So, what part of ”unclear” didn’t you understand? Anyway, just because it’s unclear to some journalist at the ever so unbiased New York Times, it does not necessarily follow that it is unclear to the CIA. And indeed, in this particular case it seems they had a burst of very good intelligence. And really, if you invite (the) hoi polloi of all that can stagger and crawl of the al Qaeda to a cosy dinner with your wife and children, you yourself have to carry the responsibility of what else may befall them that night, just as if a US soldier taking his kids on night patrol through a Falluja shootout or his wife on a Humvee through downtown Baghdad is himself to blame for what may happen to them.
check out the rest of the article for a “metric” of our progress in waziristan
Not sure why you’re trying to classify any status in Waziristan as “our” progress. Is it being used as a staging area to combat our troops in Afghanistan - absolutely. Do we have combat forces in Waziristan - no. This has been an ongoing situation ever sense the Taliban & AQ were driven out of Afghanistan. They crossed over into Waziristan region of Pakistan to lick their wounds, regroup and train new members. Surely this is not a surprise to anyone, well maybe the NY Times :rolleyes:
BY "our program’ i mean the ongoing effort to eradicate the taliban/queda remnants on both sides of the border;presumably the pakistani army is our proxy in this program–or the only one we have…
“They opposition leaders expressed their determination to continue to protest until such time as the US formally and publicly apologizes. They said it is our duty irrespective of our political ideals, to protect the sovereignty of our country which is under increasing attack under the cloak of ‘war on terror’.
They said the attack was an act of state terrorism and the refusal of the US to formally apologize for the attack shows the contempt with which it treats international laws”
Jesus christ almighty, we killed children,can’t we at least apologize??
It also appears to be unclear to the government of Pakistan.
It is beyond preposterous, that faced with the so-convenient “discovery”, after the fact, that, “hey, w"e missed Ayman, but we didn’t come up dry” has been successfully floated by persons with nothing BUT invidious interest.
The lack of skepticism from the intended audience of this bullshit claim goes to OUR shame, more than the perpetrators.
in the same vein, one may be forgiven for wondering whether there is not, even now, a project underway to cull DNA samples from high value targets, whether presently dead, alive, at large, or in custody, the same to be used the next time one of these embarrassing mistargetings occurs.
As soon as the Pakistani people apologize for harboring and supporting Islamic terrorists within their borders.
And while they’re at it, stop using words like “infidel” and “jihad” and basically become tolerant, civilized human beings instead of being selfish, racist, prejudiced, blame-everyone-but-themselves-for-their-problems jerks.
Sorry, I lost track of this thread due to getting really busy with RL concerns for a few hours after I posted in it last week.
My original claim was based on one of the articles I read at the time, this story has changed somewhat as it has moved through the news cycle.
I can’t find the original story in which I read 18 militants were killed because it may have been on the NYT which has already archived the story.
But if you go to the Wall Street Journal’s website (www.wsj.com) and do an “Article Search” on “Pakistan” you’ll find an article titled “Pakistan Condemns Deadly Airstrike” dated the 14th of this month (I can’t link to it because the URL is one of the type that doesn’t work that way.) That article lists 11 militants as killed in the explosion. If you browse through the newer ones you will find that number goes down, some of the articles claim none are killed, a more recent article claims 3-4 “key militans” were killed and that their bodies were taken away from the scene.
Anyways, the fact of the matter is it doesn’t matter if 0 or 50 militants were killed, my post was primarily about the fact that collateral damage is a necessity of war. And that while we should take steps to minimize it, it cannot be a major roadblock to taking military action.
mayhap you overlooked the word “children”?
No. Actually I think THEY overlooked their children by deciding that their religion views martyrdom as a plus, even when its muslim children…
What the fuck has that to do with anything? I’m not sayin’ you can’t snuff the little momzers, just preted that you’re sorry? Would that kill you?
What a funny little dance you are engaged in. You keep getting asked how it is justifiable to kill the children, and what the children did wrong, and why killing the children wasn’t wrong, and you keep ducking and weaving and diving and segueing off into the allegedly inappropriate actions of various associated adults.
Look the effin’ questions in the eye and face up to them like a man, fer cryin out loud.
Praise jesus, send down the clarity
I was apparently unable to frame this issue adequately.
When Clinton ordered bombings in the Balkans, I imagine children were likely killed. Was he wrong to do so?
Plenty of children were killed in Gulf war 1. In fact, I remember a bombing of a building that turned out to be a shelter containing mostly women and children. Was that war wrong?
Millions of women and children were killed in allied bombings in WWII. Was that war wrong?
The fact of the matter is that the advance of precision bombing has made collateral civilian casualties much, much smaller today than in any war in history. The U.S. military goes way out of its way to prevent civilian casualties. But sometimes it just can’t be helped. If you’re going to let al-Qaida walk freely throughout the civilian population with a policy of, "They can’t be touched as long as there’s even a chance that some innocents may be killed’, then you might as well just surrender now, because this war can’t be won.
So let’s all get on our moral high horses and pat ourselves on the back over how enlightened and good we are - until our own children are killed.
in point of fact, yes he was, but that aside, that conflict partook of an essential element of the legitimate imposition of collective punishment, pursuant to which one might at least argue the" collateral damage issue" That is not the case in the present instance. viz, serbia was a countrh the actions of which were the subject of prolonged negotiation with an elected leader on their side, hence the attribution to the general populace of the “guilt” of Milosevich.
Contrast the children at issue. They, nor anyone else, elected Bin Laden. End of story. They cannot be treated as the collateral damage of war. They are the victims of murder.
That made absolutely no sense. First, you’re suggesting that Clinton’s bombing (or one of the others - it’s not clear from your message) was a ‘legitimate imposition of collective punishment’?
Here’s a clue for you - there’s no such thing as ‘legitimate collective punishment’, and it would be highly immoral to kill children just to ‘collectively punish’ a country. All of the bombings mentioned above were strategic or tactical bombings, NOT ‘punitive’ bombings. I’m not sure you’re even clear on the concept, from what you just stated.
Second, are you now saying that it’s okay to kill innocent children as long as the country has an elected leader? Children don’t vote.
Also, by your tortured logic, does that mean that it’s okay to kill children in democracies, but not in dictatorships?
Really, if you want to have a mulligan on that last message of yours, I’ll give it to you. We can just pretend it never happened.
It’s not a war - just more bullshit Bush rhetoric like the war on drugs. And dropping bombs on a village is not a precision strike except in the sense you precisely intended to kill everyone in every house targeted, and those in the blast radius.
So unless you would be cool about Cuba taking out a Miami hotel to get at terrorists this seems like double-standards to me.
‘War can’t be won’ - there is no war and it’s impossible for us to lose if there really was one. And kindly explain how the careless slaughter of innocents is going to do anything else but breed more terrorists with more determination to carry on killing us.
I may be being niaive but I thought the idea of military action was to increase our chances of winning, not make things worse.
If you intend to hit a specific house, and that’s what you do, that’s a precision strike. A non-precision strike would be to carpet-bomb the entire area because you know there are bad guys in some house, somewhere.
And yes there is a war, and yes it’s possible to lose it. And since it hasn’t been determined that this was a ‘careless slaughter of innocents’, you don’t get to play that card.
I’m curious - when the Iraq war broke, you guys on the left were screaming that it was a distraction from getting al-Qaida. But when Bush goes after al-Qaida, you’re screaming that it’s murder. You claim it’s not a war, but primarily a policing and intelligence gathering exercise. When Bush tries to gether intelligence, you go bananas.
Just how in hell do you want to fight al-Qaida? What’s your grand strategy? Wait for Pakistan to arrest them? Pretend they don’t exist and go back to spending the peace dividend? What?