US drone strikes: Memo reveals case for killing Americans
POSTED BY: Geezer
UPDATED: Wednesday, April 12, 2023 15:52
VIEWED: 8996
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Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Listen, we were expecting a bunch of backwards luddites with a hatred for western technology to not only be able to locate Al Qaeda in the difficult mountainous cave-ridden topography of northern Afghanistan and west Pakistan and turn them over to us, but we also just assumed they knew where Al Qaeda really was, because as we all know, every Muslim knows the location of every other Muslim at all times even when they're in hiding.
Seriously, man, Al Qaeda was just in Afghanistan, it's not like the Taliban was hosting banquets for them. They were also just in Pakistan, and Pakistan didn't really know where they were at the beginning - though when we started acting like assholes and they found out where Osama was, surprise surprise, they didn't tell us. Yet we never went to war with Pakistan, and Pakistan isn't exactly a progressive western democracy either.
We didn't go to war with Pakistan, because we'd installed our own preferred government officials in Pakistan. We went to war with the Taliban in Afghanistan because we hadn't.
The Taliban could have and should have offered to help in the hunt if they did not know where Al Qaeda was. However I think they knew where the camps were and knew where Bin Laden was before the fighting started.
Pakistan is fucked up but there are parts of that government willing to work with us and that do not like having extremists in their country. Again they are feeding us information on targets for drone strikes.
I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:Quote:
Originally posted by m52nickerson:Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
It's not even a leap. It's more like a small shuffle-step to the right.
Well, wake me when that happens.
I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.
Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey...
http://now.msn.com/christopher-dorner-is-first-drone-target-on-us-soilQuote:
It's official: The drone war has come home to America. Wanted fugitive Christopher Dorner, the homicidal former cop currently at war with the LAPD, has become the first known human target for airborne drones on U.S. soil. Their use was confirmed by Customs and Border Patrol spokesman Ralph DeSio, who revealed the government's fear that Dorner will make a dash for the Mexican border. The fugitive has already killed three people, according to police, and has a $1 million bounty on his head. Dorner, who has military training, is believed to be hiding in the wilderness of California's San Bernardino Mountains, where locating him without air support may be all but impossible.
So they are going to use drones to help find him. I like the way the articles uses terms like "target" when they are simply using the drones for air surveillance.
I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.
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Quote:
Originally posted by m52nickerson:Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
Listen, we were expecting a bunch of backwards luddites with a hatred for western technology to not only be able to locate Al Qaeda in the difficult mountainous cave-ridden topography of northern Afghanistan and west Pakistan and turn them over to us, but we also just assumed they knew where Al Qaeda really was, because as we all know, every Muslim knows the location of every other Muslim at all times even when they're in hiding.
Seriously, man, Al Qaeda was just in Afghanistan, it's not like the Taliban was hosting banquets for them. They were also just in Pakistan, and Pakistan didn't really know where they were at the beginning - though when we started acting like assholes and they found out where Osama was, surprise surprise, they didn't tell us. Yet we never went to war with Pakistan, and Pakistan isn't exactly a progressive western democracy either.
We didn't go to war with Pakistan, because we'd installed our own preferred government officials in Pakistan. We went to war with the Taliban in Afghanistan because we hadn't.
The Taliban could have and should have offered to help in the hunt if they did not know where Al Qaeda was. However I think they knew where the camps were and knew where Bin Laden was before the fighting started.
Pakistan is fucked up but there are parts of that government willing to work with us and that do not like having extremists in their country. Again they are feeding us information on targets for drone strikes.
The Taliban did offer to help us find them. We refused because we assumed they were in cahoots even though it made no sense, the Taliban organized while Al Qaeda was still Mujahideen fighters... Both wanted power. Taliban came out ahead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_%281978%E2%80%93presen
t%29
Quote:
The Taliban had initially emerged as a new force in the southern city of Kandahar conquering many southern and central provinces not under Islamic State control in the course of 1994. In early 1995, as they launched a major operation against the capital Kabul, they suffered a devastating defeat against the Islamic State forces of Massoud in what many analysts saw as the movement's end. By 1996, however, they had regrouped with massive military support by Pakistan and financial support by Saudi Arabia. In September 1996 they took power in Kabul and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The United Islamic Front (Northern Alliance) was created under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Massoud as a military-political resistance force against the Taliban Emirate which was backed militarily by Pakistan's Army and enforced by several thousand Al Qaeda fighters from Arab countries and Central Asia.
Please know the history before tossing out stuff like you just said. You're speculating.
The Taliban did not know where Al Qaeda were and they weren't buddies, any more than the State of Utah could locate Butch Cassidy hiding out at hole in the wall and was in favour of him. Al Qaeda and the Taliban became allies when we (meaning George W. Bush) decided to lump them all together. We allied with the Northern Alliance who were Al Qaeda sympathizers to take down the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and when we managed to take down the Taliban we were surprised when suddenly no one could find Al Qaeda or track down Osama. It was the dumbest most politically unsavvy strategy I've ever seen - in fact it seems like at every turn there was some new sidetracked tangent to the operation that had nothing to do with the original objective, from the Taliban, to Iraq, and now Iran.
Now that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are allies due to necessity, we have Taliban sympathizers in the Pakistan government who mostly just pretend they want to help us. Ultimately we walked into Afghanistan without fully understanding the political situation and we made an enormous mess out of it. And the people feeding us drone s
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At least try and post something that supports what you are saying.
So the Taliban did not know where Al Qaeda was?
"In 2000, British Intelligence reported that the ISI was taking an active role in several Al Qaeda training camps.[85] The ISI helped with the construction of training camps for both the Taliban and Al Qaeda.[85][86][87] From 1996 to 2001 the Al Qaeda of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri became a state within the Taliban state.[88] Bin Laden sent Arab and Central Asian Al-Qaeda militants to join the fight against the United Front among them his Brigade 055.[88][89]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban
"After the Sudanese made it clear, in May 1996, that bin Laden would never be welcome to return,[clarification needed] Taliban-controlled Afghanistan—with previously established connections between the groups, administered with a shared militancy,[110] and largely isolated from American political influence and military power—provided a perfect location for al-Qaeda to relocate its headquarters. Al-Qaeda enjoyed the Taliban's protection and a measure of legitimacy as part of their Ministry of Defense, although only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
While in Afghanistan, the Taliban government tasked al-Qaeda with the training of Brigade 055, an elite part of the Taliban's army from 1997–2001. The Brigade was made up of mostly foreign fighters, many veterans from the Soviet Invasion, and all under the same basic ideology of the mujahideen."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Qaeda
Now the Taliban made offers to turn Bin Laden over to a neutral country but only after the US provided evidence that he was involved in the 911 attacks. I guess Bin Laden and Al Qaeda taking credit fro them was not enough.
I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.
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Quote:
"In 2000, British Intelligence reported that the ISI was taking an active role in several Al Qaeda training camps. [85] The ISI helped with the construction of training camps for both the Taliban and Al Qaeda. [85] [86] [87] From 1996 to 2001 the Al Qaeda of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri became a state within the Taliban state. [88] Bin Laden sent Arab and Central Asian Al-Qaeda militants to join the fight against the United Front among them his Brigade 055. [88] [89]"
This doesn't support what you were saying either. It says the ISI separately established training camps for both Al Qaeda and the Taliban, not that they were the same group. And it's also true that Al Qaeda and the Taliban were opposed to each other through the 1990s.
Quote:
"After the Sudanese made it clear, in May 1996, that bin Laden would never be welcome to return, [clarification needed] Taliban-controlled Afghanistan—with previously established connections between the groups, administered with a shared militancy, [110] and largely isolated from American political influence and military power—provided a perfect location for al-Qaeda to relocate its headquarters. Al-Qaeda enjoyed the Taliban's protection and a measure of legitimacy as part of their Ministry of Defense, although only Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
While in Afghanistan, the Taliban government tasked al-Qaeda with the training of Brigade 055, an elite part of the Taliban's army from 1997–2001. The Brigade was made up of mostly foreign fighters, many veterans from the Soviet Invasion, and all under the same basic ideology of the mujahideen."
This section only has one cite, posted after 9-11, which was written by a Times journalist seemingly as a justification for war with the Taliban. I can't confirm any sources from the Times article. The wikipedia section has also been written in a very leading manner.
In this wikipedia article, all of the cites are after 9-11.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/055_Brigade
I think you're seeing the white-washing of history in progress here Nick. You'd think if this were something that was known since 1997 there'd be mentions of it before 9-11.
In fact, further assessment of the cites on the articles are warranted after this observation.
Taliban article.
Quote:
Al Qaeda also supported the Taliban with regiments of imported fighters from Arab countries and Central Asia.[21][22][23]
cites
Quote:
^ "Afghanistan resistance leader feared dead in blast". London: Ahmed Rashid in the Telegraph. 2001-09-11.
^ Marcela Grad. Massoud: An Intimate Portrait of the Legendary Afghan Leader (March 1, 2009 ed.). Webster University Press. p. 310.
^ US attack on Taliban kills 23 in Pakistan, The New York Times, 2008-09-09
The first two cites are unrelated to the claim. The last cite is from 2008.
Quote:
In 2001 alone, according to several international sources, 28,000-30,000 Pakistani nationals, 14,000-15,000 Afghan Taliban and 2,000-3,000 Al Qaeda militants were fighting against anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan as a roughly 45,000 strong military force.[21][22][76][77] Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf – then as Chief of Army Staff – was responsible for sending thousands of Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban and Bin Laden against the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud.[22][58][78]
Again, 21 and 22 aren't related to a Taliban Al Qaeda connection. 58 is "Documents Detail Years of Pakistani Support for Taliban, Extremists". George Washington University. 2007." 76 is "Edward Girardet. Killing the Cranes: A Reporter's Journey Through Three Decades of War in Afghanistan (August 3, 2011 ed.). Chelsea Green Publishing. p. 416".
78 is "Inside the Taliban". National Geographic Society. 2007.
77 is a big one, wikipedia says that this was the book that a lot of the CIA and British In
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Changing the thread up a little.
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/design/2013/02/imagining-a-drone-proof
-city-in-the-age-of-surveillance/
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Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
In any case, I am not convinced by your argument or your sources.
Of course not.
Quote:
Originally posted by BYTEMITE:And you still support predator drone attacks. :/ I'm not even sure how we got onto this particular argument, but the original argument was about your support of predator drones, and how the rest of the board except Jongstraw and AURaptor thinks your faith in predator drones is misplaced.
Yes. I think it is far worse to sit back and let groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban work freely when we have the power to dispute and kill them.
I disagree with many on this board regarding other things as well.
I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.
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Fair enough.
I suspect you might feel cornered and/or badgered, as we're focusing on you when there are others who feel the same way.
I'll never agree with you about the ethics of any of this, but I suppose we aren't making any ground either way here.
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How Russian and Iranian drone strikes further dehumanize warfare
https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/273703453/how-russian-and-iranian-
drone-strikes-further-dehumanize-warfare
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