Thursday 28th of November 2024
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US drones kill 90 per cent more innocent people than "intended targets"……...

As Hale exposed in the leaked documents, the more than one million entries in the TIDE database include about 21,000 U.S. citizens.

“When the President gets up in front of the nation and says they are doing everything they can to ensure there is near certainty there will be no civilians killed, he is saying that because he can’t say otherwise, because anytime an action is taken to finish a target there is a certain amount of guesswork in that action,” Hale says in the award-winning documentary “National Bird,” a film about whistleblowers in the U.S. drone program who suffered moral injury and PTSD. “It’s only in the aftermath of any kind of ordinance being dropped that you know how much actual damage was done. Oftentimes, the intelligence community is reliant, the Joint Special Operations Command, the CIA included, is reliant on intelligence coming afterwards that confirms that who they were targeting was killed in the strike, or that they weren’t killed in that strike.”

 

BY Chris Hedges

 

“The people who defend drones, and the way they are used, say they protect American lives by not putting them in harm’s way,” he says in the film. “What they really do is embolden decision makers because there is no threat, there is no immediate consequence. They can do this strike. They can potentially kill this person they are so desperate to eliminate because of how potentially dangerous they could be to the U.S. But if it just so happens that they don’t kill that person, or some other people involved in the strike get killed as well, there are no consequences for it. When it comes to high-value targets, [in] every mission you go after one person at a time, but anybody else killed in that strike is blankly assumed to be an associate of the targeted individual. So as long as they can reasonably identify that all of the people in the field view of the camera are military-aged males, meaning anybody who is believed to be age 16 or older, they are a legitimate target under the rules of engagement. If that strike occurs and kills all of them, they just say they got them all.”

Drones, he says, make remote killing “easy and convenient.”

On August 8, 2014, the FBI raided Hale’s home. It was his last day of work for the private contractor. Two FBI agents, one male and one female, shoved their badges in his face when he opened the door. About two dozen agents, pistols drawn, many wearing body armor, followed behind. They photographed and ransacked every room. They confiscated all his electronics, including his phone.

He spent the next five years in limbo. He struggled to find work, fought off depression and contemplated suicide. In 2019, the Trump administration indicted Hale on four counts of violating the Espionage Act and one count of theft of government property. As part of a plea deal, he pled guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act.

“I am here to answer for my own crimes and not that of another person,” he said at his sentencing. “And it would appear that I am here today to answer for the crime of stealing papers, for which I expect to spend some portion of my life in prison. But what I am really here for is having stolen something that was never mine to take: precious human life. For which I was well-compensated and given a medal. I couldn’t keep living in a world in which people pretended things weren’t happening that were. My consequential decision to share classified information about the drone program with the public was a gesture not taken lightly, nor one I would have taken at all if I believed such a decision had the possibility of harming anyone but myself. I acted not for the sake of self-aggrandizement but that I might some day humbly ask forgiveness.” 

I know a few Daniel Hales. They made my most important reporting possible. They enabled truths to be told. They held the powerful accountable. They gave a voice to the victims. They informed the public. They called for the rule of law.

I sit across from Hale and wonder if this is the end, if he, and others like him, will be completely silenced. 

Hale’s imprisonment is a microcosm of the vast gulag being constructed for all of us.

 

NOTE TO SCHEERPOST READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.

 

READ MORE:

https://scheerpost.com/2022/08/01/when-the-just-go-to-prison/

 

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obama the bomber….

 

It was, ironically, the election of Obama that encouraged Hale to join the Air Force.

“I thought Obama, who as a candidate opposed the war in Iraq, would end the wars and lawlessness of the Bush administration,” he says. 

However, a few weeks after he took office, Obama approved the deployment of an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, where 36,000 U.S. troops and 32,000 NATO troops were already deployed. By the end of the year, Obama increased troop levels in Afghanistan again by 30,000, doubling U.S. casualties. He also massively expanded the drone program, raising the number of drone strikes from several dozen the year before he took office to 117 by his second year in office.  By the time he left office, Obama had presided over 563 drone strikes that killed approximately 3,797 people, many of whom were civilians. 

Obama authorized “signature strikes” allowing the CIA to carry out drone attacks against groups of suspected militants without getting positive identification. His administration approved “follow-up” or “double-tap” drone strikes, which deployed drones to strike anyone who assisted those injured in the initial drone strike. The Bureau of Investigative Journalists reported in 2012 that “at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims,” during Obama’s first three years in office. Additionally, “more than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners” the report read. Obama expanded the footprint of the drone program in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, and established drone bases in Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

“There are several such lists, used to target individuals for different reasons,” Hale writes in an essay titled, “Why I Leaked the Watchlist Documents,” originally published anonymously in May 2016  in the book The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program by Jeremy Scahill and the staff of The Intercept.

“Some lists are closely kept; others span multiple intelligence and local law enforcement agencies,” Hale writes in the essay. “There are lists used to kill or capture supposed ‘high-value targets, ’ and others intended to threaten, coerce, or simply monitor a person’s activity. However, all the lists, whether to kill or silence, originate from the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), and are maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center at the National Counterterrorism Center. The existence of TIDE is unclassified, yet details about how it functions in our government are completely unknown to the public. In August 2013 the database reached a milestone of one million entries. Today, it is thousands of entries larger and is growing faster than it has since its inception in 2003.” 

 

https://scheerpost.com/2022/08/01/when-the-just-go-to-prison/

 

Nowadays, we send weapons to the Nazis in Ukraine to "weaken Russia".... 

 

SEE ALSO: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/43171

 

AND WE SEND PELOSI TO TAIWAN TO PROVOKE CHINA......

 

SEE ALSO: https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/43171

 

SEE ALSO: https://www.rt.com/news/559969-serbia-kosovo-kurti-eu/

 

 

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talk of the "empty devil's house"…….

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed over the weekend in a US drone strike in Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden announced on Monday evening, after multiple media outlets reported it citing anonymous sources within the government. Biden made a brief televised appearance while quarantining with Covid-19.

“Over the weekend, the United States conducted a counterterrorism operation against a significant Al Qaeda target in Afghanistan. The operation was successful and there were no civilian casualties,” a senior administration official told reporters in a background briefing. While Zawahiri’s name was not initially mentioned, AP reported it shortly thereafter, followed by Reuters and the Washington Post. 

Addressing the nation at 7:30 pm, Biden said that the strike killed Zawahiri, calling him Bin Laden’s right hand and a “vicious and determined killer.”

After “rigorous” planning to avoid civilian casualties, Biden said, he gave the final approval for the strike a week ago. “Now, justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more.”

“No matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you’re a threat to our people, the US will find you and take you out,” Biden added.

According to US officials, the CIA carried out a drone strike in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Sunday. The Taliban government confirmed that the strike took place, with spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid condemning it as a violation of “international principles,” according to Reuters.

Afghan authorities had said that a missile had struck a home in the Sherpor district of Kabul, but that no one was inside.

“A rocket hit a house in the Sherpor area of Kabul this morning at around 6,” Interior Ministry spokesman Abdul Nafi Takoor told Tolo News. “The house was empty, thus the rocket did not result in any casualties.”

The Egyptian-born Zawahiri, 71, was considered to be Osama Bin Laden’s deputy and listed among the top 22 Most Wanted Terrorists by the FBI since October 2001, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He became the leader of Al-Qaeda following the US announcement that Bin Laden was killed in May 2011. The State Department had offered a bounty of up to $25 million for information on Zawahiri’s whereabouts.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/news/560033-drone-strike-afghanistan-al-qaeda/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

NO-ONE WAS KILLED........

 

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