-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
In a 2007 report, entitled Underlying Reasons for Success and Failure of Terrorist Attacks (pdf) and prepared for Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate by Homeland Security Institute (and recently scrubbed from their web site, here) notes: “a favorite tactic of Hamas, the “double tap;” a device is set off, and when police and other first responders arrive, a second, larger device is set off to inflict more casualties and spread panic.”
It has been documented that this terrorist tactic has been embraced by President Obama.
Obama has adopted the “double tap” tactic by using second drone attacks to kill the first responders to the first drone attacks. Funerals for the victims of the first drone attack have also been the target of second drone attacks. These second attacks have caused the deaths of between 282 and 535 civilians, and at least 60 children.
In a comment that could have come out of the Bush/Cheney/Rove administration, a senior American counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said:
Let’s be under no illusions — there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help Al Qaeda succeed.
This Obama administration official has committed the irrelevant conclusion (ignoratio elenchi) fallacy. The conclusion that there are those who would help Al Qaeda is not relevant to the question of accuracy of the documentation.
Obama’s “double tap” policy is nothing short of despicable. Obama has brought dishonor to America and to our founding principles. When America commits the same actions that we condemn when used by terrorists, we become terrorists. The liberals’ silence on this issue is shameful. If George W. Bush had adopted this tactic, the cries of protest would have been deafening.
We wanted change and we got it, from bad to worse.
H/T: Glenn Greenwald, Tom Engelhardt, Scott Shane, Juan Cole, Chris Bertram, Justin Elliott, Glenn Greenwald.
“double tap”, eh?
I’ve got a word: Hobbes. Hobbes. He da man . . . amorally speaking.
If the CIA drone strikes are a war that you find illegitimate you should say that. The principal reason for detestation of the Hamas “double tap” – we saw it in Iraq too – is that we saw the attackers as illegitimate because their intended target was non-combatants. The second strike compounded the perfidy.
But the trap/ambush itself is an ancient war tactic. If the issue is attacking ambulances or other ruptures of the thin fabric that is the law of war that should be stated plainly. But by conventional standards of war reinforcements are targets as lawful as those who were struck first.
The drone mentality
In sum: I have never heard of 99% of the people my government kills with drones, but I am sure they are Terrorists VIDEO
BY GLENN GREENWALD
11/15/2011
http://www.salon.com/2011/11/05/the_drone_mentality/
Excerpt:
In a New York Times Op-Ed yesterday, international human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith describes a meeting he had in Pakistan with residents from the Afghan-Pakistani border region that has been relentlessly bombed by American drones; if I had one political wish this week, it would be that everyone who supports (or acquiesces to) President Obama’s wildly accelerated drone attacks would read this:
The meeting had been organized so that Pashtun tribal elders who lived along the Pakistani-Afghan frontier could meet with Westerners for the first time to offer their perspectives on the shadowy drone war being waged by the Central Intelligence Agency in their region. Twenty men came to air their views; some brought their young sons along to experience this rare interaction with Americans. In all, 60 villagers made the journey. . . .
On the night before the meeting, we had a dinner, to break the ice. During the meal, I met a boy named Tariq Aziz. He was 16. As we ate, the stern, bearded faces all around me slowly melted into smiles. Tariq smiled much sooner; he was too young to boast much facial hair, and too young to have learned to hate.
The next day, the jirga lasted several hours. I had a translator, but the gist of each man’s speech was clear. American drones would circle their homes all day before unleashing Hellfire missiles, often in the dark hours between midnight and dawn. Death lurked everywhere around them. . . .
On Monday, [Tariq] was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike, along with his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan. The two of them had been dispatched, with Tariq driving, to pick up their aunt and bring her home to the village of Norak, when their short lives were ended by a Hellfire missile.
My mistake had been to see the drone war in Waziristan in terms of abstract legal theory — as a blatantly illegal invasion of Pakistan’s sovereignty, akin to President Richard M. Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia in 1970.
But now, the issue has suddenly become very real and personal. Tariq was a good kid, and courageous. My warm hand recently touched his in friendship; yet, within three days, his would be cold in death, the rigor mortis inflicted by my government.
And Tariq’s extended family, so recently hoping to be our allies for peace, has now been ripped apart by an American missile — most likely making any effort we make at reconciliation futile.
This tragedy repeats itself over and over. After I linked to this Op-Ed yesterday on Twitter — by writing that “every American who cheers for drone strikes should confront the victims of their aggression” — I was predictably deluged with responses justifying Obama’s drone attacks on the ground that they are necessary to kill The Terrorists. Reading the responses, I could clearly discern the mentality driving them: I have never heard of 99% of the people my government kills with drones, nor have I ever seen any evidence about them, but I am sure they are Terrorists. That is the drone mentality in both senses of the word; it’s that combination of pure ignorance and blind faith in government authorities that you will inevitably hear from anyone defending President Obama’s militarism. As Jonathan Schwarz observed after the U.S. unveiled the dastardly Iranian plot to hire a failed used car salesman to kill America’s close friend, the Saudi Ambassador: “I’d bet the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. has closer ‘ties’ to Al Qaeda than 90% of the people we’ve killed with drones.”
As it turns out, it isn’t only the President’s drone-cheering supporters who have no idea who is being killed by the program they support; neither does the CIA itself. A Wall Street Journal article yesterday described internal dissension in the administration to Obama’s broad standards for when drone strikes are permitted, and noted that the “bulk” of the drone attacks — the bulk of them – “target groups of men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren’t always known.” As Spencer Ackerman put it: “The CIA is now killing people without knowing who they are, on suspicion of association with terrorist groups”; moreover, the administration refuses to describe what it even means by being “associated” with a Terrorist group (indeed, it steadfastly refuses to tell citizens anything about the legal principles governing its covert drone wars).
Of course, nobody inside the U.S. Government is objecting on the ground that it is wrong to blow people up without having any knowledge of who they are and without any evidence they have done anything wrong. Rather, the internal dissent is grounded in the concern that these drone attacks undermine U.S. objectives by increasing anti-American sentiment in the region (there’s that primitive, inscrutable Muslim culture rearing its head again: they strangely seem to get very angry when foreign governments send sky robots over their countries and blow up their neighbors, teenagers and children). But whatever else is true, huge numbers of Americans — Democrats and Republicans alike — defend Obama’s massive escalation of drone attacks on the ground that he’s killing Terrorists even though they — and, according to the Wall Street Journal, Obama himself — usually don’t even know whose lives they’re snuffing out. Remember, though: we have to kill The Muslim Terrorists because they have no regard for human life.
This is why it’s so imperative to do everything possible to shine a light on the victims of President Obama’s aggression in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere: ignoring the victims, rendering them invisible, is a crucial prerequisite to sustaining propaganda and maintaining support for this militarism (that’s the same reason John Brennan lied — yet again — by assuring Americans that there are no innocent victims of drone attacks). Many people want to hear nothing about these victims — like Tariq — because they don’t want to accept that the leader for whom they cheer and the drone attacks they support are regularly ending the lives of large numbers of innocent people, including children. They believe the fairy tale that the U.S. is only killing Terrorists and “militants” because they want to believe it (at this point, the word “militant” has no real definition other than: he or she who dies when a missile shot by a U.S. drone detonates). It’s a self-serving, self-protective form of self-delusion, and the more we hear about the dead teeangers left in the wake of this violence, the more difficult it is to maintain that delusion. That’s precisely why we hear so little about it.
The Drone Summit and Why the Washington Correspondents’ Dinner Wasn’t Funny
Loren Fogel May 7, 2012
http://www.thenation.com/article/167759/drone-summit-and-why-washington-correspondents-dinner-wasnt-funny#
Excerpts:
As Washington and Hollywood celebrities were busy getting ready for an evening of glamour and amusement at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, across town human rights and peace advocates, along with the family members of individuals who have been killed in US drone attacks, gathered to discuss the Obama Administration’s policies of targeted killing at the first International Drone Summit.
The event was organized by CODEPINK, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Reprieve, and facilitated by Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of CODEPINK and the author of a new book, Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.
Panelists and audience members alike spoke of the need for transparency and official acknowledgement of what the CIA is and has been doing in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
One never sees any images of drone victims in the American mainstream media—but Clive Stafford Smith, the founder of Reprieve, which co-organized the Summit, showed the audience pictures of children who had been killed alongside images of missile parts from the weapons that took their lives. He asked, “How can we get people to pay attention?”
Chris Woods, a senior reporter with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and a leader of the Bureau’s covert war investigation team, offered a PowerPoint presentation challenging the Obama Administration and CIA’s unwillingness to acknowledge that there have been civilian casualties. According to TBIJ’s reporting, between 2004 and 2012, the CIA launched 321 drone strikes in Pakistan, 269 of which were carried out under President Obama’s command. Between 2,429 and 3,097 people have been killed in these drone strikes, including 479 to 811 civilians and 174 children.
***
A key message at the Drone Summit, which was touched upon time and again, was what David Cortwright, the Director of Policy Studies at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, referred to as “the illusion that you can counter terrorism by military force.” Extrajudicial killing has become the central feature of American counter-terrorism activities, and that feature continues to evolve behind a curtain of secrecy and lawlessness.
Raining terror from the sky upon people of far away lands has becoming a panacea for American insecurity—yet, as several panelists at the Drone Summit warned, the blowback created by repeatedly killing civilians simply creates more danger.
It’s hard to believe the mainstream American media doesn’t find this dangerous cycle of violence—yet the summit received no coverage. But if you were curious, across town, Rick Santorum took photos of Lindsay Lohan.
Barkin Dog, You better muzzle yourself. Don’t you know that Willard’s name can’t be mentioned here? I read the other day that he thinks Obama is under using the drones. He and his national security guy, John Bolton, are no peacniks waiting in the wings.
Someone famous once famously said : “‘You are either with us or against us”. Hahahahaha, I love the smell of history repeating itself in the morning 🙂
BarkinDog,
Be specific. What inaccuracies has JT and other people made about what Obama is doing? If we have erred, we will correct those errors.
Are you willing to address the drone strike information laid out here? What do you think about it? What is the consequence of labelling people terrorists for speaking the truth, especially under the NDAA?
The full moon went away. It’s Obama’s fault. Everything is Obama’s fault on this blog. Turley says: Go Williard!
We really have become a rogue nation. Who will stand against us? How far will we be willing to take this? We spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined and appear to have no fear or compunction about using it in any way we see fit. We have lost our way internationally, surrendered the moral high ground and building an oligarchy here at home. There does not seem to be an end to this in sight.
Me? I’m hoping for a meteor.
O.S.,
The testimony cited by Elaine is enough to get a legal investigation going. You may also remember that Collator Murder has the pictures, sound, and video as well as testimony. The person who most likely gave us that information is a victim of torture by the Obama administration. He has been held unlawfully for over a year.
There are calls to investigate by international groups. Look into it!
My apologies for stumbling onto a law blog as a non-lawyer. I take back everything bad I’ve ever said about Bush enabling torure, because that was never proven in a court of law. Maybe it was just a few bad apples and not a matter of policy.
arsphd 1, June 9, 2012 at 8:17 am
Where is your proof of this?
=========================
The principle of the burden of proof in such scenarios is on the government, and the degree of proof should be beyond a reasonable doubt when that many news organizations report on the issue:
(TBI). The story is of the type “speak truth to power”, not propaganda slipped in to bolster the fantasies of the warmongers.
Saad, this is a law blog, or blawg. Rumors are not proof in the legal arena. I cannot speak to whether such proof is a liberal or conservative issue, but I do recall the torture issue was front and center, with actual prosecutions and people went to jail. Unfortunately, the investigations were cut off when they started to go too high. Evidence included photographs and testimony.
Otteray,
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has a series of stories on drone strikes. Here’s a link to its Covert War on Terror page:
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/
*****
Witnesses speak out
By Chris Woods
February 4th, 2012
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/witnesses-speak-out/
Excerpt:
Researchers working for the Bureau in Waziristan spoke to people who had witnessed US drone attacks on both rescuers and funeral-goers. These personal testimonies provide eyewitness accounts of events reported in leading media outlets including the New York Times, CNN, ABC News and Associated Press.
The Bureau has also included comments from Washington Post national security correspondent Joby Warrick, on the CIA’s decision to attack a funeral in 2009.
‘We saw that all the people died’
On December 17 2009 CIA drones attacked the village of Degan. Al Qaeda commanders Abdullah Said al Libi and Zuhaib al-Zahibi were reported killed. There were some claims that the ultimate, unsuccessful target was Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law Sheikh Saeed al Saudi.
But in the aftermath of the attack, as villagers and Taliban tried to retrieve the dead and injured, the drones returned to the attack. According to the Bureau’s Waziristan researchers, two Taliban and six civilian rescuers died – five of the latter named as Bashirullah, Amir Khan, Shairullah, Abidullah and Fazle Rabbi, all of the Dawar tribe.
That day 30-year old Zahidullah was in Degan visiting his mother’s brother:
I was in my uncle’s house and there were approximately six drones in the air. As we were looking, one drone fired missiles at a house very near to us. After a short interval another fired further missiles at a second house. As the targeted people belonged to Degan village we rushed out to help. The victims were local Taliban belonged to Hafiz Gul Bahadur’s group. Some other local Taliban also rushed to help. These people were busy in rescue activities when a drone again fired two missiles. I and some other villagers were further afield so we ran away. When the situation became calmer we returned. We saw that everyone had died. Some dead bodies were burnt; most appeared to be OK, but there were [fatal] injuries to their chests and heads. A total of 16 people died in these attacks of which six were civilian rescuers and two Taliban rescuers. We were all very distressed by this incident. Some young people announced loudly that ‘We will continue Jihad against America until we finish the USA or embrace Shahadat [martyrdom].’
‘They were good people’
On September 16, 2010 Samiullah Khan, a Waziristan-based journalist, was in Danda Darpakhel to interview a Taliban commander. As they talked, a deafening explosion blew out all the windows. Drones had just struck a house two doors down.
According to reports at the time, villagers fled in panic as up to eleven drones attacked two housing compounds linked to the Haqqani Network.
‘As the US drones came over the village people started shouting and running here and there shouting ‘run, drones have come,” a local tribesman told AFP. Up to fifteen were killed. Among the dead were eight rescuers, who died when the drones struck again.
Samiullah Khan – who is also one of the field researchers employed in this project – told the Bureau what he witnessed:
There was of course a drone up in the air – in that area they seem to be up 24 hours a day. About five minutes into the interview I heard a massive noise from an attack and all the glass in the house broke. I ran out, though the Taliban were urging me not to approach the site. I saw people crying ‘Help us, help us’, there was a huge fire. Since everyone in the [damaged] house was dead or injured, the only people who could help were other villagers or the Taliban I’d been interviewing.
Many people were badly burned. We put three in my pick-up truck and took them to Miranshah town – doctors there told us they were unlikely to live, each having 90 per cent burns to his body. Back in Danda Darpakhel more people had come to the attack site to help with the rescue, thinking that the danger had now passed after 30 minutes. But the drones returned and fired again. If I had been there I would have been caught in that explosion. People there were killed, including two of my friends. They were good people. One was a student; the other ran a stall at the local bazaar. Neither was involved with the Taliban.
If that is your standard of proof, why were liberals all up in arms about the Bush era abuses? Did you have the same standard of proof then? Maybe you did but liberal;s certainly didn’t, and I would argue for matter of public policy which our leaders deliberately try to keep secret, the standard of proof has to be a bit lower. Other wise they’d just keep things classified and that would be the end of any discussion.
News releases and opinion pieces are not proof. Do you have enough that you would be comfortable taking this allegation into a court and have it undergo a vigorous Daubert or other evidentiary challenge? I am not saying it is not being done, but as a scientist, I am a professional skeptic. I also know quite a bit about psyops and propaganda, so my skeptical bump is really twitching on this item.
Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam… Or something like that….. If true, what is the distinction between Obama and Bush?
It is very dangerous to ignore what is happening. Equating speaking of the facts with being a traitor is an old technique. I have watched as Bush, then Obama supporters whole heatedly embraced this propaganda. I have seen how it has turned them against their fellow citizens who will speak truth to power. Supporters of an imperial, out of control govt. need to stop and think what they are doing. They are willing supporters of atrocities. They will turn on their fellow citizens who speak the truth. Yet it is the truth which is necessary for any real hope and justice to emerge.
P.S. No doubt it is being used by terrorists..but where is the proof that Obama has “embraced” it?
Where is your proof of this?