US Not Focusing on al-Qaeda Leaders in Drone Strikes
Obama Drone Strategy Inherited from Bush
44 separate drone strikes in 2009 alone, and dozens of additional ones so far thing year have killed almost no militant leaders of note. Yet far from being an example of CIA incompetence, officials say it is all part of the plan.
What plan? Well according to officials, the Bush Administration came up with a plan to “move beyond” the attempts to assassinate al-Qaeda leaders. Now, officials are attacking a broader set of targets. That, they say, is what President Obama is doing.
This answers the question of why almost no “named” leaders are ever killed, but raises another, perhaps more disturbing question. If the US intelligence on noteworthy men was so shoddy that so many of their attempted assassinations failed, how can they possibly possess the sort of intelligence to accurately hit these minor targets?
The answer is that they can’t, and don’t, and that is why out of those 44 drone attacks some 700 Pakistani civilians were slain. With the plan to kill al-Qaeda leaders in shambles, the US bet on a brute strength method, and it was the populace of North and South Waziristan that paid a heavy price.
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E. A. Costa
May 5th, 2010 at 8:31 am
An interesting sidelight AP, May 5, 2010:
'Kifyat Ali, a cousin of Shahzad's father, spoke with reporters outside a two-story home the family owns in an upscale part of Peshawar, Pakistan. He said the family had yet to be officially informed of Shahzad's arrest, which he called 'a conspiracy so the (Americans) can bomb more Pashtuns,' a reference to a major ethnic group in Peshawar and the nearby tribal areas of Pakistan and southwest Afghanistan. "
E. A. Costa
May 5th, 2010 at 8:31 am
An interesting sidelight AP, May 5, 2010:
'Kifyat Ali, a cousin of Shahzad's father, spoke with reporters outside a two-story home the family owns in an upscale part of Peshawar, Pakistan. He said the family had yet to be officially informed of Shahzad's arrest, which he called 'a conspiracy so the (Americans) can bomb more Pashtuns,' a reference to a major ethnic group in Peshawar and the nearby tribal areas of Pakistan and southwest Afghanistan. "
E. A. Costa
May 5th, 2010 at 8:31 am
An interesting sidelight AP, May 5, 2010:
'Kifyat Ali, a cousin of Shahzad's father, spoke with reporters outside a two-story home the family owns in an upscale part of Peshawar, Pakistan. He said the family had yet to be officially informed of Shahzad's arrest, which he called 'a conspiracy so the (Americans) can bomb more Pashtuns,' a reference to a major ethnic group in Peshawar and the nearby tribal areas of Pakistan and southwest Afghanistan. "
E. A. Costa
May 5th, 2010 at 2:48 am
The purpose is terrorism pure and simple, or in the Churchillian phrase, "a lively terror."
Bet some of you folks thought the US military and political elite was both competent and rational, right?
If you want to get more precise, qualify and call it, "terrorism by higher technology."
That also makes it very profitable, which is part of the point.
The policy is also not monolithic in its purposes.. Some of those backing it know very well that their terror will produce more potential terrorists on the ground.
Now why would they want that?
Again and again it comes back to Gianfranco Sanguinetti, who was not without talent in mimicking Renaissance Italian prose style, and who also, like most educated Italians, had a strong classical background, as well as a penetrating sense of Spectacle.