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Just remember, it was democrats who started our most controversial wars.
Amazing..under a "Democratic" President..
Just remember, it was democrats who started our most controversial wars.
The people were fooled, TWICE! Hilarious, yet sad.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentis...fighting-yemenin August 2013, a highly-regarded source that tracks US strikes in Yemen, the Long War Journal, reported on a "trend" since spring 2012 whereby the US has targeted "not only senior AQAP operatives who pose a direct threat to the US, but also low-level fighters and local commanders who are battling the Yemeni government". This is contrary, as the Journal notes, to US officials' claims that "drones are targeting only those AQAP leaders and operatives who pose a direct threat to the US homeland, and not those fighting AQAP's local insurgency against the Yemeni government."
The administration's decision to become directly involved in militarily defeating the insurgency in Yemen may be sound policy; or it may not. Right or wrong, it is not for President Obama alone to decide. When the question whether to involve the US militarily in Libya's and Syria's civil wars arose, the president addressed the country explaining his rationale and legal authority, and Congress debated.
Democracy, at a bare minimum, means leaders inform and listen to the public before committing the nation to war. A national discussion on Yemen is waiting.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/...k-intelligencePresident Obama’s heavy reliance on drone-launched missiles to strike terrorists, mainly in Pakistan and Yemen, has come at a regrettable price. On Monday, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch claimed that more than 87 civilians were killed in just the 10 drone attacks that they were able to research. Last week, a United Nations investigator estimated at least 400 civilians have been killed over the past decade by American drone strikes.
These reports cry out for more transparency about how the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command conduct the attacks, with any number of questions in need of answers.
How do drone operators, for example, know they can avoid civilian casualties with the “near certainty” required by Mr. Obama? How do they know if a suspected militant on the ground is a “continuing, imminent threat” to the United States? And is the unintended killing of bystanders creating more new militants than the attacks are eliminating?
Even with its success in preventing terrorist attacks on Americans, the US drone program remains shrouded in secrecy, especially with these new reports of civilian casualties.
Perhaps the most difficult question is this: As drone technology advances, is the US turning more of the decisionmaking in a strike over to the so-called intelligence of a semi-autonomous machine?
Many attacks on suspected Al Qaeda or Taliban figures are “signature strikes,” which rely on electronic surveillance that detects patterns of behavior rather than real-time human judgment. Are drones now also able to fire a missile on their own?
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/...e-next/280753/Last year, I encouraged readers to remember the fear that Americans felt on September 11, 2001. Many expected another attack to materialize at any moment. Anxiety even played on the nerves of people who lived far from any major city. That's how drones make innocents in Pakistan and Yemen feel every day, I wrote, citing research completed by the law clinics at NYU and Stanford. A mother they interviewed explained that "because of the terror, we shut our eyes, hide under our scarves, put our hands over our ears." Said a day laborer, "I can't sleep at night because when the drones are there .... I hear them making that sound, that noise. The drones are all over my brain .... I just turn on the light and sit there .... Whenever the drones are hovering over us, it just makes me so scared."
Children in these communities are particularly vulnerable.
"When children hear the drones, they get really scared, and they can hear them all the time so they're always fearful that the drone is going to attack them," an unidentified man reported. "Because of the noise, we're psychologically disturbed, women, men, and children .... Twenty-four hours, a person is in stress and there is pain in his head." A journalists who photographs drone strike craters agreed that children are perpetually terrorized. "If you bang a door," Noor Behram said, "they'll scream and drop like something bad is going to happen."
Americans seldom hear from the people in Pakistan's tribal regions, ground zero for U.S. drone strikes. The interviews the NYU/Stanford report conducted were an important reminder that the Obama Administration's secretive drone war affects not only dead militants and the many innocents killed as "collateral damage." Drone strikes increase terror in whole communities—rational, fully justified terror.
How terrified would you be if a foreign power flew armed drones over your house day after day?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...dential-palaceYemen’s capital, Sana’a, appeared to have fallen to Shia rebels on Tuesday, after militants overran the presidential palace and secured control of most other state ins utions after two days of deadly clashes.
The fate of the country’s elected president, Abed Mansour Hadi, remained unclear, as the rebels, known as Houthis, rampaged through the city. Hadi was believed to be barricaded in his home in another part of Sana’a, which was being s ed throughout the evening.
Huge explosions were heard inside the presidential palace, which sources said were rockets used when presidential guards briefly resisted the Houthi takeover.
The continued assault had earlier been described as a “coup” by Yemen’s information minister and other senior officials.
Lets not forget who started the war in Yemen
wow
SA210 what a blast from the past, what does he call himself now?
why are you serving this stale tea, hater?
Stale? Hundred thousand civilians are in danger of starvation cause we still there attacking them
Whats stale about it?
Stale huh?
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