Posts tagged Obama
مہرین کسانه
Some Al Qaeda text up there.
Then, in August 2009, the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, told Mr. Brennan that the agency had Mr. Mehsud in its sights. But taking out the Pakistani Taliban leader, Mr. Panetta warned, did not meet Mr. Obama’s standard of “near certainty” of no innocents being killed. In fact, a strike would certainly result in such deaths: he was with his wife at his in-laws’ home.
“Many times,” General Jones said, in similar circumstances, “at the 11th hour we waved off a mission simply because the target had people around them and we were able to loiter on station until they didn’t.”
But not this time. Mr. Obama, through Mr. Brennan, told the C.I.A. to take the shot, and Mr. Mehsud was killed, along with his wife and, by some reports, other family members as well, said a senior intelligence official.
President Obama and the Secret Kill List
Look at that Nobel Peace Prize winner. Executing people without trials and not even caring about collateral damage (or, as we might call them, murdered innocent civilians.)
(via fearandwar)
In case anyone was confused about how the Executive works (because apparently, according to Tumblr, Obama isn’t to blame but “institutions which can’t be changed”):
Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.
“He is determined that he will make these decisions about how far and wide these operations will go,” said Thomas E. Donilon, his national security adviser. “His view is that he’s responsible for the position of the United States in the world.” He added, “He’s determined to keep the tether pretty short.”
[…]
In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.
They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”
Read that last sentence again.
(via mohandasgandhi)
How humanitarian, Obama.
(via mohandasgandhi)
Because the drone strikes started by President Obama’s administration in 2009 have not been precise, what I saw was Yemenis starting to say, ‘The enemy of the enemy is my friend. If the United States is saying they’re fighting AQAP but they’re killing our children and our grandchildren and our wives, then we’re terrorists too.’
Jeremy Scahill - Why The U.S. Is Aggressively Targeting Yemen.
Several assertions by him in this are hyperbolic, to say the least, but this quote is important. USA’s counter-terrorism policies are backfiring at a rapid pace.
Particularly affected are young children who are said to be unable to sleep at night and cry due to the noise. Some children have lost their lives with the impact of the drone missile strikes in their neighbourhoods. Local doctors have declared many adults mentally unfit due to the effect drones have had on them, with the details of the disorders unknown due to lack of, firstly, awareness of mental health and, secondly, expert psychiatrists and psychologists in the area.
The Psychological, Social and Economic Impact of Drones on Civilians - Usama Khilji.
Heartrending facts. Furthermore:
Drone attacks have changed the social structure in NWA as well. Firstly, community life has been brought to a minimal level as people avoid getting together in groups, because drones are believed to more likely target groups of people collected together. Funerals of those killed in drone attacks are attended by a small number of people, because drones have targeted funerals in the past, such as the June 23, 2009 attack at a funeral in Mateen, SWA, near the NWA border town of Razmak. Similarly, people have stopped frequenting each others’ houses as guests, fracturing the principle of milmastiya (hospitality) where a Pakhtun is to treat guests well and keep them happy under pakhtunwali (the Pakhtun code of life). Even peace jirgas with respected tribal heads in attendance have been targeted by drones, such as the strike on the jirga to solve a chromite dispute that was struck by two missiles from drones on March 17, 2011 in Datta Khel, NWA, killing around 40, mostly tribal elders.
Schools and children have been attacked by drones.
[The] frail state of education has deteriorated further due to drone attacks and merits special consideration, keeping in mind the obvious importance of education. Parents are increasingly reluctant to send their children to schools due to the uncertainty about the targets of drone missiles, and instances of moving cars and motorbikes having been hit by missiles from drones, such as in the case of 16-year-old Tariq, killed in a drone strike on October 31, 2011. Moreover, a drone strike on December 31, 2009 killed Asif Iqbal, who had returned to his village to teach English at a girls school in Dattakhel, NWA, after earning a Masters degree from the National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad, and Zainullah, an employee at a girls’ school in Mir Ali, NWA. Furthermore, many children have been injured in drone strikes. A 17-year-old, who lost both his legs in a drone strike when 15, talked about how he cannot go to school anymore as he has difficulty walking, and how he wishes to play football like he used to but now is only left to watch his friends play.
The economic repercussion:
Four chromite miners were killed on October 30, 2011, as they were on their way to earn a living for their families. This and other such cases have increased fears amongst the locals of being targeted while at work. Secondly, the medical costs for treating the injured is very high as all the injured have to be transported hundreds of kilometers away to Bannu, and in most cases, even further to Peshawar, as local hospitals are underequipped and only good for first aid. Because income levels are very low in the region, families are mostly forced to take loans from friends and family to cover the medical expenses of the injured, loans of up to Rs 600,000, an amount that takes a lifetime for them to pay back.
To the people who constantly attempt to justify drone strikes, I only have one question: How would you feel if you were under the constant radar of a drone?
If Americans came to realise that their country works best for white property owners and not best for everyone else, they might feel inspired to work together to effect positive change for all, change that would endanger the corporate interests of the power elite. So Gingrich works his magic - bobbing and weaving, suggesting Obama would approve of a white dude getting popped every now and then. As I said, his future looks bright as the chief spokesman for white supremacy.
Race and the Paradox of America - John Stoehr
That’s right.
(Source: english.aljazeera.net)
Six months before this thing got going, every Republican I know was saying, ‘We’re gonna win, we’re gonna beat Obama.’ Now even those who’ve endorsed Romney say, ‘My God, what a fucking mess.
(Source: thedailybeast.com)
The Egyptian people consider America’s claims that it respects democracy and freedom as mere words. US President Obama’s promises, made during his visit to Egypt, have not been fulfilled, and Egyptians want to see more concrete steps in this regard. The discriminatory policies adopted by the US administration toward Muslims make them doubt the seriousness of US intentions with regard to democracy promotion. We had a revolution for change, and US policy should change, too. We have a parliament for the first time that represents the people and not the regime, and religion is a key component in the hearts of the people, who will stand by their Parliament.
(Source: verbalresistance)
Good luck, America.
Ask Osama bin Laden … if I engage in appeasement.
President Obama (via nationaljournal)
I would, Mr President, but you had him shot in the face and thrown to the sharks.
(via zainyk)
This policy of “non-appeasement” in dealing with terrorism hasn’t worked very well for us thus far, has it? In fact, after it was largely adopted by policymakers after the Second World War, it hasn’t really helped us avoid war… at all. We just end up looking like huge, I believe the technical term is, dicks.
(via mohandasgandhi)
Co-signed for commentary above.
(via mohandasgandhi)
With a notable exception of the enhanced interrogation program, the incoming Obama administration changed virtually nothing with respect to existing CIA programs and operations. Things continued. Authorities were continued that were originally granted by President Bush beginning shortly after 9/11. Those were all picked up, reviewed and endorsed by the Obama administration.
“The highest number of child deaths occurred during the Bush presidency, with 112 children reportedly killed. More than a third of all Bush drone strikes appear to have resulted in the deaths of children.
On only one occasion during Bush’s time in office did a single child die in a strike. Multiple deaths occurred every other time.
[…] President Obama, too, has been as Commander-in-Chief responsible for many child deaths in Pakistan. The Bureau has identified 56 children reported killed in drone strikes during his presidency – although child deaths have dropped significantly in recent months.”Over 160 children reported among drone deaths (h/t Sullivan)
This has to stop.
(via fuckyeahpreetsabawsss)
168 children killed in drone strikes in Pakistan since start of campaign:
As many as 168 children have been killed in drone strikes in Pakistan during the past seven years as the CIA has intensified its secret programme against militants along the Afghan border.
The strikes, which began under President George W Bush but have since accelerated during the presidency of Barack Obama, are hated in Pakistan, where families live in fear of the bright specks that appear to hover in the sky overhead.
In just a single attack on a madrassah in 2006 up to 69 children lost their lives.
Chris Woods, who led the research, said the detailed database of deaths would send shockwaves through Pakistan, where political and military leaders repeatedly denounce the strikes in public, while privately allowing the US to continue.
Read more here.
Obama’s war record …in one place
Among other things, since taking office Obama has:
- Started a covert, drone war in Yemen
- Started a war in Libya without congressional approval
- Escalated the war in Afghanistan
- Sharply increased drone attacks inPakistan
- Continued the occupation of Iraq, in spite of saying otherwise
- Escalated the proxy war in Somalia by launching drone strikes
- Sold $60 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia
- Secretly deployed US special forces to 75 countries
- Signed an agreement for 7 military bases in Colombia
– Touted nuclear power, even after the disaster in Japan
- Opened up deepwater oil drilling, even after the BP disaster
- Did a TV commercial promoting “clean coal”
- Defended body scans and pat-downs at airports
- Signed the Patriot Act extension into law
- Continued Bush’s rendition program
Is the CIA Helping Run a Secret Prison in Somalia?
An interesting exposé in The Nation, the left-of-center U.S. newsweekly, explores how the CIA has participated in the running of secret detention and interrogation centers in Somalia. The article’s author, Jeremy Scahill, claims the CIA mans an operation in a “sprawling walled compound” by Mogadishu’s airport and sends out its own staff to a clandestine Somali-run prison in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency—all part of an “expanding counter-terrorism program” in the region.
[…]According to Scahill’s reporting, based on interviews with U.S. officials, human rights workers, lawyers, Somali politicians and analysts, the U.S. could be complicit in the possible torture of those held in the underground prison and has perhaps overseen the rendering of Somali terror suspects from Nairobi back to Mogadishu. A team of lawyers representing one man known to be in detention there paints the whole set-up as a kind of “decentralized, out-sourced Guantanamo Bay.” An article in Harpers outlines the moral tenuousness of the American position:
On the second day of his presidency, Barack Obama issued an executive order that on its face terminated the CIA’s “black site” program, which had seen the agency operate a series of clandestine overseas prisons for terrorism suspects. A few months later, on April 9, 2009, then CIA Director Leon Panetta stated that the CIA “no longer operates detention facilities or black sites,” and that the sites were being “decommissioned.” At the same time, however, the CIA was also maintaining a series of “special relationships” under which cooperating governments maintained proxy prisons for the CIA.
Read more.
