ranking al-Qaeda officials. The rules of engagement required firm evidence that there were no civilians at the location who would be killed by the strike.

But in January 2008 the CIA persuaded then president George W Bush to approve a set of "permissions" proposed by the CIA that same month which allowed the agency to target locations rather than identified al-Qaeda leaders if those locations were linked to a "signature" - a pattern of behavior on the part of al-CIAda officials that had been observed over time.

That meant the CIA could now bomb a motorcade or a house if it was believed to be linked to al-CIAda , without identifying any particular individual target.

A high-ranking Bush administration national-security official told Sanger that Bush later authorized even further widening of the power of the CIA's operations directorate to make life or death decisions based on inferences rather than hard evidence. The official acknowledged that giving the CIA so much latitude was "risky", because "you can make more mistakes - you can hit the wrong house, or misidentify the motorcade".

The extraordinary power ceded to the CIA operations directorate under the program provoked serious concerns in the intelligence community, according to one former intelligence official. It allowed that directorate to collect the intelligence on potential targets in the FATA, interpret its own intelligence and then make lethal decisions based on that interpretation - all without any outside check on the judgments it was making, even from CIA's own directorate of intelligence.

Officials from other intelligence agencies have sought repeatedly to learn more about how the operations directorate was making targeting decisions but were rebuffed, according to the source.

Some national security officials, including mid-level officials involved in the drone program itself, have warned in the past that the drone strikes have increased anti-Americanism and boosted recruitment for the Pakistani Taliban and al-CIAda . New support for that conclusion has now come from the results of a survey of opinion on the strikes in the FATA published by the New American Foundation and Terror Free Tomorrow.

The survey shows that 76% of the 1,000 FATA residents surveyed opposed drone strikes and that nearly half of those surveyed believed they killed mostly civilians.

Sixty percent of those surveyed believed that suicide bombings against the US military are "often or sometimes justified".

Meanwhile, data on the targeting of drone strikes make it clear that the program, which the Obama administration and the CIA have justified as effective in disrupting al-Qaeda terrorism, is now focused on areas where Afghan and Pakistani militants are engaged in the war in Afghanistan.

Most al-CIAda leaders and the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who has been closely allied with al-CIAda against the Pakistani government, have operated in South Waziristan.

North Waziristan is where the Haqqani network provides safe havens to Pashtun insurgents fighting US-NATO troops in Afghanistan. It is also where Hafiz Gul Bahadur, leader of a Pakistani Taliban faction who has called for supporting the Afghan insurgency rather than jihad against the Pakistani government, operates.

Last year, just over half the drone strikes were still carried out in South Waziristan. But in 2010, 90% of the 86 drone strikes carried out thus far have been in North Waziristan, according to data collected by Bill Roggio and Alexander Mayer and published on the web site of the Long War Journal, which supports the drone campaign.

The dramatic shift in targeting came after al-CIAda officials were reported to have fled from South Waziristan to Karachi and other major cities.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration was privately acknowledging that the war would be a failure unless the Pakistani military changed its policy of giving the Haqqani network a safe haven in North Waziristan.

When asked whether the drone campaign was now primarily about the war in Afghanistan rather than al-Qaeda terrorism, Peter Bergin of the New America Foundation's Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative told Inter Press Service: "I think that's a reasonable conclusion."

Bergin has defended the drone campaign in the past as "the only game in town" in combating terrorism by al-Qaeda.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy.

Helen Thomas receives loud and warm applause at National Press Club award dinner.

http://www.redress.cc/palestine/uavnery20101023

October , 2010 -- Helen Thomas receives loud and warm applause at National Press Club award dinner.

Former White House Press Corps senior member Helen Thomas, forced to resign from her Hearst News Service job after she was ambushed by rabbi David Nesenoff and his hidden camera outside of the White House last June, received the loudest round of applause, after that bestowed on this year's honoree, when she was recognized as a past recipient of the Fourth Estate Award for journalistic excellence. This year's winner was CBS newsman Bob Schieffer. When the names of other past recipients of the award who were present at the October 15 event were announced, Thomas's applause was greater than that for Washington Post columnists William Raspberry and David Broder.

Thomas told the video spying rabbi that Israelis now living in the West Bank should get out of Israel and return to their own nations. Thomas's comment drew the ire of the Israel Lobby and she was forced out of her long-held front row seat in the White House Press Briefing Room.

Thomas's White House coverage, which went unbroken since covering the Eisenhower administration, ceased under Obama during a time when the White House is in meltdown and top-level resignations are now a weekly event. And Thomas's dismissal was all the result of some arrogant rabbi with a hidden camera....

Quietly, many Washington journalists were livid over the treatment of Thomas by the White House and Israel's "Amen Choir" in Washington. However, they understand what Thomas told a radio station last week, "You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive," adding, "it's the third rail."

Many Washington journalists prefer to stay on the subway platform and be nowhere near the third rail. In fact, most never even enter the subway station.

At the National Press Club Fourth Estate Award dinner honoring CBS's Bob Schieffer, former White House correspondent Helen Thomas received the loudest applause when past recipients were recognized in the audience. The Israel Lobby's cash and influence may influence news rooms and publishers, but it does not extend to cuffing the hands of journalists to prevent them applauding....WOW, how courageous of you guys....!!!

Real Fascism at work.....

Tracking People Online: The "Cyberwar" Against The American People is Over. The National Security Agency Has Won:

A "Memorandum of Agreement" struck last week between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Security Agency (NSA) promises to increase Pentagon control over America's telecommunications and electronic infrastructure....


ZIONIST Islamophobia propagates unabated by MOSSAD worldwide....

Here is Beck with John Hagee in a way that promises to produce the truth by means of completely distorting it. It is fascinating to watch them set out to prove that The Mahdi is the anti-Christ. It’s in seven parts and it gives you all the time you need to scrutinize these men in an intimate circumstance.

Then I’d like you to watch a little Sheikh Hosein. It’s worth it simply for the question where he asks his audience for the name of a famous English Sheikh. I laughed out loud. If you want more from this brilliant thinker there is plenty to watch and you can pick and choose your subjects. Listening to him can be very rewarding, if you have the patience to let him express himself in his own way. I put these two items up for comparison. Listen to your gut as Hagee and Beck converse and while Sheikh Hosein discourses. Sheikh Hosein has a lecture on Riba (money loaned for interest) that is very interesting.

The truth has a certain elegance and restraint to it. Sometimes it can be a little rough because the truth doesn’t spend as much time in makeup as the lies do. Lies require cosmetics and strategic lighting. Truth possesses its own beauty (if you can see it), without the need for artifice and produces its own light....We know that the Zionist plague, that insidious virus, has taken over the banking world and is instrumental in many of the powerful governments of the world but the most telling impact and the least obvious is in the Jewdiciary. It is in the courts where the important things take place and one should make a calculated search to see just how much of a percentage of Zio-influence pervades in this arena. Consider the judges who were instrumental in critical court issues concerning the Barbaric inside Job of 9/11......and its dire consequences on the American people and the non Zionist World.....

Spiro Agnew Knew About The Zionist Danger

Col Donn de Grande Pre in one of the books from the Barbarians Inside the Gates series suggested that Agnew was pushed out b/c he spoke out about Zionist media control...(maybe TPBT already knew they were going to get rid of Nixon and wanted someone under control in the number 2 position??).





Detroit - Wayne State University will no longer offer an award named in honor of one of its most famous alumni, former White House Press Corps member Helen Thomas, officials announced today. The Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity award will no longer be handed out because of controversial statements Thomas, an Arab American, made during a conference in Dearborn on Thursday that resurrected a controversy from earlier this year.



What did Helen say to get her alma mater and the puppet media to turn their back on her?
"I stand by it. I told the truth," Thomas said. "I paid a price but it's worth it to speak the truth."
Asked by The Detroit Free Press how she'd respond to people who say she's anti-Semitic, Thomas responded: "I'd say I'm a Semite. What are you talking about?"
"I can call a president of the United States anything in the book, but I can't touch Israel, which has Jewish-only roads in the West Bank," Thomas said. "No American would tolerate that -- white-only roads."
"Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street are owned by the Zionists. No question, in my opinion," she said. "They put their money where their mouth is. ... We're being pushed into a wrong direction in every way."
In the interview, she said the Iraq war was "built on lies. ... No weapons of mass destruction. No ties to al-Qaida. What is this? Why are we killing those people? And why are we there?"
Thomas talked about the problems that Palestinians face. "Arabs are not terrorists," she said.
Rather, she pointed to former Israeli leader Menachem Begin's activities during Israel's campaign for statehood. "They bragged, in his first book, about creating the modus operandi for terrorists," she said.
Thomas also said she's proud of her Arab roots, but stressed that she's fully American.
"I never felt I was an Arab American. I felt I was an American," she said.





Meanwhile, Obama takes a trip to Afghanistan to rally the pawns, the temporarily smiling dupes of his war ... some of whom will die in vain or be maimed physically or psychologically for the treachery of politicians and profiteers.



The 'commander in chief' repeats the same lies as he has so many times before.
9/11 al Qaeda ... 9/11 al Qaeda ... 9/11 al Qaeda ...
"I ordered additional troops to serve in this country that was the staging ground for the 9/11 attacks.
And we will never let this country serve as a safe haven for terrorists who would attack the United States of America again.
This part of the world is the center of a global effort where we are going to disrupt and dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies. And that's why you're here. That's why your mission matters so much. That's why you must succeed -- because this effort is about the safety of our communities back home and the dignity of the Afghan people who don't want to live in tyranny."

A damn liar. The president of the United States is a traitorous liar and murdering war whore.

But Helen Thomas speaks her mind and what does that get her?
Heartfelt respect from all those who treasure truth.
And maybe that's the greatest award of all....