From Tucson to Pakistan

As President Barack Obama consoled the nation Wednesday with talk of "rain puddles in heaven," his agents were murdering four more people in his illegal war in Pakistan.

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Suspected U.S. unmanned aircraft fired four missiles at a house in a militant-infested area of northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least four people, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

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An "infested" area -- the language used for vermin, for insects, for filthy creatures fit only for extermination. These insects are what is being killed in the wilds of Pakistan: not human beings, not sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. Just strange, worthless little creepy-crawlies called "militants."

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Well, surely they had it coming, right, if they were militants? "Militant" means "insurgent" which means "terrorist" which means "big swarthy devil-worshipper coming to shtup your woman and eat your babies."

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But who said they were "militants"? Well, unnamed Pakistani intelligence officials, as indicated at the very beginning of the story. But just three paragraphs later, these same anonymous officials admit that "the identities and nationalities of those killed in Wednesday's strike were unknown."

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The CIA’s New Year message to Pakistan consisted of three drone attacks in North Waziristan, killing 19 people. There were 116 drone strikes in 2010, double the number ordered in the first year of the Obama presidency. Serious Pakistani newspapers, Dawn and the News, claim that 98 per cent of those killed in the strikes over the last five years – the number of deaths is estimated to be between two and three thousand – were civilians, a percentage endorsed by David Kilcullen, a former senior adviser to General Petraeus. The Brookings Institution gives a grim ratio of one militant killed for every ten civilians. The drones are operated by the CIA, which isn’t subject to military rules of engagement, with the result that drones are often used for revenge attacks, notably after the sensational Khost bombing of a CIA post in December 2009.

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In fact, even as Obama was making "one of the greatest speeches ever given by any sitting president" and "calling all of us to realize a larger purpose," his vice president, Joe Biden, was touring the imperial frontier, warning the Pakistanis that America's patience is growing thin over their continuing failure to instigate a civil war, and hinting darkly the Empire "would not wait indefinitely" for this act of national suicide, but may be 'forced' to start carving up the country itself.

Biden then moved on Iraq, to discuss "the issue of whether to keep some U.S. forces in Iraq beyond the Dec. 31 deadline" for withdrawing all American forces from Iraq. (Except for the thousands and thousands of soldiers and mercenaries needed to guard the American fortress city in the midst of Baghdad, of course.)

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All this, while Obama asks us to "sharpen our instincts for empathy."

  Chris Floyd

Obama also said: "Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world." He should know.

  Once Upon a Time

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.