12-07-14 From the front-lines of the Medieval Digital Era: Obama Bombs Civilians, Then Police & First Aid, And Then Their Funerals, Again

Obama Bombs Civilians, Then Police & First Aid, And Then Their Funerals, Again
  Posted by Alexander Higgins - June 6, 2012 at 1:29 pm - Permalink - Source via Alexander Higgins Blog

Obama’s new method to take out terrorists – bomb woman and children, then bomb the civilian police and other first aid responders, and then bomb their funerals.

 



SOURCE: http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/06/06/obama-bombs-civilians-police-aid-funerals-141611/

A shocking new tactic is emerging on the battlefield in the War on Terror which involves first bombing targets which is then followed by the bombing of first responders attempting to help the victims of first bombings  and then finally bombing the funeral were people are gathering to mourn the victims.

Obama’s new tactic of targeting funerals and first responders was fist revealed in a report in a shocking report from the  The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in February.

At that time of that report the tactic of bombing funerals or first aid responders was known only to have been used  separately from each other.

The three-day bombing spree that started this Saturday in Pakistan establishes a pattern in which repeated the use of these tactics in conjunction with in an attempt to flush a single target out of hiding.

The bombings so far are confirmed to have killed at least 27 people and started with two separate attacks.

The first was the dropping of 6 bombs on a two individuals said to be riding a motor bike.

The second attack involved bombing a mosque during worship in an attack that destroyed nearby houses which followed multiple strikes on homes the previous day.

When police and first aid responders attempt to retrieved and help the wounded from the wreckage they were bombed.

Then private gatherings to mourn the dead were held because public funeral are often bombed by the Americans and those gatherings were bombed as well.

Finally on Tuesday, the US government reported that Monday’s bombings took out the intended target.

In order to put these bombings in context, please watch the following video.

Many visualize these bombings to small targeted bombings because the propagandists have repeatedly used words such as “strike”, “precision”, “targeted”, “guided” to create such a visualization in our head.

This is not the case at all and as you can see in the video below these “drone strikes” drop massive bombs that can take out entire city blocks.

In fact, there are many reports of a bomb taking out a mosque and several surrounding homes containing entire families.

 

Hellfire missiles being loaded on to a US military Reaper drone




 

Video Clip Shows Massive Size Of US Bomb Explosion

This is not just collateral damage.

This is premeditated, as Jeremy Scahill of the Nation puts it, mass murder of innocent civilians which is being repeatedly being ordered personally by President Obama with the tactics progressively getting more sickening.

Glenn Greenwald reports:

In February, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documented that after the U.S. kills people with drones in Pakistan, it then targets for death those who show up at the scene to rescue the survivors and retrieve the bodies, as well as those who gather to mourn the dead at funerals: “the CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals.” As The New York Times summarized those findings: “at least 50 civilians had been killed in follow-up strikes after they rushed to help those hit by a drone-fired missile” while “the bureau counted more than 20 other civilians killed in strikes on funerals.”

This repellent practice continues. Over the last three days, the U.S. has launched three separate drone strikes in Pakistan: one on each day. As The Guardian reports, the U.S. has killed between 20 and 30 people in these strikes, the last of which, early this morning, killed between 8 and 15. It was the second strike, on Sunday, that targeted mournersgathered to grieve those killed in the first strike:

At the time of the attack, suspected militants hadgathered to offer condolences to the brotherof a militant commander killed during another US unmanned drone attack on Saturday. The brother was one of those who died in the Sunday morning attack. The Pakistani officials said two of the dead were foreigners and the rest were Pakistani.

Note that there is no suggestion, even from the “officials” on which these media reports (as usual) rely, that the dead man was a Terrorist or even a “militant.” He was simply receiving condolences for his dead brother. But pursuant to the standards embraced by President Obama, the brother ­ without knowing anything about him ­ is inherently deemed a “combatant” and therefore a legitimate target for death solely by virtue of being a “military-age male in a strike zone.” Of course, killing family members of bombing targets is nothing new for this President: let’s recall the still-unresolved question of why Anwar Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son, Abdulrahman, was killed by a U.S. drone attack in Yemen two weeks after his father was killed.

From  The Bureau of Investigative Journalism:

Obama terror drones: CIA tactics in Pakistan include targeting rescuers and funerals

The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of  civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed.

The findings are published just days after President Obama claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a ‘targeted, focused effort’ that ‘has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties.’

Speaking publicly for the first time on the controversial CIA drone strikes, Obama claimed last week they are used strictly to target terrorists, rejecting what he called ‘this perception we’re just sending in a whole bunch of strikes willy-nilly’.

‘Drones have not caused a huge number of civilian casualties’, he told a questioner at an on-line forum. ‘This is a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists trying to go in and harm Americans’.

But research by the Bureau has found that since Obama took office three years ago, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 60 children.  A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners.  The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.

[...]

State-sanctioned extra-judicial executions

But some international law specialists fiercely disagree, arguing that the strikes amount to little more than state-sanctioned extra-judicial executions and questioning how the US government would react if another state such as China or Russia started taking such action against those they declare as enemies.

[...]A CIA drone fired its missiles into the Taliban group, killing at least a dozen people. Villagers joined surviving Taliban as they tried to retrieve the dead and injured.

But as rescuers clambered through the demolished house the drones struck again. Two missiles slammed into the rubble, killing many more. At least 29 people died in total.

[...]

Yusufzai, who reported on the attack, says those killed in the follow-up strike ‘were trying to pull out the bodies, to help clear the rubble, and take people to hospital.’  The impact of drone attacks on rescuers has been to scare people off, he says: ‘They’ve learnt that something will happen. No one wants to go close to these damaged building anymore.’

Source: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Empty Wheel reports:

[...] a report from Chris Woods and Christina Lamb at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism delivered the shocking newsthat CIA targeting practices for drone attacks include the intentional targeting of mourners at funerals and first responders to initial attacks:As Woods and Lamb point out, targeting mourners and first responders is a practice that is both heinous and likely to include civilian deaths along with those who are military targets. However, it now appears that the strikes that took out Abu Yahya al-Libi included both a strike on mourners and possibly a strike on first responders, so it seems likely now that there will be a push from Obama administration figures to provide a patina of glory derived from taking out al-Qaeda’s number two in command to a practice that Woods and Lamb pointed out amounts to “little more than extra-judicial executions”.

Before it was known that al-Libi had likely been killed, Glenn Greenwald pointed out yesterday that Monday’s strikes had been aimed at mourners and I pointed out that locals in the vicinity feared a follow-on strike hitting first responders. Greenwald cited and quoted from a Guardian article pointing out the mourner aspect of the strike. More details come from this article in Pakistan Today:

A US drone targeted a compound believed to be used by militant commanders Mullah Nazir and Commander Malang in the Wocha Dana Beermal area of South Waziristan.

While officials in various intelligence agencies have confirmed al-Libi’s death, officials in the United States endorsed that al-Libi was the target of Monday’s drone strike. There has not been any confirmation or rejection of the report by al Qaeda yet. According to reports, the militants had gathered in the compound to condole the death of Malang’s brother who was killed the previous day in a drone attack in the same area.

Multiple reports indicate that two missiles were used in the attack that killed al-Libi. The Los Angeles Times indicates that both a house and a vehicle were destroyed, adding to the possibility raised in the Express Tribune article I quoted on Monday that the second missile may have been aimed at rescuers responding to the first. The Times article says that all three drone attacks Saturday, Sunday and Monday were targeted at al-Libi:

The CIA had targeted Libi with three separate drone-launched missile attacks over three days, finally succeeding early Monday in strikes that destroyed a house and a vehicle, U.S. and Pakistani officials said.

Death tolls from the weekend of attacks vary widely depending on sources. The LA Times article cited above quotes a “US official”:

Reports from Pakistan said as many as 15 people were killed in the drone strikes. The U.S. official said that figure was “wildly inaccurate” and insisted that the death toll was “less than a handful.”

Similarly, the New York Times reports:

American officials said that Mr. Libi was the only person who died in the attack, although others were present in the compound. A tribesman from the area, speaking by phone and citing Taliban sources, said that three to five militants had been killed. But he agreed that no civilians had died because there had been no public funerals in the area.

[...]Source: Empty Wheel

The Daily Mail reports:

Attack of the drones: 27 killed in just three days as U.S. increase strikes in Pakistan

U.S. drone attacks on Pakistan have entered their third consecutive day, with rockets killing 15 people in northwest Pakistan this afternoon.

The strike targeted a militant hideout in the Hesokhel village of the North Waziristan tribal region, officials said.

It brought the death toll from drone attacks in Pakistan in the past three days to 27.

Read full article