The “Drone Bomber” Arrives To A Warm Welcome From Our Glorious Leaders

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Hamid Mir, Editor with Geo News in Islamabad (Pakistan) recorded that there were 34 drone attacks in the Pakistan region between 2004 -2008.  Between 2008 and March 2009 the  number rose dramatically and there were 46 drone attacks alone in that 15 month period.  [Note, as confirmed in reports below, the number of drone attacks has risen further and sharply under Obama’s first office term.  See in particular this Google Map of the attacks]

Mir points out that there 80 drone attacks during the entire period referred to above.  In all of these attacks 513 people were killed.  Having checked all the records Mir has ascertained that of all these casualties only 14 were actually of alleged terrorists (names confirmed by US Defense Dept Press Releases). The remainder, 499 people, were all civilians.

Hamid Mir investigated 11 individual incidents of drone bombings.  In two of these, he found that two ‘low-level’ Taliban activists had been killed.  In the remaining 9 attacks only civilians were killed.  As he states in the second of the two you tube clips below this is violation Article 3 of the UN Human Rights Charter – among many other violations contrary to the conduct of war.

Today, our glorious leaders, will warmly welcome the Commander In Chief of the US armed forced responsible for these atrocities.

And Hamid Mir on Drone attacks in Pakistan.

Related articles

• WikiLeaks Cables: Pakistan Urged Drone Strikes (newser.com)
• Obama Increase Drone Bombings
• You: Six killed in US drone attack in NWaziristan (nation.com.pk)
• “Drone strike kills six in N Waziristan” and related posts (thefrontierpost.com)
• Eight Killed In Latest Drone Bombing

the glove and the iron fist

Does anyone believe this hand-wringing in respect to US atrocities in Western Afghanistan?

For the last few months there have been repeated massive bombardments in the area without any concern for the impact on the huge number of civilians caught up in the conflict.  A series of leaks from the latest US military report on this concedes as much stating that “dozens of civilians were killed in the air strikes in western Farah province” earlier last month.   Dozens?  It seems that the real number is more in the region of several hundred.  Note this: “In one case, a compound of buildings where suspected militants were massing was struck, even though it was in a densely populated area and there was no imminent threat, the New York Times said.” Indeed, a disregard for civilian casualties so that mission objective is achieved seems to be order of the day.

I drew attention to this in an earlier blog in February entitled The Obama Lie.  It seems that on the one hand Obama is keen and adept to present a caring image of his presidency.  But the reality for many ordinary citizens of this planet is much different: women, men and children have literally been bombed beyond recognition in what is a brutal and unrelenting assault in Western Afghanistan; that assault is all about securing US foreign policy into the future.

Few column inches are spared for the dead from these dreadful assaults by the US military machine.  Indeed we hear little about them and who they are; what they loved in life and who was near and dear to them.  Instead these hundreds of dead in Afghanistan are anonymous and will remain so it seems, discarded as mere numbers in the various reports which which casually allude to each atrocity as it happens.   Contrast that with, if you wish, the many column inches given to the awful killing of the traveller Edwin Dyer in Mali earlier this week.  The Guardian carried a good article about Mr Dyer – who he was and the fate that befell him.  It is a sorry, ugly story but in it we learn that Mr Dyer was ‘was well-respected in his community’.  A number of strongly worded condemnations of his murder also carried in the same article.  Such a report of course is important for his family and friends – granting them and the victim some respect in what is for them a tragic time.

But no such words and not even the names for the countless murdered by the US military machine.

We Bombed It And Bombed It …

‘We bombed it and bombed it and bombed it, and bueno, why not.’

This comment is attributed to an unnamed Franco staff officer and refers to the savage attack on the city of Guernica on April 26, 1937.   It is not clear how many died on that day during what was a watershed attack, regarded now by many as the first indiscriminate and purposeful aerial terror attack on a civilian population.  Estimates put the death toll at anywhere between 300 and 1650, with many more injured.

The quote comes to mind as we witness the brutal aerial and ground attack on the Gaza strip.  The overwhelming superiority of the Israeli forces and the military might they are able to bring to bear on what is a largely civilian population is in itself shocking.  The awful tragedy is our inability to do so little about it and to stop it.  We are unable to stop the aggressor in this case – since they are backed by the USA – and so the dreadful experience of Guernica is repeated.  My heart goes out to these peole at this time and what they must be going through…

I am reminded of the poem by Herbert Read called ‘Bombing Casualties in Spain’  and quote it here in solidarity with those suffering at this awful juncture in history:

Dolls’ faces were rosier but these were childrens

their eyes not glass but gleaming gristle

dark lenses in whose quicksilvery glances

the sunlight quivered.  These blench’d lips

were warm once and bright with blood

but blood

held in a moist bleb of flesh

not split and spatter’d in tousled hair.