It is already well-documented that the Obama Administration has been escalating the number of air strikes against targets inside Yemen. While the CIA has played a role in those military strikes, officials say, the agency is now preparing to launch attacks of its own.
The CIA has been responsible for a massive drone campaign against Pakistan’s tribal areas, launching scores of strikes and killing thousands of people over the past several years of escalations. As with the Pakistan attacks, the Yemen strikes will nominally be aimed at “assassination” of al-Qaeda members.
But with the Pakistan program a dreadful failure, killing massive numbers of random people and rarely killing anyone officials have even heard of, the Yemeni program looks to be even more complex, targeting a tribal area that encompasses most of the nation, and which despite recent increases in presence officials have conceded is largely a mystery to intelligence agencies.
The CIA strikes will like center if part on attempts to assassinate US citizen Anwar Awlaki, who officials admitted last year was the first confirmed US citizen to be tapped for assassination by the president. Officials have alleged ties to al-Qaeda, but have mostly complained about Awlaki’s religious sermons being critical of American foreign policy.
It is now official. The strikes are against the people, who have dared to take down CIA's favorite, President Saleh. He kept the myth of Al-Qaeda going — and thus he is indispensable. What is CLEAR, is that the strikes are against the people's rebellion. So, people have been rebranded into "tribes", "militants", or "islamic militants", or "terrorists". Any preacher would do to justify killing the civilians and keeping the dictator (or his sons) in power. Where are the twitts, facebook accounts, telephone calls — where are now the voices of the rebellion? Where are the ACTIVISTS? CNN and other western media are determined to keep them off the front pages, and reserve the crocodile tears for Syria. Tears have ceased for Libya, now that civilians of Tripoli are dying daily under bombs. Nobody cares ABOUT THEM. Just like nobody cares about the brutal suppression of revolt like in Yemen or Bahrain.
More drone strikes on a country that can't defend itself from aerial attack…terrific. Bet the guys beyond the joysticks feel like real tough guys.
When are these things going to start being shot down? Surely in all these places China or Russia would pass weaponry along that could blast these things out of the sky easy?
Betcha that the weapon that shoots them down is cheaper than building the drones. The US has a style of warfare where we use million dollar planes and vehicles to blow up stone huts. Sooner or later the US runs out of money.
The US essentially 'lost' Vietnam because of economics. This same expensive style of war eventually forced the US into a 'gold crisis'. Different economics these days, so different crisis, but same cause and effect. The US is not set up to fight long wars. The US style of warmaking is very expensive, and it can't be sustained for long. The US can't afford right now to have these huge defense budgets and expensive wars. We are seeing this today as we can't lower taxes on the working class and we can't pay for teachers and nurses and librarians because we spend a trillion dollars a year or more on this military and these ever expanding wars.
The US can't fight long wars. If we try, we are doomed to lose. Any enemy that can simply survive and avoid us for long enough is guaranteed to win because eventually we can't afford the million dollar cruise missiles and the twenty thousand dollars an hour in the air planes to blow up their stone huts.
NO winners at war; fascist amerika IS the big loser..soon the empire will grind to a halt !
After all the debate about Obama and the War Powers act, notice how grey the line between war and peace becomes. We are essentially beginning a bombing campaign in Yemen. Does it make any difference if the bombs are dropped by a piloted plane instead of a remote control operated drone?
This article talks about the CIA beginning drone strikes, but it doesn't speak as to who has the authority to order this. Does Obama have to personally sign off? Or is the power to start a war now delegated down to the CIA director?
This is why enforcing the constitution is a good idea. The founders deliberately tried to make it harder to go to war by forcing the Congress to issue a declaration of war. Now we seem to be so far down the slippery slope from that standard of freedom and democracy where today its not even clear if the President has to be involved in starting a war, or if the CIA director can go start his own wars.
BTW, this is all probably legal. The Use of Force in Afghanistan resolution was so broadly written that it gave the President and the military and the CIA the power to go anywhere in the world to kill terrorists with no time limit on that authorization. If we want to move back towards democracy in this country, one first step has to be repealing that original AUMF, replacing it with a more limited one that authorizes the war in Afghanistan if they like. But this open-ended resolution to go to war almost anywhere forever into the future has to be ended.
The drones are more acceptable to the squeamish Hollywood-liberal types because they cause less damage than carpet bombing, and the attacks can be covert. War Chief Obama, while approving all of these attacks, can collect massive amounts of campaign cash from that wealthy crowd without hurting their feelings.