Guest blogged by David Edwards
A U.S. air strike in Pakistan targeted the al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahri. The attack destroyed 3 houses in small village near the Pakistan border. 18 people, including women and children were also killed.
Pakistan officials and other sources are reporting that al-Zawahri was not killed in the attack as previously thought.
Pakistan condemned the air strike because of the loss of civilian lives. Today, hundreds of people in Pakistan protested the U.S. action.
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Continuing to win the hearts and minds throughout the world.
Jeezus!
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Yet another intelligence failure. Go on trolls, tell us how this was justified.
How many "Number Twos" are there now?
Is anyone keeping track?
So we are now 5 years after "September 11th"? And with supposedly the greatest military of any country why do foolish people believe this is all about 9/11.
Osama bin Laden vacations at the expense of the Bush Admin in the bahamas.
How can foolish people continue to believe these lies?
Has anyone else heard the rumor that "al-qaeda" is a made up US term? And that arabs had never heard it until US media began expounding on it?
Shit happens, eh?
NIXON: CAMBODIA=BUSH: PAKISTAN
Just great to know this nincompoop is making us safer. After all, those 18 dead people could have been terrorists, right?
What this shows is that with all the spying being done (NSA, FBI, Homeland Security, and spy satellites) the neoCon regime headed by Bush/ Cheney ’04 is not focusing on foreign data.
The prime reason for spying is supposed to be to find out what foreign entities are doing to hurt Americans. It is not to spy on Americans.
Recently the Bush "intelligence machine" has caused the nation of Pakistan to be attacked wrongfully in an act of war. In Iraq a family was wiped out recently based on faulty "intelligence".
The current fascist Bush admin is focusing quality time on spying on Americans, and perhaps not spending enough quality time on foreign spying as a result.
Really makes you wonder how many of the thousands of individuals held and tortured in secret prisons and known prisons were put there on bogus info.
I mean, if they will commit acts of war without properly vetting the information, why would they not imprison without properly vetting the information?
I have a name for this admin: "THE INCOMPETENT CRIMINAL REGIME of Bush/Cheney ’04".
They will go down in infamy.
This stuff is getting really, really OLD. Remember the bomb that mistakenly hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and the explanation was that the attack planes were using an "old map?" New maps were available at local gas stations, but our crack pilots were using old ones provided by the C.I.A.
Now we’re going into a country that has indicated its support for the war on terror, and dropping bombs on innocent civilians. Whose fault will this one be? The C.I.A. again? Valerie Plame? God help us.
Plus, wasn’t it just last week that the MSM was airing stories that speculated that al-Zawahri was dead??? I think the term here is "Mickey Mouse" leadership, intelligence, foreign policy…
Oh. My. God.
The heedlessness and sense of entitlement is appalling.
Tears are shooting out my eyes onto my computer screen.
How in the world can we claim any of them is unjustified in attacking us? Stop it!!!!!!!!!!
Agent 99 American military did not do these brutal missile attacks….I have inside intel that is all. Someone framed americans with these attacks and they did it deliberately, to de-stabilize the region for expansion….
Doug
Well, Doug, that’s a sobering statement. Initial reaction is that, if your intel is correct, it reflects equally as badly as if we had done it. I’m assuming you’re leaning toward India posing as US, or, maybe Iran has the aircraft to make a convincing-enough swipe? Derail our concentration on them? Maybe not American military, but maybe still American? SURELY YOU DON’T MEAN CHINA! None of the other Stans have the juice to pull it off either. What!?!
Doug, I’m thinking you’re giving me some of my own back as a clue from a different thread and I’m glad somebody yanked the non-comment comment of mine there. My bones are humming with what I can’t say, and can’t prove. Almost wish I could blurt it out for told-you-so rights later, but, pfsh! Who cares! As long as it happens!
Just went outside where the setting sun is playing with the clouds raining my brains out. Magnificent double rainbow, where you can almost see the progression of rainbow-tude between them, to the east of me, and breathtaking beams of sunlight bouncing off the pillowy bank to the west of me, and the redwoods everywhere in chorus because of it! I just spent a few minutes hopping up and down with joy on my front porch.
Is it that so many have so little experience of Beauty? How do I get this while bodies are strewn all through piles of rubble in my name?
I’ll shut up now.
Doug,
I agree with you.
Think of it, 18 peoples lives snuffed so that, what? Bush had a hand in it, you can bet.
I am reminded of the multiple instances of bad intel in Vietnam where, for all intents and purposes, the US military became a tool for every disgruntled village chief or regional leader, responding in lethal manner to every whim or preceived slight.
I am very close to becoming GWBush’s worst nightmare. Hell, the Pentagon has just about had it with the freak.
The Pentagon is not what it seems….
The Pentagon is under "control" by others……and the real culprit of the Pakistani missile ambush, Cheney, has seen to it that his "black ops" team is well hidden…..
Doug E.
Now THIS is giving "aid and comfort to the enemy"!!!!!!!
Ralph Nader: "Speak Up, Military"
Doug: There was an article in Vanity Fair some years back, probably by Hiccup Hitchens, about the US having promised Iraqis that we would support them in a coup, and when called upon to provide this support we ratted them out to Saddam instead.
It supposedly took place during the Clinton Administration, and I was pretty fried to be asked to entertain that notion, even as I recognize Bill was not the paragon of presidency across the board that we’d like him to have been. I tried to hang with it. I couldn’t feature Bill Clinton refusing such a request. It sounded too well-researched to have been a bogus claim, but also contained a little cosmos of far less believable, not at all substantiated, claims… like throwing your gardening pants in with the whites load. I finally realized that the thing that could make the ratting out part of the story work was if the request for back-up on such a well-organized coup plot is if the information did not make it out of the Pentagon.
Heck, you could end up in charge of the World Bank on that kind of a job performance rating.
Sibel Edmonds warned that the spy agencies had been infiltrated (link here).
She was fired and ordered not to talk. The courts gave her no relief.
Now it does look like someone inside is getting bad data to the admin and they are acting on it.
Who told them al-Zawahri was there, and how much did they double check it before blasting another country’s citizens to bits?
They are spending too much time spying on Americans and are not doing a quality job on the real purpose for being there – spying on enemies with quality work.
I can hear bush telling them they "are doing a fine job" and reminding everyone to remember that there are more days when we don’t invade and bomb other nations than days when we do.
The incompetence of this admin is growing rather than diminishing.
It’s an area that al-Qaeda is "supposed" to be operating in. It looks like an area bombing to me, with the possibility of a big propaganda coup by the Administration if they got lucky (and they need it badly). Air strikes are now replacing ground troops in Iraq (18 civilians killed there in the last 2 days), so this will be SOP in Pakistan also.
From an Austrailian paper: http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/pakistani-villagers-deny-hosting-zawahiri/2006/01/15/1137119012699.html
…But villagers said the Egyptian-born al-Zawahri was never there, and that they had never sheltered any senior al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders.
"This is a big lie. … Only our family members died in the attack," said Shah Zaman, who lost two sons and a daughter. "They dropped bombs from planes, and we were in no position to stop them, to tell them we are innocent."…
I noticed that 3 Republican senators publically supported the bombing.
I’d venture to say that, lately, at LEAST three Republican senators would publicly support anything heinous and unAmerican you care to name.
I think "area bombing" is the same excuse Nixon used for bombing Cambodia.
Problem is, Pakistan is a sovereign country. And bombing a sovereign country with whom we’re at peace is an act of war. Oh, well…when you’re the world’s number one superpower, there are no rules.
You may want to read this:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/18/no_remorse/
No remorse
By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist
…He long ago maneuvered the self-absorbed American psyche to ignore our own inhumanity. Our bombs and bullets have now killed several times more innocents in Iraq than were killed during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. But the rationale for a remorseless occupation continues to be, as one senior White House official told me and a small group of journalists in November of 2003, ”There will be some civilian deaths. It will be nothing like what Saddam Hussein did."
With three years of denial, the reaction to the latest mistake in Pakistan was predictably without feeling. Asked yesterday if regrets were forthcoming, White House press secretary Scott McClellan refused to talk about the incident, saying only, ”I think you’ve heard our comments about matters of that nature in the past. If I have anything additional to add, I will." All McClellan said was, ”Al Qaeda continues to seek to do harm to the American people."
On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brushed off the airstrike by saying, ”The biggest threat to Pakistan, of course, is what Al Qaeda has done in trying to radicalize the country. . . These are not people who can be dealt with lightly."…
You may want to read this:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/01/18/no_remorse/
No remorse
By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist
…He long ago maneuvered the self-absorbed American psyche to ignore our own inhumanity. Our bombs and bullets have now killed several times more innocents in Iraq than were killed during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. But the rationale for a remorseless occupation continues to be, as one senior White House official told me and a small group of journalists in November of 2003, ”There will be some civilian deaths. It will be nothing like what Saddam Hussein did."
With three years of denial, the reaction to the latest mistake in Pakistan was predictably without feeling. Asked yesterday if regrets were forthcoming, White House press secretary Scott McClellan refused to talk about the incident, saying only, ”I think you’ve heard our comments about matters of that nature in the past. If I have anything additional to add, I will." All McClellan said was, ”Al Qaeda continues to seek to do harm to the American people."
On Monday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brushed off the airstrike by saying, ”The biggest threat to Pakistan, of course, is what Al Qaeda has done in trying to radicalize the country. . . These are not people who can be dealt with lightly."…