Obama widens drone attacks in Pakistan

The Obama administration has granted secret permission to the CIA to carry out more indiscriminate drone missile strikes in Pakistan, even as protests over civilian casualties caused by the attacks continue to grow.

Officials revealed this week that the US intelligence agency is operating under rules that allow it to target suspected “militants” in Pakistan based upon “pattern of life” analyses, without even ascertaining their identity. For the most part, they acknowledge, the names of those assassinated with Hellfire missiles fired from Predator and the larger Reaper drones are never known.

This description of the drone program flies in the face of official propaganda, which has presented the missile attacks as part of a carefully prepared exercise in “targeted killings” aimed against high-ranking leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But according to the Los Angeles Times, which cited current and former intelligence officials, “The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of drone strikes in Pakistan’s border region.”

The newspaper reported that the initial permission to broaden the drone campaign came during the last year of the Bush administration, but has been continued and even widened under the presidency of Barack Obama.

“Instead of just a few dozen attacks per year, CIA operated unmanned aircraft now carry out multiple missile strikes each week against safe houses, training camps and other hiding places used by militants in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan,” the LA Times notes.

There have been 34 missile strikes so far this year, at least two every week, according to figures compiled by the New America Foundation. This compares to 53 for all of last year and 30 during the last year of the Bush administration.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/dron-m07.shtml

n/t

but she posts their crap all the time.

...if not more so, on a kind of percentage basis. And people post MSM/establishment-approved articles all the time.

Doesn't mean WSWS is right about every single thing, but why a priori reject it, if you're not Joe McCarthy? :shrug:

of some faith-based belief that the US or Dems or Obama wouldn't do this, and in further proof of their gullibility want to believe that WSWS is less reliable than the NY Times (despite ample evidence of deceit by the latter), here are more sources: http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&cf=all&ncl=dwcyH949CqiNj2M1XsOfqbO0O6tpM

Edit to add: WSWS is at the top of the list of many sources for this information. Reuters, CNN, CBS are all included.

that time of night again...

this rag as a valid source for news? Talk about the "easily manipulated".

The reporting is factual, verified everywhere except on US TV unless you look into very obscure corners, and WSWS has a better record than those professional corporate liars you trust. Don't be such a dittohead. It really is not 'a good thing.'

(edit out irrelevant stuff.)

they'll be all sorts of finger pointing, executive privilege shit & "how could we have let this happen!"

Tit for tat.