Drones: Killing from a distance

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/wp-conten...98080259_n.jpg

http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2012/12/2...at-a-distance/

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With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds. Bryant felt as if he had to count each individual pixel on the monitor. Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says.

Second zero was the moment in which Bryant’s digital world collided with the real one in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif. Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.

“Did we just kill a kid?” he asked the man sitting next to him.

“Yeah, I guess that was a kid,” the pilot replied.

“Was that a kid?” they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.

Then, someone they didn’t know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. “No. That was a dog,” the person wrote.

They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?

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Original article here: http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-872726.html

Humans reduced to dogs.

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Revealed: U.S. carried out
http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...5HSiYpl_m4bchA
drone strikes in Afghanistan this year alone -
more than the entire drone strikes in Pakistan
over the past eight years COMBINED

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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz2FyPRTVZ7

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The United States carried out more drone strikes in Afghanistan this year than it has done in all the years put together in Pakistan since it launched the covert air war there eight years ago, it has been revealed.

The statistics, published by the U.S. Air Force and published by Wired’s Danger Room blog, show that there were 333 drone strikes in Afghanistan in 2012 alone, up from 294 in the previous year and 278 in 2010.

It is far more than an estimated 338 strikes carried out by the CIA in Pakistan since it began hunting down remnants of al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas eight years ago.

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DAILY


http://media.caglecartoons.com/media...113950_600.jpg

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Originally Posted by presence

Federally Administered Tribal Areas

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WTF are these?

I see "federal" and the first thing to cross my mind is big-mess....

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Originally Posted by tod evans

WTF are these?

I see "federal" and the first thing to cross my mind is big-mess....

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The tribal areas are on the afghan/pakistan border. Very remote, no roads in or out, very high altitude. Local law prevails; they consider themselves sovereign, but they're claimed by both pakistan and afghanistan officially.


...off the top of my head; researching for something more definative, please hold...
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here's a map:

http://yourpakistan.files.wordpress....if?w=786&h=440


Most of what I said above stands... you'll have to read on your own:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federally_Administered_Tribal_Areas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durand_Line

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtun_people

Kind of like a Israel/Gaza kind of issue, but much more remote. Add intense hatred of the US for all in the region, add US actively building roads, add 333 drone strikes this year alone; add majority completely illiterate.


keywords: durand fata pakistan pashtun baloch


also here:
http://pakistansurvey.org/

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Nearly nine out every ten people in FATA oppose the U.S. military pursuing al-Qaeda and the Taliban in their region. Nearly 70 percent of FATA residents instead want the Pakistani military alone to fight Taliban and al- Qaeda militants in the tribal areas.
The intensity of opposition to the American military is high. While only one in ten of FATA residents think suicide attacks are often or sometimes justified against the Pakistani military and police, almost six in ten believe these attacks are justified against the U.S. military. (The United Nations has determined that many of the suicide attackers in Afghanistan hail from the Pakistani tribal regions.)
More than three-quarters of FATA residents oppose American drone strikes. Indeed, only 16 percent think these strikes accurately target militants; 48 percent think they largely kill civilians and another 33 percent feel they kill both civilians and militants. Directed by the Central Intelligence Agency, missiles are launched from unmanned drone aircraft in the FATA region of Pakistan.

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Originally Posted by presence

The tribal areas are on the afghan/pakistan border. Very remote, no roads in or out, very high altitude. Local law prevails; they consider themselves sovereign, but they're claimed by both pakistan and afghanistan officially.


...off the top of my head; researching for something more definative, please hold...

...

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US federal or local federal?

Pakistani Federal,


Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (FATA)



In reality Pakistan has little control, afghanistan has little control. US spending billions to pretend like they are gaining control by daily bombings... yet AK47 totin, Pashtun are real deal; GTF off my land and leave me the F alone. US offensive is like Vietnam with mountains instead of jungle.

http://dawncompk.files.wordpress.com...-275.jpg?w=670
Pakistani soldier, FATA


Pashtun are Sunni Muslims:

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Sunni Muslims counter that there is no basis in Islam for a hereditary privileged class of spiritual leaders, and certainly no basis for the veneration or intercession of saints. Sunni Muslims contend that leadership of the community is not a birthright, but a trust that is earned and which may be given or taken away by the people themselves.

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http://islam.about.com/cs/divisions/f/shia_sunni.htm

also

Sunni theory of government:

http://www.al-islam.org/restatement/46.htm

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Actually, there is no such thing as a Sunni theory of government.

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"Illiterate Militant Theocratic Anarchy" best describes my understanding of Pashtun government

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Originally Posted by presence

Pakistani Federal,


Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (FATA)



In reality Pakistan has little control, afghanistan has little control. US spending billions to pretend like they are gaining control by daily bombings... yet AK47 totin, Pashtun are real deal; GTF off my land and leave me the F alone. US offensive is like Vietnam with mountains instead of jungle.

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Yea, all the shit TLA's and terminology are from the point of view of the aggressors over the decades. It's surreal just to read about it from "our" point of view, then consider it from "their" point of view.

It sounds like genocide to me but maybe I don't have good grasp on reality...

I wish we would leave those poor people alone.