Drone: Inside the CIA's Secret Drone War
From drone operators to strike victims, we examine the impact of remote-controlled killing and the future of warfare.

03 Apr 2016 07:26 GMT | Drone strikes, Pakistan, CIA, US, 

Filmmaker: Tonje Hessen Schei

In 2001, the White House concluded that it was legal to use armed drones to kill senior al-Qaeda leaders. Within weeks of the 9/11 attacks, US President George W Bush signed off on an order which authorised the CIA to capture and kill al-Qaeda operatives.

I thought it was the coolest damn thing in the world. I was like 'Oh man, I get to play a video game all day!' And then reality hits you that you may have to kill somebody.

Michael Haas, former drone operator

 

For some, drones are the greatest weapon ever to be developed by the CIA; for others, they present a constant, deadly and terrifying threat.

In this two-part documentary, we go inside the CIA's secret drone war to explore, through wide-ranging interviews spanning the US and Pakistan, what drones mean for the people who fly them and for the people who live under their constant threat.

What happens when you spend hours in a pitch-black room, day after day, shooting at "targets" halfway across the world on a pixelated screen in the hinterland of Nevada?

Why are former pilots speaking out against the drone war and is the US government attempting to silence them? And how do drone operators process killing with a joystick?

Brandon Bryant is a former drone operator and now whistleblower who has spoken out about his role in the CIA's covert war.

"We're the ultimate voyeurs, the ultimate 'peeping Toms'. No one's going to catch us. And we're getting orders to take these people's lives," Byrant says. "It was just point, and click."

Few drone operators have spoken out. "It's so weird ... no one else has come out and talked about what they've done, or the things that are going on," Bryant says. "It just blows my mind."

Since Bryant began talking publicly about being a drone pilot, former friends and colleagues have harassed him. "What the drone community is doing right now is that they're bashing me," Bryant says. "They're ripping me apart to make anyone else fear talking about anything that they'd ever done."

Michael Haas, another former drone operator, also shares his experiences.

"In the control room they had a picture from September 11... Just to try to make you pissed off about it all over again right before you go do your job," Haas says. "These guys have to die. These guys deserve to die and you got to make it happen."

Living under drones

Thousands of kilometres away in the isolated territory of Waziristan in northwestern Pakistan, civilians live under the constant presence of drones, and the threat of yet another attack and the deaths of more innocent family members and friends.   

"I think a lot about why they kill us innocent people," says Zubair Ur Rehman, a young man who survived a drone strike that killed his grandmother while she was chopping vegetables outdoors. "It was a horrible day. It felt like the end of the world.

"Everything has changed. We don't go to school or play any more."

'Militainment'

With further advancements in drone technology, the US government is not likely to cease its drone activity any time soon, instead placing special focus on early recruitment by targeting young gamers. 

"There's always been a connection between the world of war and the world of entertainment. And I call this phenomenon 'militainment', where the military world is actually now pulling tools from the world of entertainment to do its job better," says Peter Singer, author of Wired for War.

"Video gamers do have a skillset that is very important and enhances the skillset of drone operators," says Missy Cummings, associate professor of aeronautics at MIT and a former US Navy pilot.

"So when I talk to people about this, I say, we don't need Top Gun pilots - we need Revenge of the Nerds ." 

In the midst of the fast advancement of technology and lagging international legislation, this film shows how drones change wars and possibly our future. We look at the psychological implications of drones and how "distance creates indifference". 

We examine those on the different sides of the drone strikes and the consequences of dehumanising war. And we ask if the US government will ever be held accountable for the hundreds of innocent lives lost in the CIA's drone war.

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/specialseries/2016/03/drone-cia-secret-drone-war-160330081229214.html

 

Now is the time to take mass nonviolent action on a historic scale to save our democracy. Following a ten-day, 140-mile march from the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia to Washington DC, thousands are gathering this week in in the nation’s Capital to demand Congress take immediate action to end the corruption of big money in our politics and ensure free and fair elections in which every American has an equal voice.

This week we began the process of taking back our democracy, with hundreds arrested in our first mass sit-in at the Capitol on Monday April 11. Now day after day through Saturday April 16th we will continue to reclaim the Capitol in a show of hope and for the truly representative democracy we see in our hearts. Over 3,500 people, coming to DC from near and far, have pledged to risk arrest this week. Buy your bus ticket, jump in your car, get yourself to DC for what will be one of the largest civil disobedience actions in a generation.

 

 

By mid-afternoon, arrests by the hundreds were well underway.

#DemocracySpring has hit the US Capitol - this is what democracy looks like!https://t.co/WgrqKLppwQ

— act.tv (@actdottv)April 11, 2016

Officials saying hundreds have been arrested, mass arrest of this scale at the Capitol "is unprecedented" #DemocracySpring

— Cassandra Fairbanks (@CassandraRules) April 11, 2016

Alexandra Rosenmann is an AlterNet associate editor.

 

http://www.alternet.org/thousands-activists-march-capital-get-money-out-politics-democracy-spring-protests-hundreds-arrested

 

see also: https://www.rt.com/usa/339192-democracy-spring-protest-capitol/

 

 

Late last year, I spent some time digging into the Pentagon’s “reconstruction” efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, countries it invaded in 2001 and 2003 in tandem with a chosen crew of warrior corporations. As a story of fabled American can-do in distant lands, both proved genuinely dismal no-can-do tales, from roads built (that instantly started crumbling) to police academies constructed (that proved to be health hazards) to prisons begun (that were never finished) to schools constructed (that remained uncompleted) to small arms transfers (that were “lost” in transit) to armies built, trained, and equipped for stunning sums (that collapsed).  It was as if nothing the Pentagon touched turned to anything but dross (including the never-ending wars it fought).  All of it added up to what I then labeled a massive “$cam” with American taxpayer money lost in amounts that staggered the imagination.

All of that came rushing back as I read TomDispatch regular William Hartung’s latest post on “waste” at the Pentagon.  It didn’t just happen in Kabul and Baghdad; it’s been going on right here in the good old USA for, as Hartung recounts, the last five decades.  There’s only one difference I can see: in Kabul, Baghdad, or any other capital in the Greater Middle East and Africa, if we saw far smaller versions of such “waste” indulged in by the elites of those countries, we would call it “corruption” without blinking.  So here’s my little suggestion, as you read Hartung: think about just how deeply what once would have been considered a Third World-style of corruption is buried in the very heart of our system and in the way of life of the military-industrial complex.  By now, President Dwight Eisenhower must be tossing and turning in his grave. Tom

How Not to Audit the Pentagon 
Five Decades Later, the Military Waste Machine Is Running Full Speed Ahead 
By William D. Hartung

From spending $150 million on private villas for a handful of personnel in Afghanistan to blowing $2.7 billion on an air surveillance balloon that doesn’t work, the latest revelations of waste at the Pentagon are just the most recent howlers in a long line of similar stories stretching back at least five decades.  Other hot-off-the-presses examples would include the Army’s purchase of helicopter gears worth $500 each for $8,000 each and the accumulation of billions of dollars' worth of weapons components that will never be used. And then there’s the one that would have to be everyone’s favorite Pentagon waste story: the spending of $50,000 to investigate the bomb-detecting capabilities of African elephants. (And here’s a shock: they didn’t turn out to be that great!) The elephant research, of course, represents chump change in the Pentagon’s wastage sweepstakes and in the context of its $600-billion-plus budget, but think of it as indicative of the absurd lengths the Department of Defense will go to when what’s at stake is throwing away taxpayer dollars.

Keep in mind that the above examples are just the tip of the tip of a titanic iceberg of military waste.  In a recent report I did for the Center for International Policy, I identified 27 recent examples of such wasteful spending totaling over $33 billion.  And that was no more than a sampling of everyday life in the twenty-first-century world of the Pentagon.

 

read more: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176126/tomgram%3A_william_hartung%2C_

 

US President Barack Obama will talk next week with leaders in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries about agreements on counter-terrorism and bolstering ballistic missile defence systems, a White House official said on Thursday.

Obama will travel to Saudi Arabia with his defence chief Ashton Carter to meet with King Salman on Wednesday and then attend a summit with other leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council on Thursday.

"As you'll hear more coming out of the summit, there’s been agreements reached to increase our cooperation on counter-terrorism, streamlining the transfer of critical defence capabilities to our GCC partners, bolstering GCC ballistic defence ... systems, and defending against the cyber threat," said Rob Malley, a senior adviser to Obama on the Middle East.

"On all of those, I think you'll see progress has been made, there's been much deeper cooperation between us and the GCC," Malley told reporters on a conference call.

Obama plans to discuss the fight against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Saudi-led conflict in Yemen, and Iran and regional stability issues, the AP news agency quoted Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, as saying.

The president also wants to hear about ideas from King Salman and other leaders for dealing with economic issues, given the sharp drop in oil prices, Malley said.

Obama then will travel to London to meet British Prime Minister David Cameron and to Hanover for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, where ISIL - also known as ISIS - and counter-terrorism cooperation also will be on the agenda, the White House said.

Obama plans to also discuss Afghanistan and Russian moves in Ukraine with Cameron and Merkel, the White House officials said.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/04/obama-visit-saudi-arabia-defence-talks-160414211816389.html

Saudis threatens to sell off $US750b in US assets if Congress passes 9/11 bill

Date

April 17, 2016 - 12:19PM

• Mark Mazzetti

The Saudi Arabian government has threatened to sell hundreds of billions of dollars worth of American assets should the US Congress pass a bill that could hold the kingdom responsible for any role in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill's passage, administration officials and congressional aides from both parties say, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon.

The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir delivered the kingdom's message personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $US750 billion ($975 billion) in Treasury securities and other assets in the US before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.

Several outside economists were sceptical the Saudis would follow through, saying that such a sell-off would be difficult to execute and would end up crippling the kingdom's economy.

However, the threat is another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the US.

The administration, which argues the legislation will put Americans at legal risk overseas, has been lobbying so intently against the bill that some lawmakers and families of September 11 victims are infuriated.

In their view, the Obama administration has consistently sided with the kingdom and has thwarted their efforts to learn what they believe to be the truth about the role some Saudi officials have played in the terror plot.

"It's stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens," said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the World Trade Centre on September 11.

She is part of a group of victims' family members pushing for the legislation.

Saudi officials had long denied that the kingdom had any role in the September 11 plot, and the 9/11 commission found "no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organisation".

However, critics had noted the commission's narrow wording left open the possibility that less senior officials or parts of the Saudi government could have played a role.

Suspicions had lingered, partly because of the conclusions of a 2002 congressional inquiry into the attacks that cited some evidence that Saudi officials living in the US at the time had a hand in the plot.

The dispute comes as bipartisan criticism is growing in Congress about Washington's alliance with Saudi Arabia, for decades a crucial US ally in the Middle East.

Last week, two senators introduced a resolution that would put restrictions on US arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

These have expanded dramatically during the Obama administration.

The Senate bill is intended to make clear the immunity given to foreign nations under the law should not apply in cases where nations are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill Americans on US soil.

If the bill were to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the President, it could clear a path for the role of the Saudi government to be examined in the September 11 lawsuits.

New York Times, Reuters

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/saudis-threatens-to-sell-off-us750b-in-us-assets-if-congress-passes-911-bill-20160417-go86ha.html#ixzz463TQGiPj 
Follow us: @smh on Twitter | sydneymorningherald on Facebook

 

 US President Barack Obama is to send 250 additional military personnel to Syria to support local militias in the fight against so-called Islamic State (IS), officials have said.

The goal, they say, is to encourage more Sunni Arabs to join Kurdish fighters in north-eastern Syria.

The new deployment will bring to 300 the number of US forces in non-combat roles in Syria.

In a BBC interview, Mr Obama ruled out sending ground troops there.

He said military efforts alone cannot solve Syria's "heart-breaking situation of enormous complexity".

• What's left of Syria?
• Has opportunity for peace been lost?
• The story of the conflict

Most of the additional personnel will be special operation forces, the Associated Press news agency reports. The group will also include medical and logistical troops, it adds.

A formal announcement is expected from President Obama during his visit to Hannover on Monday, where he will discuss Syria and other foreign policy issues with leaders of the UK, Germany, France and Italy.

read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36126944

 

The Sunnis helping the Kurds? Pull the other leg... it rings...