hipsterlibertarian:

In today’s late-coming admission that the Obama Administration has assassinated four American citizens with drone strikes, Attorney General Eric Holder described the death of one of those four, 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, as a “mistake.”

A mistake is when you write “2012” instead of “2013.”

A mistake is when you make change for a ten instead of a twenty.

A mistake is when you back into another car.

But — as Mr. Obama would say — let me be clear: Targeting a 16-year-old who is accused of no crime for death by bomb in a specific attack two weeks after his father was assassinated is not a mistake.

That’s what we call murder.

wet-salamanders:

ernestsewell:

Even after cutting off the head of al-Qaeda, the United States Department of Defense doesn’t believe an end to the war on terror is in sight. On Thursday, one Pentagon official predicted the mission against al-Qaeda could continue for another two decades.

Speaking to the Senate Armed Services early Thursday, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Michael Sheehan said the Pentagon has no plans to pull out of its almost 12-year-old war overseas.

When asked for his take on how long the war on terror could go on for, Sheehan told lawmakers, “At least 10 to 20 years.”….

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So yeah, you keep supporting those troops, killing children, women, and men for another 10 or 20 years.  Oooh rahh amurrika!

im sorry but you support the troops always and not the fucking war. the war and the people leading and starting the war are terrible. troops are normal people who are following tradition or have no better options or are trying to get away from here. they need support. almost half the men in my family have served and it was so traumatizing for them they wont tell anyone even a fourth of their stories and its wrong to blame them. they don’t even like half the shit they have to do. they need our support. they need stupid fucking people spitting on them when they come home from seeing countless people die or be hurt. they need support and they need it badly. you always support the soldier.

If you support the troops, you support the war.  Without anyone fighting a war, there’d be no war. 

Even after cutting off the head of al-Qaeda, the United States Department of Defense doesn’t believe an end to the war on terror is in sight. On Thursday, one Pentagon official predicted the mission against al-Qaeda could continue for another two decades.

Speaking to the Senate Armed Services early Thursday, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Michael Sheehan said the Pentagon has no plans to pull out of its almost 12-year-old war overseas.

When asked for his take on how long the war on terror could go on for, Sheehan told lawmakers, “At least 10 to 20 years.”….

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So yeah, you keep supporting those troops, killing children, women, and men for another 10 or 20 years.  Oooh rahh amurrika!

Kill, Killing, Killed

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Private Chris MacGregor, 24

Photographer Lalage Snow, who is currently based in Kabul, Afghanistan, embarked on an 8-month-long project titled We Are The Not Dead featuring portraits of British soldiers before, during, and after their deployment in Afghanistan. Similar to Claire Felicie’s series of monochromatic triptychs, Snow captures the innocent expressions of these men transformed into gaunt, sullen faces in less than a year.

The three-panel juxtaposition allows the viewer to observe the physical changes a stationed soldier in a war zone goes through. Time is sped up for these men under the beating sun, amidst combat. Regardless of age, the boys that went in came back as men with experiences beyond their years. As weathered and worn as their skin or sunken in faces may appear, it’s their dilated eyes that are the most telling.

Additionally, Snow’s series accompanies each triptych with quotes from each of the servicemen that gives a great deal of insight into their mental and emotional state at each given time. Sergeant Alexander McBroom’s first portrait, before deployment, features him bravely saying, “I am not worried about going out - it is my job after all.” Three months later, he is quoted as saying, “It has been an eye opener.” And, finally, another four months after, he says, “It is always that fear, that apprehension, what is going to happen if I get blown up?” Having gone through life-altering trials and warfare, it is no surprise that fear is no longer a foreign feeling to these courageous men.

Snow’s intention with the series is to not only honor their bravery by featuring them, but to also draw attention to every soldiers’ psychological transformation. She says, “It was a very personal project and stemmed from having embedded with the military on and off for 4 years in Iraq and Afghanistan and bearing witness to how many young men return as shadows of their former selves and, in many cases, with deep, psychological scars. As the body count of British servicemen killed or wounded rose and the political ramifications of the British army’s presence in Afghanistan became increasingly convoluted, more and more soldiers felt like they didn’t have a voice, or at least, weren’t being listened to. We Are The Not Dead is an attempt at giving the brave young men and women the chance to explain how it really is.”

Lance Corporal Sean Tennant, 29


Private Ben Frater, 21


Corporal Steven Gibson, 29


Second Lieutenant Struan Cunningham, 24


Private Fraiser Pairman, 21


Lance Corporal Martyn Rankin, 23


Second Lieutenant Adam Petzsch, 25


Private Jo Yavala, 28


Lance Corporal David McLean, 27


Private Sean Patterson, 19


Private Steven Anderson, 31


Sergeant Alexander McBroom, 24


Private Matthew Hodgson, 18

Yemen has quickly become one of the most active theaters of operations for America’s drone fleet, though the killing of a local anti Al-Qaeda cleric underscores the rising collateral damage of the unmanned attacks.

Sheik Salem Ahmed bin Ali Jaber, a prominent cleric within his small village in Yemen, was known for preaching of the evils of the al-Qaida network, warning villagers to stay out of the group and renounce their military ideology.

Unfortunately for Sheik Salem, US military drones that had been hovering in the area took a shot at two alleged Al-Qaeda fighters last August while he was meeting with them outside of the remote village of Khashamir.

According to the cleric’s brother-in-law, Faysal bin Ali bin Jaber, who retold the events to the Associated Press, Salem was called out by the local Al-Qaeda members, presumably to meet with him and intimidate him into dropping his vocal opposition to the group.

Sheik Salem had spoken “about how killing people and labeling people who work with the West as infidels is wrong,” said Faysal.

Following Salem’s death “everyone who saw that there is no differentiating between us and Al-Qaeda are asking why don’t we just join Al-Qaeda since it makes no difference?” he added.

Though the US does not report individual drone strikes in Yemen, groups including the UK’s Bureau for Investigative Journalism, the Long War Journal and the New America Foundation all attempt to track such statistics by using information from Yemeni security officials.

The Associated Press for one has reported nine strikes in Yemen so far in 2013, while the Long War Journal tallied 42 strikes in 2012, up from 10 the year prior. That increase is attributed to US backing of a Yemeni campaign to thwart the Al-Qaeda network and its allies, which took root in a number of southern cities and towns. The US considers the Al-Qaeda branch in Yemen to be one of its most dangerous, linking it with a unsuccessful airliner bombing attempt over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

Since information regarding lethal drone operations is not disclosed, it is not entirely clear how the US military makes determinations on when to strike, and how remote pilots determine whether to launch weapons when civilians may be nearby, as was the case in the death of Sheik Salem - which also resulted in the killing of three alleged militants.

According to a New York Times own analysis of drone strikes, one known pattern in similar attacks involves a drone hovering over an area for weeks before deploying weapons, presumably as military analysts attempt to confirm the identities of human targets.

What puzzles even supporters of the military operations against Al-Qaeda in Yemen is why drone strikes are increasingly targeting fresh recruits, and why the US is resorting to drones at all when they could be apprehended by Yemeni security forces instead.

Naji al-Zaydi, a former governor of Marib Province and opponent of Al-Qaeda who spoke with the Times in February, believes these men represent low-level targets. 

“Even with Al-Qaeda, there are degrees — some of these young guys getting killed have just been recruited and barely known what terrorism means,” al-Zaydi said. He also added that, in a tribal culture such as Yemen’s, both the identity and background of Al-Qaeda recruits targeted by these drone strikes are not exactly a secret.

According to CIA director John Brennan, drone strikes are only used as a last resort. Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations in August, he made no excuses for the deployment of drones in Yemen.

“In short, targeted strikes against the most senior and most dangerous AQAP terrorists are not the problem, they are part of the solution,” said Brennan, referring to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Last week during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington on the US drone program, Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemeni activist and writer whose village had been struck days earlier, told that panel that drones are “harming efforts to win hearts and minds” and are now “the face of America” to many Yemenis.

“What violent militants had previously failed to achieve, one drone strike achieved in an instant,” he added.

The White House says that United States President Barack Obama may approve of using military force against the Syrian government.

Early afternoon on Friday, White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the administration has a number of options in regards to handling reports that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons, and those routes include but are not exclusive to using military force.

Fielding a question from the media during the afternoon presser, Carney said that he could not speculate on what action if any Pres. Obama will pursue against Assad, but said “as a general principal the United States retains the ability to act unilaterally.”

Pres. Obama spoke to reporters hours later about the allegations during a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah in the Oval Office, calling the developments a “game changer” in terms of how the US might respond.

“Horrific as it is when mortars are being fired on civilians and people are being indiscriminately killed, to use potential weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations crosses another line with respect to international norms and international law,” Obama said.

“That is going to be a game changer. We have to act prudently. We have to make these assessments deliberately. But I think all of us … recognize how we cannot stand by and permit the systematic use of weapons like chemical weapons on civilian populations.”

Just one day earlier, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that the US intelligence community determined “with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons.” The White House sent a letter to members of the US Senate that morning informing lawmakers that Pres. Assad is believed to have used the odorless liquid sarin on at least two occasions.

“Thus far, we believe that the Assad regime maintains custody of these weapons, and has demonstrated a willingness to escalate its horrific use of violence against the Syrian people,” the letter read in part.

Following up on Friday, Carney said, “We still believe based on the information that we have that the stockpiles of chemical weapons in Syria are under control of the Syrian regime.”

 “Because of that, Assad is responsible for the disposition of those chemical weapons and it is his responsibility first and foremost not to use them or to transport them to terrorist groups, but to secure them and make sure they aren’t used by anyone else.”

“That’s all I can really say about it. That’s our assessment at this time,” said Carney, adding that the Obama administration is working with allies and partners, including the United Nations and Sthe yrian opposition, to gather credible facts to corroborate earlier reports.

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OF COURSE they would.  Force, war, & violence is the native tongue of the United States government.  I’m sure this is ‘shocking’ or ‘news’ to some, but really - come on.  Murderer-in-chief barry obama is the black messiah most murderous potus on record.