USA murder-robots kill and mame

USA murder-robots kill and mame





US Predators strike again in North Waziristan

By Bill RoggioOctober 14, 2011

US Predators struck again in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan, killing four militants in the same village where a senior Haqqani Network leader was killed yesterday.

The unmanned, CIA-operated Predators, or the more deadly Reapers, fired a pair of missiles at a vehicle in the village of Danda Darpa Khel just outside Miramshah, the main town in North Waziristan, according to AFP. Four "militants" were killed in the strike; no senior leaders have been reported killed.

Today's strike in Danda Darpa Khel is the second in the village in two days. A strike there yesterday killed Jan Baz Zadran, a top-level coordinator for the Haqqani Network who has been described as the organization's third in command. Jan Baz was the key deputy to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the operational commander of the terror network. He is the senior-most Haqqani Network leader killed or captured by US and Afghan forces in the past three weeks. On Sept. 27, special operations forces captured Haji Mali Khan, the Haqqani Network's operational commander for Afghanistan, during a raid in Paktia province.

The two other militants killed with Jan Baz were identified as Maulana Iftikhar and Noor Ali Shah. Locals described them as participating in "jihad," or holy war, Dawn reported.

The village of Danda Darpa Khel is in the sphere of influence of the Haqqani Network. In the past, the US has carried out several attacks against the Haqqani Network in the village.

Jan Baz is the second senior Haqqani Network commander killed in Darpa Danda Khel in the past two years. On Feb. 18, 2010, the US killed Mohammed Haqqani, one of the 12 sons of Jalaluddin Haqqani, the patriarch of the family, in an airstrike in Danda Darpa Khel. Mohammed served as a military commander for the Haqqani Network.

Background on the Haqqani Network

The Haqqani Network operates primarily in the Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktia, and Paktika, and also has an extensive presence in Kabul, Logar, Wardak, Ghazni, Zabul, Kandahar, and Kunduz. The Haqqani Network has become a focus of ISAF operations in Afghanistan and CIA operations in Pakistan, as the terror group remains entrenched in the Afghan east and continues to direct high-profile attacks in Kabul. In August, Major General Daniel Allyn, Commanding General of Regional Commander East, told The Long War Journal that the Haqqani Network is "enemy number one."

The terror group has close links with al Qaeda and the Taliban, and its relationship with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) has allowed the network to survive and thrive in its fortress stronghold of North Waziristan, a tribal agency in Pakistan. The Haqqani Network has also extended its presence into the tribal agency of Kurram.

In North Waziristan, the Haqqanis control large swaths of the tribal area and run a parallel administration with courts, recruiting centers, tax offices, and security forces. The Haqqanis also run madrassas, or religious schools, in the area that serve to radicalize Pakistani youth to wage jihad. In addition, the Haqqanis have established multiple training camps and safe houses used by al Qaeda leaders and operatives, as well as by Taliban foot soldiers preparing to fight in Afghanistan.

The Haqqani Network has been implicated in some of the biggest terror attacks in the Afghan capital city of Kabul, including the January 2008 suicide assault on the Serena hotel, the February 2009 assault on Afghan ministries, and the July 2008 and October 2009 suicide attacks against the Indian embassy.

The terror group collaborated with elements of Pakistan's military and intelligence service in at least one of these attacks. In the past, American intelligence agencies have confronted the Pakistani government with evidence, including communications intercepts, which proved the ISI's direct involvement in the 2008 Indian embassy bombing. [See LWJ report Pakistan's Jihad and Threat Matrix report Pakistan backs Afghan Taliban for additional information on the ISI's complicity in attacks in Afghanistan and the region.]

Most recently, the US and the Afghan government have linked the Haqqani Network and Pakistan's intelligence service to the June 2011 assault on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul and to the attack on the US Embassy and ISAF headquarters in September. In September, Admiral Michael Mullen, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused the Haqqani Network of being one of several "[e]xtremist organizations serving as proxies of the government of Pakistan."

Over the past few years, six of the Haqqani Network's top leaders have been added to the US' list of specially designated global terrorists. All six commanders have close ties to al Qaeda. Those Haqqani Network leaders designated as global terrorists are:

        Siraj Haqqani, who also is a member of al Qaeda's executive council. Designated as a global terrorist in March 2008.

        Nasiruddin Haqqani, a key financier and "emissary" for the Haqqani Network. Designated as a global terrorist in July 2010.

        Khalil al Rahman Haqqani, a key fundraiser, financier, and operational commander for the Haqqani Network who also aids al Qaeda. Designated as a global terrorist in February 2011.

        Badruddin Haqqani, an operational commander who also aids al Qaeda. Designated as a global terrorist in May 2011.

        Mullah Sangeen Zadran, a top military commander in eastern Afghanistan who supports al Qaeda's operation. Designated as a global terrorist in August 2011.

        Abdul Aziz Abbasin, a key commander in the Haqqani Network who is currently the Taliban's shadow governor for Orgun district in Paktika province. Designated as a global terrorist in September 2011.

Jalaluddin Haqqani, who is the father of Siraj, Nasiruddin, and Badruddin and the brother of Khalil and brother-in-law of Khan, has not been added to the US' list of terrorists, despite his close links to both the Taliban and al Qaeda. In an interview with Al Somood, the Taliban's official magazine, Jalaluddin admitted that he served on the Taliban's executive council, which is known as the Quetta Shura.

The Predator strikes, by the numbers

Today's strike is the third in Pakistan's tribal areas in two days, and the third this month. In addition to yesterday's strike in Danda Darpa Khel, US Predators hit a Taliban mortar team in South Waziristan.

The pace of the US strikes has been uneven over the past year, and the monthly strike totals have generally decreased. From January through September 2011, the strikes in Pakistan were as follows: nine strikes in January, three in February, seven in March, two in April, seven in May, 12 in June, three in July, six in August, and four in September. In the last four months of 2010, the US averaged almost 16 strikes per month (21 in September, 16 in October, 14 in November, and 12 in December).

So far this year, the US has carried out 56 strikes in Pakistan. In 2010, the US carried out 117 strikes, which more than doubled the number of strikes that had occurred in 2009; by late August 2010, the US had exceeded 2009's strike total of 53 with a strike in Kurram. In 2008, the US carried out a total of 36 strikes inside Pakistan. [For up-to-date charts on the US air campaign in Pakistan, see LWJ Special Report, Charting the data for US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2011.]

In 2010 the strikes were concentrated almost exclusively in North Waziristan, where the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, the Haqqani Network, al Qaeda, and a host of Pakistani and Central and South Asian terror groups are based. All but 13 of the 117 strikes took place North Waziristan. Of the 13 strikes occurring outside of North Waziristan in 2010, seven were executed in South Waziristan, five were in Khyber, and one was in Kurram.

This year, that pattern has changed, as an increasing number of strikes are taking place in South Waziristan. So far in 2011, 34 of the 56 strikes have taken place in North Waziristan, 20 strikes have occurred in South Waziristan, and one took place in Kurram.

The US campaign in northwestern Pakistan has targeted top al Qaeda leaders, al Qaeda's external operations network, and Taliban leaders and fighters who threaten both the Afghan and Pakistani states as well as support al Qaeda's external operations. The campaign has been largely successful in focusing on terrorist targets and avoiding civilian casualties, as recently affirmed by the Pakistani military.

For a list of al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in the US air campaign in Pakistan, see LWJ Special Report, Senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2011.


Not a word on civilians who are murdered.
Not a word on the illegality, the fact these bombings are war crimes.
(UN charta, Nuremberg USA signatory)

THE LONG WAR JOURNAL
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Foundation for Defence of (fake) Democracies.
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The Long War Journal is dedicated to providing original and accurate reporting and analysis of the Long War (also known as the Global War on Terror). This is accomplished through its programs of embedded reporters, news and news aggregation, maps, podcasts, and other multimedia formats.

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Wikipedia info:

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a non-partisan policy institute founded shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks which aims to promote pluralism, defend democratic values, and challenge the ideologies that threaten democracy.[1] Its founders particularly aim to challenge terrorist and militant Islamist ideologies which arguably seek to overthrow democratic societies

It conducts "research and education on international terrorism—the most serious security threat to the United States and other free, democratic nations. It advocates United States military intervention in various muslim majority nations such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, and Palestine.

The foundation's president is Clifford D. May and its executive director is Mark Dubowitz. Its Leadership Council is composed of prominent thinkers and leaders from the defense, intelligence, and policy communities including Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Bill Kristol, Louis J. Freeh, Joseph Lieberman, Newt Gingrich, Max Kampelman, Robert McFarlane and James Woolsey.

Its Board of Advisors include Gary Bauer, Rep. Eric Cantor, Gene Gately, General P.X. Kelley, Charles Krauthammer, Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland, Richard Perle, Steven Pomerantz, Oliver "Buck" Revell and Francis J. "Bing" West.[2]

Foundation fellows and senior staff are Jonathan Schanzer, Vice President of Research, Khairi Abaza, Senior Fellow, Tony Badran, Research Fellow, Levant, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Director, Center for Study of Terrorist Radicalization, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Senior Fellow. Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Military Affairs Fellow, Thomas Joscelyn, Senior Fellow and Co-Chair, Center for Law and Counterterrorism, Jonathan Kay, Visiting Fellow, Dr. Michael Ledeen, Freedom Scholar, Andrew C. McCarthy, Co-Chair, Center for Law and Counterterrorism, Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi, Senior Fellow, Dr. J. Peter Pham, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Dr. Walid Phares, Director, FDD's Future of Terrorism Project, David B. Rivkin, Jr., Senior Fellow and Co-Chair, Center for Law and Counterterrorism[3]

The foundation has initiated the following centers, coalitions, committees and ongoing projects:

    The Iran Energy Project
    The Center for The Study of Terrorist Radicalization
    The Center for Law & Counterterrorism
    The Future of Terrorism
    The Coalition Against Terrorist Media
    The Committee on the Present Danger

It engages in investigative reporting.



The Iran Energy Project

The foundation has promoted the utility of energy sanctions as part of a comprehensive economic warfare strategy against the Iranian regime. To this end, it provides leading research and analysis in support of strong, broad-based energy sanctions, including gasoline, natural gas, and oil sanctions, as part of a comprehensive strategy to end the Iranian regime's pursuit of nuclear weapons, support for terrorism, and abuse of human rights. The foundation also analyzes the prominent role of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iran's energy industry.

It will continue to monitor the Iranian energy sector for new entrants into the Iranian energy trade and any signs that companies which have reportedly left the market have resumed their trade.

The focus on energy sanctions has changed the debate in Washington. No longer a discussion over how to achieve a "grand bargain" with the Iranian regime, the debate now focuses on how to use sanctions to deter an aggressive regime dedicated to pursuing nuclear weapons, supporting terrorism, and repressing its own people.[4]

As the foundation's Mark Dubowitz noted, "the push for broad-based sanctions targeting Iran's energy sector, including steps taken to make it more difficult for Iran to import gasoline, acquire key energy technology, and attract investment for its energy sector, has already had a major impact. Not only are Iran's gasoline suppliers exiting the market, but energy investors, banks, technology providers, and insurers now face growing pressure to decide between doing business with the Iranian regime and continuing their business relationships in the lucrative U.S. market ... President Obama needs to enforce U.S. law and put these companies to a choice."[5]


The Center for the Study of Terrorist Radicalization

The center comprises the core of the foundation's research and analysis on terrorist movements and ideologies. It is dedicated to identifying effective strategies and techniques to combat these threats. The center combines academic and policy research, training programs, strategic communications and investigative journalism to create cutting-edge analysis of what the U.S. military has dubbed the "long war." Center director Daveed Gartenstein-Ross leads a group of experts with a range of knowledge and skills that afford unparalleled insights.


Center for Law and Counterterrorism

The foundation believes that the war against terrorism cannot be won on the battlefield alone, and says that Senior Fellow Andrew C. McCarthy is one of the nation's leading experts on prosecuting the war against terrorists while protecting the civil liberties of Americans.

For 18 years, McCarthy was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York. From 1993 to 1995, he led the successful prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a plot to bomb New York City landmarks. He also made major contributions to the prosecutions of the bombers of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as well as the Millennium plot attack at Los Angeles International Airport.

He joined the foundation as a senior fellow in 2004 to address the issue of protecting of civil liberties while fighting terrorism.

In 2006, the foundation stated that it tasked McCarthy with laying the groundwork for the Center for Law & Counterterrorism (CLC). This program examines the inevitable tension between civil liberties and national security. The CLC advisors McCarthy recruited include former Education Secretary William Bennett, retired Chief Federal District Judge Michael B. Mukasey, former Deputy Attorney General George J. Terwilliger III, National Review Editor Rich Lowry, Columbia Law School Professor Daniel C. Richman, and FDD Senior Fellow Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official.


Future of Terrorism

The foundation's Future of Terrorism Project is run by Walid Phares, a Middle East expert whose advice and counsel has been sought for the past two decades by officials from the United States, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Lebanon, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. A professor of Middle East Studies and native Arabic speaker who is fluent in French, Phares played an important role in the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559, which called for Syria to end its occupation of Lebanon.

As foundation senior fellow, Phares regularly conducts briefings for the European Parliament and Commission, the U.N. Security Council, foreign governments, the U.S. Congress, and the U.S. departments of State, Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security. Phares is the author of nine books on the Middle East, including the Foreign Affairs best-seller, Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies against the West, published in 2006, and The War of Ideas: Jihad Against Democracy, published in 2007.

Phares reaches millions of people as a terrorism analyst for Fox News and through radio and television appearances around the world, including the BBC, al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya, and Alhurra. He writes frequently for academic publications and newspapers, including Global Affairs, Middle East Quarterly, The Philadelphia Inquirer, National Review, and the Chicago Sun-Times.


Coalition Against Terrorist Media

The foundation claims to believe that what it considers to be terrorist controlled-and funded media—such as Hezbollah's al-Manar Television and al-Nour Radio, and Hamas' al-Aqsa TV—are used to promote hate, incite violence, recruit suicide bombers and other terrorists, and conduct operational surveillance. As a result, FDD founded the Coalition Against Terrorist Media (CATM)—with a membership that includes Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and secular organizations in America and Europe—to fight on this front. It wages a campaign to remove such networks from the airwaves.

Before CATM launched its campaign against al-Manar, the station reached a daily worldwide audience of 10 to 15 million viewers with its 24/7 broadcasts.

As a direct result of CATM's campaign, the foundation says that the following goals were achieved:

    The U.S. State Department in 2004 added Hezbollah's al-Manar TV and al-Nour Radio as well as their parent company, the Lebanese Media Group, to its Terrorism Exclusion List. This important first step allowed the U.S. government to deport or deny entry to any alien contributing to the ventures.
    In 2005, the European Commission and the authorities responsible for regulating the communications industry of individual European countries agreed that al-Manar violated the governing European Union directive opposing hate broadcasting.
    Eight of the original 10 commercial and government-owned satellite companies (two French, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, Australian, Barbadian, and Brazilian) stopped their worldwide broadcasting of al-Manar.
    Al-Manar was taken off the air in the United States, Canada, Central America, South America, Asia, Australia, and parts of Africa.
    Multinational corporations withdrew more than $2 million in annual ad revenue for al-Manar.
    In 2006, the U.S. Treasury Department designated al-Manar, al-Nour, and the Lebanese Media Group as Specially Designated Global Terrorist entities.

The campaign to shut down al-Manar broadcasts have raised concerns about censorship from the American Civil Liberties Union.[6]


Committee on the Present Danger

The Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) calls itself a non-partisan organization that seeks to stiffen U.S. resolve to confront and defeat the ideologies that drive terrorism. In its efforts, CPD focuses on the threats that militant Islamism allegedly presents to the national security of the United States and its allies. The Committee also is highlighting what it considers to be threats to basic human rights—in particular, women's rights, gay rights, and freedom of religion.

To help drive these efforts, the Committee appointed as vice president for policy one of its members, Lawrence Haas, former communications director for Democratic Vice President Al Gore.

CPD has played a significant role in U.S. national security debates in the past. The Committee was formed in 1950 as a bipartisan advocacy organization for President Harry S Truman's policy of containment against what it believed to be Soviet expansionism. The CPD then re-emerged in 1976 when its original leaders and others — including U.S. Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson — believed that Americans' will to win the Cold War was flagging, and that the United States should pursue policies to bring that conflict to a successful conclusion.

Today, CPD's membership includes more than 100 former U.S. Cabinet members and White House officials from Republican and Democratic administrations, ambassadors, academicians, writers, and other foreign policy experts. Its co-chairmen are George Shultz, Secretary of State under President Reagan, and R. James Woolsey, Jr., Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under President Bill Clinton. U.S. Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) serve as honorary co-chairmen. CPD's international co-chairmen are former Czech President Václav Havel and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.

The organization is controversial for its hard-line stance. Paleoconservative Patrick Buchanan has criticized it for lacking consistency while simultaneously claiming to be in favor of "strategic clarity" in terms of its objectives.[7] Tom Barry has criticized it as alarmist and militaristic in all its incarnations.[8]


Investigative reporting

Claudia Rosett, the foundation's journalist-in-residence, has reported on the United Nations, including the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal. She writes regularly for Commentary Magazine.

Insights gained from investigating the scandal led the foundation's reporter to other investigations in 2006, exposing more U.N. graft, misconduct, and abuse of public trust. Among the 35 articles published under Rosett's byline in 2006 were claims that the United Nations indirectly helps advance North Korea's nuclear weapons program, and that its refugee agency sabotages the struggle of North Korean refugees seeking freedom.

Rosett also broke the story of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan accepting a $500,000 personal prize from the ruler of Dubai, through a prize jury stacked with U.N. personnel. Her 2006 investigation set off a storm of press criticism that ultimately forced the U.N. leader to return the prize money.[citation needed]

Following up on some of the high-ranking U.N. officials implicated in corruption scandals exposed earlier by Rosett, she again scooped the world press in 2006 by interviewing the former head of the U.N. Oil-for-Food program, Benon Sevan. Since fleeing the United States in 2005, Sevan had been living in the Cypriot capital of Nicosia. He had refused to speak to the media or to congressional investigators. Rosett conducted an exclusive two-and-a-half hour interview, which was published in The Wall Street Journal in April 2006.


Iranian Threat Campaign

The foundation's Iranian Threat Campaign called upon the Free World to defend itself against the escalating danger to democracy, freedom, and human rights posed by the "radical regime" ruling Iran.

The foundation says that this campaign raised global awareness of the threat from Iran and its terrorist proxies through more than 300 broadcast interviews of foundation staff in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East; nearly 100 newspaper and policy journal articles written by foundation staff; briefings to scores of policymakers in Washington and European capitals; 20 foundation publications; and polls the foundation released.

On college campuses, it sponsored speaking tours for Iranian dissident student leaders. In cooperation with the foundation's Arab and Muslim Speakers Bureau and FDD Undergraduate and Academic fellows at, among other schools, Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago, these Iranian student leaders spoke to students and faculty about the alleged threat Iran's mullahs pose to democracy and human rights.


Criticism

The International Relations Center features a report on the foundation on its "Right Web" website, a program of the left-wing[9][10][11][12][13] think tank Institute for Policy Studies[14] which, according to its mission statement, seeks to "check the militaristic drift of the country." The report states that "although the FDD is an ardent critic of terrorism, it has not criticized actions taken by Israel against Palestinians that arguably fall into this category."[15] It terms the FDD a "prominent member of the web of neoconservative-aligned think tanks," including the American Enterprise Institute, Hudson Institute and Freedom House.[16] Left-wing writer Jim Lobe, writing in the Asia Times, referred to the FDD as a group "whose views largely mirror those of Israel's ruling Likud Party," and said that the FDD's board of advisors includes "prominent neo-cons and Iraq war boosters." [17] The American Conservative published an article accusing it of being funded mainly by a small number of pro-Israel hawks, as well as being engaged in "spin".[18] It is listed as a "pro-war" organization by globalsecurity.org with regard to its stance on Iran's nuclear program,[19] and has been described as one of the "top neocon think tanks" by the Christian Science Monitor.[20][dead link]