Barack Obama confirms unmanned drone programme

[untitled]

US actions ARE legitimate because of its MIGHT.

Then so are people legitimate in calling her a bully. Is that not what bullies believe in ... Might is right

 

[VCheng]

Then so are people legitimate in calling her a bully. .................

Call USA whatever you like!

"Jiss ki laathi, uss ki bhains".

I wonder which culture recognizes the same truth in a different way?

 

[untitled]

I wonder which culture recognizes the same truth in a different way?

The same culture which has been bullying the world since WWII

 

[VCheng]

The same culture which has been bullying the world since WWII

Just like the Ottoman Empire before it, and the British Empire before that, and the Mughal Empire before that....... and so on.

Human history never really changes, does it?

 

[untitled]

Human history never really changes, does it?

True and we all know such behavior make more enemies than friends

 

[VCheng]

True and we all know such behavior make more enemies than friends

Of course. And all empires decline too. However, while they remain in power, certain behaviors are entirely predictable and indeed universal.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

............. is all that matters. That is the universal truth, and everything else is fluff. Like it or not, that is just the way it has been, is and will be.

Please learn to deal with it, and you will be better off.

If it is all that matters, then stop pretending that US actions have any 'international legal legitimacy' - after all, you have been at the forefront on this thread trying to feebly argue that US military actions inside Pakistan have 'international legal legitimacy', by arguing 'due process, the 9/11 attacks etc.'. You could have saved everyone the trouble of debunking your flawed hypothesis, when your intention was to eventually fall back on 'tyrant does as tyrant wants'.

---------- Post added at 07:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:56 PM ----------

I don't understand you.

We have been saying all along that US actions have no international legitimacy and are a case of "might is right". After 100 posts of laila majnoo, you finally accept it.

So what was the fuss all about?

Bhai, this is typical VC MO - argue a highly flawed hypothesis to defend his Western masters, and then, when exposed, debunked and outwitted, resort to the same old 'might is right, and get used to it' argument.

I mean really - every discussion with him boils down to that one liner anyway, so he might as well stop wasting our time and just state that right off the bat, and leave the discussions on the international legality/legitimacy of foreign policies pursued by nations to the rest of us.

 

[Developereo]

You are only part way to understanding that might confers legitimacy. THAT is what I have been saying all along.

US actions ARE legitimate because of its MIGHT. The rest of the intellectual pooh-pooing doesn't matter.

I hope you can now get it.

Read my "admission" again, carefully:

No comment.

 

[gambit]

Neither you, nor the US, has offered a single iota of evidence suggesting that any institution in Pakistan had any knowledge of OBL hiding where he was - that is after all the point of 'hiding in plain sight' -

Institutions? No need. But individuals with sufficient authority and influences inside said institutions will do.

ObL was not under arrest, not even house arrest. When you think about it, ObL have not violated any Pakistani laws, perhaps illegal entry into the country, at best. As far as I know, there are no Pakistani laws saying it is illegal for any Pakistani to advocate a war, religious or else, against the US or any other nation-state. Same for Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran, the UAE, Afghanistan. Did I missed any? If any 'criminal' is wanted by Pakistan or any other ME country, it is because said country wants to do US a favor, say regarding embezzlement, or murder on US soil, or parental custody issues, in other words, crimes that are common to both countries and that they have an understanding that a person would be turned over to the offended country for prosecution. That understanding is called an 'extradition treaty'. ObL did not violated any Pakistani laws, other than illegal entry and that is not an extraditable offense to the US.

So if there are individuals inside Pakistani governmental institutions who are sympathetic to ObL and know that officially, Pakistan would do US a favor regarding ObL, all they have to do is any combination of: See no evil, Speak no evil, and Hear no evil. Lastly: Record no evil, so as not to officially implicate any Pakistani institution.

and your own government has admitted that Pakistan provided key elements of the intelligence that allowed the US to build on to track down OBL.

One does not have to be a fan of pulp spy fiction to know that intelligence, its collection, and its analysis, reaches criticality at the 50% mark, meaning that if a police detective presents you with evidences of your illegal activities that you know is only half of what is needed to arrest, let alone convict in court, odds are very good that with time, he will find the other half. Heck, even 40% will be enough for you to either 'fess up or flee the country.

Intelligence chiefs of every levels in both sides talked and presented what they know. For US, it was probably thus for our Pakistani counterparts: 'We have been watching this region/area/town for ObL and we found this suspicious person whose behaviors are consistent with being ObL's associate/lackey/wife/son/etc. So what do you know?' The problem for our Pakistani counterparts is that they do not know how much we know. Our questions are not designed to elicit the truth but to assess the validity of the lies and their sources. Eliminate the validity of the lies and the truth will be clear: That Pakistani officials know of and harbored ObL in Pakistan.

Outside of brazenly lying, and apparently offering sexist comments, you can offer no denial backed by credible facts to the above.

What? You think there are no female diplomats and intelligence analysts/chiefs?

Am willing to bet my next year's salary that of all these female diplomats and intelligence analysts/chiefs, it was Hillary Clinton who wished she could roll her eyes past the biological constraints when she heard/read the Pakistani official reply that Pakistan's ISI does not know that ObL was living free in Pakistan.

My point was not to be sexist...Eerrr...May be just a little...But to say that at the international level involving life and death issues, the official Pakistani position is just too difficult to swallow when we have had plenty of experiences involving lies and deception with far more mundane issues.

Hi visage was 'well known' yet no one in the neighborhood has so far indicated that they ever saw OBL, suspected OBL was there, or passed on any information indicating OBL was there. Heck, your own government indicated that after months of sophisticated, imaginative and continuous surveillance of the compound SPECIFICALLY TO IDENTIFY OBL, they were only 40% to 50% certain, with only Panetta really confident enough to go ahead with the raid, and that too only because he was confident in the ability of US SF's to get in and out safely, even if OBL was not there.

Check this out...

Spotted: Michelle Obama Shopping At Target - ABC News

While the White House does not provide details about the First Lady’s personal activities, “It is not uncommon for the First Lady to slip out to run an errand, eat at a local restaurant or otherwise enjoy the city outside the White House gates,” her Communications Director Kristina Schake said.
According to the Associated Press, plain clothes Secret Service agents arrived at the store about half an hour before Mrs. Obama, who then spent roughly 30 minutes shopping. The only person to recognize the First Lady was the cashier who rang up her purchases.

And Michelle Obama does not have a beard, Praise be to God, nor was she burqa-ed, and yet only one person in a brightly lit and busy department store recognized the US First Lady. Osama bin Laden could have roamed the streets of Abbottabad at night or dusk and no one would be the wiser of who walks among them.

In post 46 you tried to compare ObL to any criminal in hiding. My response is that it was a flawed comparison. Then and now. Criminals do not go on videos to expound their positions regarding bank robberies, murders, or rapes to gather like minded people. If you pass out photos of the leaders of the Mexican drug cartels, most likely 90% of the police forces in the US would go: 'Huh? Who they?' But if you post a video of ObL condemning US and Israel anywhere in the ME, soon enough there would be a crowd of ordinary people who recognize him and gathered to watch.

The reality is that ObL committed no major crimes in any muslim country, at least crimes that would earn someone his expulsion. What he did, many muslims, high and low, wished and he became their genie to grant them their wish. ObL and his followers do not see him as a 'criminal' while cohorts in a bank robbery indeed see themselves and each other exactly that: Law breakers and immoral people. That is why ObL have no problems going on videos and that was why so many in/of the Pakistani government supported and hid him.

Whether Bugti and his cause have 'considerable international support' does not change the fact that the terrorist leader and his terrorist organization are involved in an ethnic cleansing campaign of non-Baloch settlers in Balochistan, and have been involved in massacring non-combatants (baluch and non-baloch) such as educators, laborers and government workers who support the GoP, along with attacks on security forces that also result in civilians being killed.

Arguing that such a terrorist group and terrorist leader 'enjoys international support' as justification for the US sheltering and supporting him in Afghanistan is a pathetic and intellectually dishonest excuse for US support for terrorism/terrorists in other nations.

The real intellectual dishonesty here is to conflate ObL with Baloch resistance.

Balochistan in history

"We have a distinct civilization and a separate culture like that of Iran and Afghanistan. We are Muslims but it is not necessary that by virtue of being Muslims we should lose our freedom and merge with others. If the mere fact that we are Muslims requires us to join Pakistan then Afghanistan and Iran, both Muslim countries, should also amalgamate with Pakistan. We were never a part of India before the British rule. Pakistan’s unpleasant and loathsome desire that our national homeland, Balochistan should merge with it is impossible to consider. We are ready to have friendship with that country on the basis of sovereign equality but by no means ready to merge with Pakistan. We can survive without Pakistan. But the question is what Pakistan would be without us? I do not propose to create hurdles for the newly created Pakistan in the matters of defense and external communication. But we want an honorable relationship not a humiliating one. If Pakistan wants to treat us as a sovereign people, we are ready to extend the hand of friendship and cooperation. If Pakistan does not agree to do so, flying in the face of democratic principles, such an attitude will be totally unacceptable to us, and if we are forced to accept this fate then every Baloch son will sacrifice his life in defense of his national freedom."

Baloch resistance is narrowly defined and confined. ObL's terrorism is broadly contexted and unrestrained by borders and laws. Baloch resistance involves a few millions while ObL sought to galvanize over one billion people in a world war and one with religious dimensions. Like it or not, that while the US and the Europeans may be disgusted by the violence committed by the Baloch resistance, the goal of the resistance is laudable while no sane governments, muslim or else, want al-Qaeda operating inside their territories. You think Yemen, or Somalia, or Afghanistan really care about the fighting between Pakistan and Baloch?

Pakistan is struggling with the same set of challenges in fighting an ideological insurgency that the US is, and its fight is complicated by the fact that the TTP finds shelter in vast regions in Eastern Afghanistan abandoned by US forces.

When the US can demonstrate complete control of Afghanistan, despite having immensely more military, economic and technological resources at its disposal, then you can question Pakistan about its success/failure in COIN.

The US can never achieve even reasonable control of Afghanistan when Pakistan, allegedly a partner, is either incompetent and/or unwilling to exercise control of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. No different than when the Soviets occupied Afghanistan and the neighboring countries, not only refused to exercise controls of their respective borders, but to actively assisted international muslim fighters into Afghanistan. Responsibility of containment ends at the borders.

Again, US due process, on its own, has no international legal legitimacy.

More than you might like. Your friend is completely wrong when he said this...

What 'due process'? Without a court conviction, this is just a fancy form of 'off with his head'.

An act of war is not an act of criminality. Did Hitler offended US in anyway prior to US declaring war upon Nazi Germany and in doing so made him a target of war? No, Hitler did not offended US in any way.

So when a war is declared, official or otherwise, combatants are mobilized to prosecute said war. Combatants are authorized to kill each other without fear of LEGAL reprisals after the fact. If an al-Qaeda fighter killed an American -- ala Daniel Pearl -- in this unofficially declared war, then the al-Qaeda leadership would not seek legal reprisals after the fact. Same for if an American soldier kill an al-Qaeda fighter that no US government official will seek legal reprisals against the American soldier.

So when the US President committed US military forces against al-Qaeda and any who allied himself and possibly his country with al-Qaeda, the 'due process' the US President went through is well understood by the leaders of these governments, even muslim ones.

 

[gambit]

Where did I say anything about line of sight? I specifically talked about life in danger. Anyone in a plane or a tank or wielding any kind of weapon would be reasonably suspect. Someone driving in a family sedan would be more circumspect. In a war zone, the rules are relaxed but even then, an explicit surrender must be honored -- with due caution, obviously.

This was your argument...

I always thought even in war you can't kill someone unless your life is in danger. If someone is surrendering or not resisting, you have to take them prisoner, not just kill them and throw away the body and tell everybody 'just trust me'.

By that simplistic argument, a pilot have no legal support to drop his bombs. His life was not -- or may not be -- threatened by those on the ground. Same for the sniper whose target is usually unaware of the sniper being the threat, not the other way around.

It doesn't matter what his version of due process was, it was illegal by international standards, so his acts were illegal. The issue here is not OBL per se, but the question of extrajudicial killings. Criminals, by definition, break the law but the 'good guys', by definition, must act within the law.

Here is where you failed to understand the difference between an act of war versus an act of criminality...

An act of criminality is supported by an existing law, in other words, if there is a law say 'No trespassing' and if you jumped the fence, then that act is a crime. No law = No crime.

On the other hand, an act of war is preemptive, in other words, a soldier can kill his enemy without the prerequisite of being first himself threatened. In a war, most killings are not 'extrajudicial' because there the killings are authorized by extraordinary principles, not judicial orders. To be 'judicial' mean an act is authorized by one or more laws after some measures of reviews. To be 'extrajudicial' mean an act was found to be NOT supportable by reviews of laws but the act was performed anyway. The 'extraordinary principles' here are survival of the nation, self defense against invasion, and so on...

Of course it was. No one ever denied it. The point being raised is whether the US is justifying their actions by pointing to criminals and saying "he did it first".

The Tu quoque criticism is valid only if we 'did it' to any non-interested party, in other words, after al-Qaeda did 9/11 we went to war against Timbuktu and killed 3000 citizens there. Is that what you are saying as our response?

Here is your original argument...

OBL is not the issue here. The issue is whether drone strikes violate due process rights of suspects.

A person cannot be a 'suspect' unless a 'crime' have been committed. Put it another way, AFTER the bank was robbed, we do not have a convicted 'criminal' but only a list of persons who we suspected of being at least involved in said bank robbery. But we cannot say the word 'criminal' unless there is an existing law that say 'No robbery'.

In a war, there is no law that say 'No killing'. There is no 'due process' available to the target other than we should ascertain as much as possible that the target is a combatant whose INTENTION is to do us harm. In a war, the goal is preemption, not responsive, so if a person is determined to be hostile with intent, immediate or deferred, of doing me harm, then I am authorized to kill him.

We did not go after Timbuktu but against Afghanistan who supported al-Qaeda in a war against US. It was a war that we tried to defuse through diplomatic overtures to the Taliban for many years to no results.

 

[Major Shaitan Singh]

WASHINGTON — British and Pakistani journalists said Sunday that the C.I.A.’s drone strikes on suspected militants in Pakistan have repeatedly targeted rescuers who responded to the scene of a strike, as well as mourners at subsequent funerals.

The report, by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, found that at least 50 civilians had been killed in follow-up strikes after they rushed to help those hit by a drone-fired missile. The bureau counted more than 20 other civilians killed in strikes on funerals. The findings were published on the bureau’s Web site and in The Sunday Times of London.

The bureau’s findings are based on interviews with witnesses to strikes in Pakistan’s rugged tribal area, where reporting is often dangerous and difficult. American officials have questioned the accuracy of such claims, asserting that accounts might be concocted by militants or falsely confirmed by residents who fear retaliation.

But most other studies of drone strikes have relied on sketchy and often contradictory news reports from Pakistan. The bureau’s investigation, which began last year with a detailed study of civilian casualties, involved interviews with villagers who said they saw strikes, wounded people and family members of those killed.

The bureau counted 260 strikes by Predator and Reaper drones since President Obama took office, and it said that 282 to 535 civilians had been “credibly reported” killed in those attacks, including more than 60 children. American officials said that the number was much too high, though they acknowledged that at least several dozen civilians had been killed inadvertently in strikes aimed at militant suspects.

A senior American counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, questioned the report’s findings, saying “targeting decisions are the product of intensive intelligence collection and observation.” The official added: “One must wonder why an effort that has so carefully gone after terrorists who plot to kill civilians has been subjected to so much misinformation. Let’s be under no illusions — there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help Al Qaeda succeed.”

Getting a full picture of the drone campaign is difficult. It is classified as top secret, and Obama administration officials have refused to make public even the much-disputed legal opinions underpinning it.

But Mr. Obama spoke about the program in an online appearance last week.

“I want to make sure that people understand: actually, drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties,” he said in the forum on YouTube. “For the most part they have been very precise precision strikes against Al Qaeda and their affiliates.” He called the strikes “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists.”

However, American officials familiar with the rules governing the strikes and who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that many missiles had been fired at groups of suspected militants who are not on any list. These so-called signature strikes are based on assessments that men carrying weapons or in a militant compound are legitimate targets

 

[KRAIT]

50......more collateral damage...

 

[cheekybird]

Well what do know...US wanted a stable afghanistan RIP to the dead

 

[KRAIT]

For stable afghanistan, they are creating unstable northern part of pakistan....i can never understand them.

 

[farhan_9909]

Thank God fall of US is near

they are gonna kicked by other countries within few decades