Why Biden and his AF-PAK cothinkers are morons : Up to 320 Civilians Killed in Pakistan Drone War

Is there ANYONE who thinks this american govt will sustain a drone war from a distance, and special forces raids when 1 out of 3 casualties and deaths is what we consider an innocent civilian?

WIRED:

How many civilians have been killed in the U.S. drone war in Pakistan? The number could be as high as 320 innocents, according to an analysis released today by the New America Foundation. That's about a third of the 1,000 or so people slain in the robotic aircraft attacks since 2006.

Reliable information from the drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas is incredibly hard to come by. The government not only keeps news organizations out, it also blocks aid groups, like Doctors Without Borders. So analysts are forces to rely only press reports, which are themselves relying on second-hand accounts. The result: wildly different estimates of who has died in the attacks. In April, the News of Pakistan claimed that Predator and Reaper attacks had only killed 14 militants; the rest were bystanders. Last month, the Long War Journal estimated that about 10 percent of the casualties were civilian. The New America study, lead by long-time terrorism researcher Peter Bergen, comes down somewhere in between.

CIA director Leon Panetta told an audience last May that the drones were "the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the Al Qaeda leadership." But the New America study contends that the terror group's chieftains make up just a tiny percentage of the unmanned aircraft's victims. "Since 2006, our analysis indicates, 82 U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan have killed between 750 and 1,000 people. Among them were about 20 leaders of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and allied groups, all of whom have been killed since January 2008." The rest have been footsoldiers in the militant organizations, or civilians.

Perhaps the most frequent target of the drone strikes was Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. Since President Obama took office, 15 of the 41 reported attacks were specifically aimed at Mehsud.He was finally killed on August 5th, along with one of his wives and her father.

All of which leads Jane Mayer, the New Yorker reporter who revealed so much of what we know about the abusive treatment of detainees, to take aim at the drone program. "The embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radicall new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force. And, because of the CIA program's secrecy, there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war," she writes in the magazine's current issue.

In July 2001... the U.S. denounced Israel's use of target killing against Palestinian terrorists... The CIA, which had been chastened by past assassination scandals, refused to deploy the Predator for anything other than surveillance purposes... George Tenet, then the agency's director, argued that it would be a 'terrible mistake' for 'the Director of Central Intelligence to fire a weapon like this.'

...Seven years later, there is no longer any doubt that targeted killing has become official U.S. policy.

When congress, after all american troops had left Vietnam, passed the bills cutting them off and dooming them over there, the silence over the act was so deafening we can still hear the echoes (Bernard Lewis' dictum anyone?). But we all knew that the Viet Cong and North Vietnam had no design on the then building WTC.

This is far different. Our men are dying. Our women are dying. And ... from Gertz..

U.S. intelligence update on Al Qaida threat: 'Robust', still targets U.S.

Al Qaida remains a threat of conducting a major mass casualty terrorist attacks but the group remain under pressure, a senior U.S. intelligence official told the Senate.

Michael Leiter, director of the Counterterrorist Center, said current intelligence shows that "Al Qaida is under more pressure today and it's facing more challenges and is more vulnerable than any time since 9/11."

"But that being said, they remain robust enemy," he told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Sept. 30.

Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs hearing on Sept. 30. Reuters/Molly Riley

While much has been done to deter and defense against future terror attacks, "attacks in the United States remained quite possible."

The most significant danger, he said, is Al Qaida's continuing safe haven in Pakistan, despite the fact that the free operating areas are shrinking and becoming less secure, complicating efforts by the Islamist group to train and recruit people and move them within Pakistan.

"Al Qaida and its allies have suffered significant leadership losses over the last 18 months, interrupting training and plotting, and potentially disrupting plots," Leiter said. "But again, despite that progress, Al Qaida and its allies remain intent on attacking U.S. interests at home and abroad. We assess that the Al Qaida core is actively engaged in operational plotting and continues recruiting, training and transporting operatives to include individuals from Western Europe and the United States."

In addition to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and North Africa are areas where Al Qaida is reemerging, he said.

FBI Director Robert Mueller, appearing with Leiter, said one of the major dangers are recurring intelligence reports for the past several years indicating Al Qaida has "made a concerted effort to recruit Europeans and Westerners understanding that they can fly under the radar in terms of passing through border controls." The Internet also is being used as a recruiting tool for terrorists, he said.

It's this simple. Neither Al Qadea, nor the Taliban can be allowed to survive in any form. Among other tests, if Obama does not pick the strategy to achieve this end, and is prepared to execute it to its final end, his presidency will not only be an abject failure at the Buchanan level, he will have been seen to have failed to protect the American people, and WILL HAVE FAILED TO DO SO.

Hey, you wanted the job, Barack.

And NOW WHAT ARE YOU PREPARED TO DO (besides attack critics as not legit) ?