Tweet
Predator drone launching Hellfire missile. (photo: Wikimedia Commons)
After Thursday’s full day of diplomatic meetings in Washington on the ongoing US-Pakistan crisis, the US killed another 25 people in North Waziristan when four missiles were fired from two drones. News of this latest strike comes as Pakistan’s Express Tribune reports on a potential route to ending drone strikes that was brought up in Wednesday’s meeting between US and Pakistani military leaders in Rawalpindi.
Dawn described the diplomatic meetings Thursday, which took place at the US State Department in Washington:
US and Pakistani diplomats spent Thursday trying to redefine a relationship that threatens to spin out of control if not handled properly. Statements by both US and Pakistani military chiefs since Wednesday, weighed heavily on the talks in Washington that aim at setting the agenda for next month’s strategic dialogue.
/snip/
“The two sides are seeking ways to sort out differences and find strategic convergences,” said [Pakistan's Ambassador to the US] Mr [Hussain] Haqqani of the diplomatic effort to keep the troubled relationship on track.
The two delegations had a quiet lunch after the first round and then [Pakistani Foreign Secretary] Mr [Salman] Bashir started bilateral meetings with Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Thomas Nides, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Robert Blake and Under-secretary William Burns. He is also expected to meet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton later in the evening.
It was late evening Washington time when the latest drone attack was reported, so it very well could have taken place during the meeting between Clinton and Bashir.
Two U.S. pilotless aircraft fired four missiles into a house in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region on the Afghan border on Friday killing 25 militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
/snip/
A Pakistani intelligence official in the region who declined to be identified said the house was being used as a militant hideout.
“They have surrounded the area and are not allowing anybody to go there,” the intelligence official said, referring to militants.
Twenty-five bodies had been recovered from the rubble and three women were among those killed, he said.
More details, including possible “collateral damage”, come from BBC:
Missiles were fired on a large compound in the town of Spinwam, but five women and four children in a nearby house were also killed.
Meanwhile, the Express Tribune claims that in Wednesday’s meeting between US Joint Chiefs Chair Mike Mullen and Pakistan’s Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Mullen outlined a route to the US ending drone strikes:
The United States has linked the halting of the drone campaign in the tribal belt with the Pakistan military launching a full-scale operation against the influential Afghan insurgent group, the Haqqani network, allegedly based in North Waziristan.
US Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani during marathon talks in Rawalpindi on Wednesday that the CIA-led Predator strikes would continue until Pakistan eliminates Haqqani network from its the tribal region, The Express Tribune has learnt.
Of course, this is unlikely to happen:
“Our position is absolutely clear that the operation in North Waziristan will be launched only if it is in the national interest,” said a security official, who requested not to be identified.
More diplomatic talks are planned for today, this time to be held at Pakistan’s Embassy in Washington. Will the US military conduct yet another strike tonight to emphasize to the diplomats that the military controls when and where strikes will be carried out?
24 Comments
Banksters droning more people to death does not make my day but this is an essential read. Thank you for having the intestinal fortitude to keep doing this reporting.
Are negotiations “Cough up OBL and crew or we will keep droning you” a remote possibility? Not that he’s alive or anything.
“..Send in the drones, there ought to be drones. Don’t bother, they’re here…”
With apologies to Judy Collins.
With clowns calling for the buttons to be pushed…
The fierce moral urgency of hope and change.
But no worries, the Drones are being redeployed to Libya to kill people there, and America just sold 30+ drones to Pakistan for their own use.
Yeah, but the ones we sold to Pakistan are mini-drones capable of surveillance only; not large enough to pack heat.
See, the stupidity in all this is amazing. I wonder if they will have as much trouble with getting the right targets as we do?
Ah, their remote controllers probably won’t be sitting for hours looking at a gaming screen.
Vision Cloud: Spy
Cakeor Death?Jim, thank you for exposing the intentional moral failurs of and the deliberate destruction of truth and human beings by America’s ruling classes … there are no “rugs”, any longer, large enough to sweep it under and the “lumps” are becoming noisome and unsightly to most everyone in the world but American “true-believers” who embolden and applaud the treasonous ones.
DW
Do you believe that? I’m not a drone expert but aren’t even the smallest (not shoulder launched I mean) capable of carrying at least a single missile, or can be modified as such? Military tech is pretty much designed to be adaptable.
Paks have closed Shamsi Base to U.S. drones.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42715278/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/
When the U.S chooses to assassinate them they are “militants.” When they forego killing them and capture them they are “terrorists” and and don’t qualify for the protection of military conventions.
There is also this:
Executive Order 12333 Intelligence
2.11 Prohibition on Assassination. No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12333.html
So it they are “militants” they are military opposing the U.S. in an undeclared war (part of the endless War on Terror) and thereby qualify for assassination, along with their families.
Thank you, Barry. The check is in the mail. Not.
PS. The missile attacks in Pakistan are being done by CIA. Neither Gates nor Clinton has any control of them. There is evidence that the CIA — upset over Raymond Davis, perhaps — has “gone rogue” and is wantonly killing just because 1) they can and 2) we have a morally weak president who might like being considered unstable. Nixon-style, for those that remember Tricky Dick.
I wish that whenever Obama gave a speech, he had to do so from behind the bloody corpses of the Pakistani children he has murdered. If there is an afterlife, I hope their spirits torment him there for as many years of their lives as he stole from them.
And I wish that all the loyal Democrats who will vote for this monster in 2012 first had to look in the eyes of the parents of these children and explain why they’re doing so – despite whatever “disappointments” they have in the “mistakes” he has made.
First part of this Gareth Porter interview puts a lot of the complications caused by U.S. drones in Pak.
http://antiwar.com/radio/2011/04/20/gareth-porter-115/
Similarly in Pakistan, the army has no control of the powerful ISI, the Pak intelligence service. The ISI considers itself the protector of Pakistan’s security, and wants a Pak client (Haqqani) as a safeguard in Afghanistan against a potential India ally on its western flank, given the schmoozing that the U.S. has been doing with India. Therefore we have the ridiculous situation of a U.S.”partner” Pakistan financing the killing of U.S. soldiers and Marines with U.S.-donated funds. But, hey, there’s a lot of money in it.
Admiral Mullen was in Afghanistan recently.
How’s it going, Admiral?
“I think we’ll know a lot more as to where this all stands … at the end of this fighting season.”
(Like we’ll know who’s in the World Series at the end of the baseball season.)
Knowing a lot more –
that’s an objective worth a few lives.
So long as it’s not mine –
or Admiral Mullen’s.
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=63606
Here are eight soldiers who won’t, like Admiral Mullen, know any more at the end of the fighting season. They were all killed in Afghanistan, all on the same day, April 16, 2011.
These soldiers died April 16 at Forward Operating Base Gamberi, Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when an Afghan National Army soldier attacked them with multiple grenades.
Capt. Charles E. Ridgley Jr., 40, of Baltimore, Md.
Sgt. 1st Class Charles L. Adkins, 36, of Sandusky, Ohio
Staff Sgt. Cynthia R. Taylor, 39, of Columbus, Ga.
Sgt. Linda L. Pierre, 28, Immokalee, Fla.
Spc. Joseph B. Cemper, 21, Warrensburg, Mo.
These soldiers died of wounds suffered April 16, in Nimroz province, Afghanistan when insurgents attacked their unit with an improvised explosive device.
Spc. Paul J. Atim, 27, of Green Bay, Wis.
Spc. Charles J. Wren, 25, of Beeville, Texas
Pfc. Joel A. Ramirez, 22, of Waxahachie, Texas
Nixon was paranoid. Obama simply seems amoral.
Jared Lee Loughner: 6 innocents killed
Barack Hussein Obama: 6 innocents killed… per day
From Porter interview linked about: U.S. now has 1300 spies in Pak, most of them there without Pak’s knowing about it. This is O’s expansion over the 300 under W.
Community leaders in NW Pak, who are willing to live with Pak govt are being targeted by drones.
Michael Whitney has a fresh cross-post available: Obama on Manning: “He Broke the Law.” So Much for that Trial?
Jim, from above, on one of Scott Horton interviews I’ve listened to recently, the guest said that all but the smallest drones (hummingbird size) can be armed. Come with handgrenade size missiles, soon to be deployed to a police station near you. It might have been this interview.
http://antiwar.com/radio/2011/04/21/nick-mottern/
One Person, One Drone
VoteThis is a stupid military decision, and stupider politics.
The deal seems to be this. Unless you, Pakistan, conduct military action in North Waziristan (a politically risky decision for the Pakistani government, who bought with non-intervention blessings from North Waziristan of Pakistani actions in the Swat Valley and other agencies in the Northwest Tribal Areas and FATA). Unless, you, Pakistan, attack the Taliban (and al Quaeda) in North Waziristan, the US will continue drone attacks that will be more politically unpopular in your country.
It’s the worst form of open and blatant extortion. And politically and militarily stupid.
There is a video that has been removed that happens to be referenced here and here. I’d like to see if anyone knows where it is mirrored.