A Secret Deal on Drones, Sealed in Blood

[Richard]

I don't see this one boding well for either us or the Pakistani government.

This article is adapted from “The Way of the Knife: The C.I.A., a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth,” to be published by Penguin Press on Tuesday.

Richard

A Secret Deal on Drones, Sealed in Blood
NYT, 6 Apr 2013

Nek Muhammad knew he was being followed.

On a hot day in June 2004, the Pashtun tribesman was lounging inside a mud compound in South Waziristan, speaking by satellite phone to one of the many reporters who regularly interviewed him on how he had fought and humbled Pakistan’s army in the country’s western mountains. He asked one of his followers about the strange, metallic bird hovering above him.

Less than 24 hours later, a missile tore through the compound, severing Mr. Muhammad’s left leg and killing him and several others, including two boys, ages 10 and 16. A Pakistani military spokesman was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, saying that Pakistani forces had fired at the compound.

That was a lie.

Mr. Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the C.I.A., the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a “targeted killing.” The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies.

That back-room bargain, described in detail for the first time in interviews with more than a dozen officials in Pakistan and the United States, is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the C.I.A. to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization.

(Cont'd)

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/wo...tan.html?_r=1&

[mark46th]

More drones. I think the drones are a great weapon for the GWOT. Whether anyone in the administration will admit it or not, we are at war with Islam. We will eventually lose this war because they will out-breed us. But until then, I have no guilt about killing terrorists, where ever they hide.

[afchic]

Originally Posted by mark46th

More drones. I think the drones are a great weapon for the GWOT. Whether anyone in the administration will admit it or not, we are at war with Islam. We will eventually lose this war because they will out-breed us. But until then, I have no guilt about killing terrorists, where ever they hide.

But what about when they aren't killing terrorists, or militants, or any other word the Administration uses to define them?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ama-drone-lies

Interesting Article. I am going to go pull the latest copy of Foreign Affairs from my library so I can see the original article. Atlantic and many other Left leaning media are picking this up.

Do I believe that terrorist need to be killed, and in secret sometimes; you bet I do. But this is a very slippery slope that is getting much more slippery.

[JimP]

the problem with killing them is that you can't exploit them for intel value. Also - a little "pesky" provision of treaty/domestic/international law about waging a war of "no quarter".

Nothing to see here - move along citizen.....

[mark46th]

"The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the C.I.A. to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them...."NYT


If we could catch them, OK, but what do you do with them after interrogation? This is why we started using drones. They are dead. No worries about them causing trouble from Gitmo...