[quote="Salon"]On December 30 of last year, ABC News reported on a 16-year-old Pakistani boy, Tariq Khan, who was killed with his 12-year-old cousin when a car in which he was riding was hit with a missile fired by a U.S. drone. As I noted at the time, the report contained this extraordinary passage buried in the middle:
Asked for documentation of Tariq and Waheed’s deaths, Akbar did not provide pictures of the missile strike scene. Virtually none exist, since [b]drones often target people who show up at the scene of an attack.[/b]
What made that sentence so amazing was that it basically amounts to a report that the U.S. first kills people with drones, then fires on the rescuers and others who arrive at the scene where the new corpses and injured victims lie.
In a just-released, richly documented report, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, on behalf of the Sunday Times, documents that this is exactly what the U.S. is doing — and worse:
The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has [b]killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals[/b], an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed.
The findings are published just days after President Obama claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a “targeted, focused effort” that “has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties”. . . .
A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that [b]at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners.[/b] The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.
Although the drone attacks were started under the Bush administration in 2004, they have been stepped up enormously under Obama.
There have been 260 attacks by unmanned Predators or Reapers in Pakistan by Obama’s administration – averaging one every four days.
As I indicated, there have been scattered, mostly buried indications in the American media that drones have been targeting and killing rescuers. As the Bureau put it: “Between May 2009 and June 2011, at least fifteen attacks on rescuers were reported by credible news media, including the New York Times, CNN,Associated Press, ABC News and Al Jazeera.” Killing civilians attending the funerals of drone victims is also well-documented by the Bureau’s new report:
Other tactics are also raising concerns. On June 23 2009 the CIA killed Khwaz Wali Mehsud, a mid-ranking Pakistan Taliban commander. They planned to use his body as bait to hook a larger fish – Baitullah Mehsud, then the notorious leader of the Pakistan Taliban.
“A plan was quickly hatched to strike Baitullah Mehsud when he attended the man’s funeral,” according to Washington Post national security correspondent Joby Warrick, in his recent book The Triple Agent. “True, the commander… happened to be very much alive as the plan took shape. But he would not be for long.”
The CIA duly killed Khwaz Wali Mehsud in a drone strike that killed at least five others. . . .
Up to 5,000 people attended Khwaz Wali Mehsud’s funeral that afternoon, including not only Taliban fighters but many civilians. US drones struck again, killing up to 83 people. [b]As many as 45 were civilians, among them reportedly ten children and four tribal leaders.[/b]
The Bureau quotes several experts stating the obvious: that targeting rescuers and funeral attendees is patently illegal and almost certainly constitutes war crimes:
Clive Stafford-Smith, the lawyer who heads the Anglo-US legal charity Reprieve, believes that such strikes “are like attacking the Red Cross on the battlefield. It’s not legitimate to attack anyone who is not a combatant.”
Christof Heyns, a South African law professor who is United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra- judicial Executions, agrees. “Allegations of repeat strikes coming back after half an hour when medical personnel are on the ground are very worrying”, he said. ‘To target civilians would be crimes of war.” Heyns is calling for an investigation into the Bureau’s findings.
What makes this even more striking is how conservative — almost to the point of inaccuracy — is the Bureau’s methodology and reporting. Its last news-making report, issued last July, was designed to prove (and unquestionably did prove) that top Obama counter-Terrorism adviser John Brennan lied when he said this about drone strikes in Pakistan: “in the last year, ‘there [b]hasn’t been a single collateral death[/b] because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop.” The Bureau’s July, 2011 report concluded that Brennan’s claim was patently false: “a detailed examination by the Bureau of 116 CIA ‘secret’ drone strikes in Pakistan since August 2010 has uncovered at least 10 individual attacks in which 45 or more civilians appear to have died.” As I noted at the time — and again when I interviewed Chris Woods of the Bureau — their methodology virtually guarantees significant [b]under-counting[/b] of civilian deaths (and, indeed, their July, 2011, count was much lower than other credible reports) because they only count someone as a “civilian” when they can absolutely prove beyond any doubt that the person who died by a drone strike was one. The difficulty of reporting and obtaining verifiable information in Waziristan ensures that some civilian deaths will not be susceptible to that high level of documentary proof, and thus will go un-counted by the Bureau’s methodolgy.
The point is that the Bureau is extremely scrupulous, perhaps to a fault, in the claims it makes about civilian drone fatalities. Its findings here about deliberate targeting of rescuers and funeral attendees are supported by ample verified witness testimony, field research and public reports, all of which the Bureau has documented in full. As Woods said by email: “We have been working for months with field researchers in Waziristan to independently verify the original reports. In 12 cases we are able to confirm that rescuers and mourners were indeed attacked.”
As the report notes, it’s particularly remarkable that these findings come on the heels of President Obama’s recent boasting about the efficacy of drones and his specific claim that the policy has “not caused a huge number of civilian casualties”, adding that it was “important for everybody to understand that this thing is kept on a very tight leash.” Compare that claim to the Bureau’s almost certainly under-stated conclusion that it has “found that since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children.” And targeting rescuers and funeral attendees of your victims is quite the opposite of keeping the drone program on a “very tight leash.” As Samiullah Khan, one of the Bureau’s field researchers put it:
In a war situation no one is allowed to attack the Red Cross. Rescuers are like that. You are not allowed to attack rescuers. You know, the number of Taliban is increasing in Waziristan day by day, because innocents and rescuers are being killed day by day.
Strictly speaking, the legality of attacking rescuers may be ambiguous because, as the Bureau put it: “It is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions to attack rescuers wearing emblems of the Red Cross or Red Crescent. But what if rescuers wear no emblems, or if civilians are mixed in with militants, as the Bureau’s investigation into drone attacks in Waziristan has repeatedly found?” But there’s nothing ambiguous about the morality of that, or of attacking funerals (recall the worst part of the Baghdad attack video released by WikiLeaks: that the Apache helicopter first fired on the group containing Reuters journalists, then fired again on the people who arrived to help wounded). Whatever else is true, it seems highly likely that Barack Obama is the first Nobel Peace laureate who, after receiving his award, presided over the deliberate targeting of rescuers and funeral mourners of his victims.[/quote]
[url]http://www.salon.com/2012/02/05/u_s_drones_targeting_rescuers_and_mourners/[/url]
That's fucked up.
You'd think over a year, civillians would have learned to flee when a Predator drone goes off. These rescuers are going to aid people who obviously did s[U]omething[/U] to be killed, and attending the funerals sounds like a hazard in itself: if Taliban members are showing up, the civillians should be trying to stay away from them. Shame there's collateral damage at all, but that's war.
[QUOTE=imperialrock;37322628]You'd think over a year, civillians would have learned to flee when a Predator drone goes off. These rescuers are going to aid people who obviously did s[U]omething[/U] to be killed, and attending the funerals sounds like a hazard in itself: if Taliban members are showing up, the civillians should be trying to stay away from them. [B]Shame there's collateral damage at all, but that's war[/B].[/QUOTE]
people who say this are the worst, not that the rest of your post was any better
"shit happens" is a really fuckin awful attitude to have about a military conflict that doesn't have to exist in the first place
[editline]20th August 2012[/editline]
and no not everyone being aided did something to be killed. just like you said at the end of your post, there's collateral, and sometimes when people try to help and aid those that result as collateral, they end up dying next to them because of shit like this.
I'm sorry, but can we get another source for this one? I've never seen this one before and I've seen some of Fenderson's posts.
[QUOTE=asteroidrules;37322718]I'm sorry, but can we get another source for this one? I've never seen this one before and I've seen some of Fenderson's posts.[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/world/asia/us-drone-strikes-are-said-to-target-rescuers.html[/url]
[url]http://www.torontosun.com/2012/02/06/us-drones-target-rescuers-funerals-report[/url]
[url]http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-terror-drones-cia-tactics-in-pakistan-include-targeting-rescuers-and-funerals/[/url]
[QUOTE=imperialrock;37322628]You'd think over a year, civillians would have learned to flee when a Predator drone goes off. These rescuers are going to aid people who obviously did s[U]omething[/U] to be killed, and attending the funerals sounds like a hazard in itself: if Taliban members are showing up, the civillians should be trying to stay away from them. Shame there's collateral damage at all, but that's war.[/QUOTE]
When a drone strike occurs near your village it is kinda a big deal. These rural communities are very tight-knit. The community comes out to help funeral is held.
For those of you interested in what a Paki funeral looks like, here is a nice picture to give you an idea of just what measures we are taking to prevent collateral damage.
[url]http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Funeral-PA-photos1.jpg[/url]
It's not news that civillians are killed any more, it's news when they're [I][URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1206472"]not[/URL][/I].
[QUOTE=Kopimi;37322694]people who say this are the worst, not that the rest of your post was any better
"shit happens" is a really fuckin awful attitude to have about a military conflict that doesn't have to exist in the first place
[editline]20th August 2012[/editline]
and no not everyone being aided did something to be killed. just like you said at the end of your post, there's collateral, and sometimes when people try to help and aid those that result as collateral, they end up dying next to them because of shit like this.[/QUOTE]
I guess I'm just too seperated from the conflict to really feel anything but resigned to this sort of thing, maybe I just have foolish faith in the American government in this case, I don't know.
[QUOTE=imperialrock;37322628]You'd think over a year, civillians would have learned to flee when a Predator drone goes off. [/QUOTE]
You're not understanding the concepts of projectile speed and blast radius.
You can try to run if you manage to look up and actually see what's coming, but odds are slim.
Families in Kandahar have been using drones as a sort of boogeyman to keep their children in line. Be good or the drones will get you.
I'm not against drones in particular, but I'm not a fan of how easy it is to make a mistake with civilians so close.
I guess what the U.S is playing with is that if the drone is completely automatic and no real person is doing the killings then there is no one who is personally responsible. But I think that if the drones can't detect if the red cross is there then it should not be allowed to be used in the first place.
[QUOTE=Super Muffin;37322844]You're not understanding the concepts of projectile speed and blast radius.
You can try to run, but odds are slim. Families in Kandahar have been using drones as a sort of boogeyman to keep their children in line. Be good or the drones will get you.
I'm not against drones in particular, but I'm not a fan of how easy it is to make a mistake with civilians so close.[/QUOTE]
Drones are willing do some crazy stuff like firing into public markets or blowing up the wife and kids while trying to knock off a warlord. Most of these incidents aren't really mistakes and are the result of the chance of killing a warlord being too good to pass up.
Sounds like something terrorists would do.
[editline]20th August 2012[/editline]
Targeting a funeral.
[QUOTE=Glent;37322926]Sounds like something terrorists would do.
[editline]20th August 2012[/editline]
Targeting a funeral.[/QUOTE]
The article goes on to say that the "double-tap" idea was probably taken from terrorists.
[QUOTE=Fenderson;37322944]The article goes on to say that the "double-tap" idea was probably taken from terrorists.[/QUOTE]
I thought it'd been a tactic since WWII to wound, and then let the rescuers come in and then injure or kill them too.
You saw the Viet Cong do it in Full Metal Jacket too now that I think about it.
Just makes me think we're intentionally pissing every middle-eastern nation off in policy so we can keep from looking like we even have the option to end the wars.
We end up making 5 terrorists for every 1 we kill, American taxpayers are driven under mountains of debt without any say in the matter, and private military and weapons industries make literally BILLIONS of dollars of profit they get to keep despite the American taxpayers paying for the initial investment.
[QUOTE=mac338;37322961]I thought it'd been a tactic since WWII to wound, and then let the rescuers come in and then injure or kill them too.
You saw the Viet Cong do it in Full Metal Jacket too now that I think about it.[/QUOTE]
This is part of the last bit of the article, there are 2 other 'updates'.
[quote="salon"]
UPDATE: Perhaps this is where the idea came from to attack rescuers:
[img]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0x53sNmW07s/Ty7TnU_hH2I/AAAAAAAAAqQ/R7GCHQoBBXc/s1600/terrorism.png[/img]
Or perhaps it came from here,
The widow of a Birmingham, Alabama, police officer denounced confessed bomber Eric Rudolph as a “monster” Monday after a federal judge sentenced him to life in prison for the 1998 blast that killed her husband.
U.S. District Judge Lynwood Smith in Birmingham sentenced Rudolph to two consecutive life terms without parole in connection with the January 1998 bombing of the New Woman All Women clinic, which performs abortions. . . .
In the later Atlanta area blasts, Rudolph targeted federal agents by placing second bombs nearby set to detonate after police arrived to investigate the first explosion.
In January 1997, a bomb exploded at the Northside Family Planning Services clinic in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs. A second bomb went off an hour later, injuring seven people.
A month later, four people were wounded in an explosion at Atlanta’s Otherside Lounge. Police found a second bomb and defused it before it went off.
Or perhaps it’s from here: a 2007 Homeland Security report on Terrorism, explaining that this is a hallmark of Hamas terror attacks:
[img]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-U-80dX5uQnE/Ty7VlkLdZ1I/AAAAAAAAAqo/tORzQsVEB4E/s1600/dhs.png[/img]
When describing Hamas, Homeland Security even christened such attacks with a name: “the double tap.” Whatever else is true, this conduct is something the FBI, DHS, the DOJ and federal courts have all formally denounced as Terrorism.[/quote]
Terrorists using the same tactics doesn't make using them yourself exactly better.
Well it's still no where near as bad as past wars throughout Europe's ages which ended up with whole cities flattened people and all.
[QUOTE=imperialrock;37322628]You'd think over a year, civillians would have learned to flee when a Predator drone goes off. These rescuers are going to aid people who obviously did s[U]omething[/U] to be killed, and attending the funerals sounds like a hazard in itself: if Taliban members are showing up, the civillians should be trying to stay away from them. Shame there's collateral damage at all, but that's war.[/QUOTE]
Being part of the Taliban doesn't make someone inherently evil. Lots (if not all) of the members were at some point a kid who was flooded with the ideas of anti-Imperialism by relatives and friends. If this brainwashed kid is killed, people are going to care. You can't tell them it's stupid to mourn someone.
man, even just the idea of being caught up in a drone strike is fucking terrifying - you are being attacked by someone you can't see from half way across the world; to them you are just a dot on a screen, and there's literally nothing you can do to directly threaten them back or force them to stop, meanwhile they can end your life in an instant
[QUOTE=Uber|nooB;37326242]man, even just the idea of being caught up in a drone strike is fucking terrifying - you are being attacked by someone you can't see from half way across the world; to them you are just a dot on a screen, and there's literally nothing you can do to directly threaten them back or force them to stop, meanwhile they can end your life in an instant[/QUOTE]
I would imagine that it can be just as disturbing for the drone operators to think about. If it was my job to be able to kill people across the world from the comfort of a chair, I would definitely be unnerved.
It's a pretty well known two strike tactic. ADmittedly a civilised military should certainly not employ it.
[QUOTE=Mlisen14;37323668]Being part of the Taliban doesn't make someone inherently evil. Lots (if not all) of the members were at some point a kid who was flooded with the ideas of anti-Imperialism by relatives and friends. If this brainwashed kid is killed, people are going to care. You can't tell them it's stupid to mourn someone.[/QUOTE]
Relevant comic:
[img]http://i.imgur.com/vTFZe.jpg[/img]
Fucking military industrial complex.
[QUOTE=Canary;37323528]Well it's still no where near as bad as past wars throughout Europe's ages which ended up with whole cities flattened people and all.[/QUOTE]
Yeah well the World Wars were full blown country vs country wars, collateral damage doesn't matter since the objective is to lead a country to surrender by any means, this is different, we're there to supposedly help the country get rid of a terrorist group, not become the terrorists ourselves.
Bombing people trying to rescue survivors from rubble, [I]then[/I] bombing a goddamn funeral? Those fucking murderous assholes calling those strikes should be hanged, holy shit this is just beyond fucked up.
[QUOTE=wraithcat;37326544]It's a pretty well known two strike tactic. ADmittedly a civilised military should certainly not employ it.[/QUOTE]
See, this is the problem, for some reason it seems the majority of the public want the U.S. (and the other NATO countries) to follow the "rules" and be civilized, regardless of what tactics the enemy is using.
That's not how you win wars, that's not how you crush the opposition; being nice isn't the most efficient way to end the conflict, and doesn't seem to be winning the hearts of the people over there (assuming we haven't been being dicks from the start).
By trying to be the good guy's the US only hurts itself; by targeting rescuers the US is sending the message that you don't help people hit by drones unless you want to be next. Besides, those people going to help those hurt in drone attacks are effectively aiding the enemy, and as such are fair game. Targeting mourners is, agreeable, rather distasteful, but there is sound logic behind it (not that it makes it all that much better, but at least they aren't just randomly shooting civilians).
Perhaps this comes off as harsh, but from my point of view, it seems the majority of people over there don't wan't us there and either do nothing or actively help the enemy, so why should we be so damn concerned with protecting them? It's not like they seem to care enough about the US's, and other countries, civilian losses to help apprehend the terrorists.
Don't get me wrong, I don't even think the US should be there because it's a massive waste; but as long as they are, I don't see a problem with shooting rescuers.
[QUOTE=Electrocuter;37327057]Yeah well the World Wars were full blown country vs country wars, collateral damage doesn't matter since the objective is to lead a country to surrender by any means, this is different, we're there to supposedly help the country get rid of a terrorist group, not become the terrorists ourselves.[/QUOTE]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the majority of the country's civilian population doesn't do shit to help get rid of the terrorists, do they?
[QUOTE=smeismastger;37327355]Bombing people trying to rescue survivors from rubble, [I]then[/I] bombing a goddamn funeral? Those fucking murderous assholes calling those strikes should be hanged, holy shit this is just beyond fucked up.[/QUOTE]
Do you think the survivors from the attack are going to have a sudden change of heart and decide the US are great and there's no need to try and kill them anymore?
[QUOTE=smeismastger;37327355]Bombing people trying to rescue survivors from ruble, [I]then[/I] bombing a goddamn funeral? Those fucking murderous assholes calling those strikes should be hanged, holy shit this is just beyond fucked up.[/QUOTE]
[IMG]http://www.fpdct.com/images/flag_eagle.jpg[/IMG]
[QUOTE=DaMastez;37327359]Correct me if I'm wrong, but the majority of the country's civilian population doesn't do shit to help get rid of the terrorists, do they?[/QUOTE]
Please tell me you are joking here and not seriously this retarded
¨[QUOTE=DaMastez;37327359]Do you think the survivors from the attack are going to have a sudden change of heart and decide the US are great and there's no need to try and kill them anymore?[/QUOTE]
Gee yes, they are totally going to convert into capitalism and hail USA as the best thing ever and thank them for bombing them for no reason at all. I mean they know it's their fault for existing and living in afghanistan and being in fear of local warlords and taliban.
[QUOTE=DaMastez;37327359][B]By trying to be the good guy's the US only hurts itself; by targeting rescuers the US is sending the message that you don't help people hit by drones unless you want to be next. Besides, those people going to help those hurt in drone attacks are effectively aiding the enemy, [I]and as such are fair game.[/I][/B] Targeting mourners is, agreeable, rather distasteful, but there is [I]sound logic [/I]behind it (not that it makes it all that much better, but at least they aren't just randomly shooting civilians).[/QUOTE]
this thread will now go vastly downhill.
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