5/29/12, "Drones have replaced Guantánamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants; in his 2010 guilty plea, Faisal Shahzad, who had tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square, justified targeting civilians by telling the judge, “When the drones hit, they don’t see children.”"
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2/6/13, "AP explains participation in Saudi drone-base secrecy," Washington Post, Erik Wemple
"Associated Press spokesman Paul Colford explains why the wire service participated in the “informal arrangement” among prominent U.S. news outlets to keep secret the location of a U.S. drone base in Saudi Arabia:
The Associated Press in 2011 agreed to withhold the location of a secret U.S.-run drone base located inside Saudi Arabia after U.S. officials contended that revealing the location would make the base a target of extremists, endangering people directly, and would badly endanger counterterror efforts. The AP did report at the time on secret drone operations operating from the region, targeting extremists in Yemen.The AP’s account provides a stark look at the considerations that weigh on editors in conversations with national security officials. Who wants to be responsible for putting U.S. installations at risk? Or for hampering counterterrorism efforts?
The AP on rare occasions withholds information when officials offer a compelling argument that the information could imperil national security or specific individuals. When the location of the base was made public Tuesday night, the AP felt national security concerns no longer applied and published the location.
The flip side: Who wants to be responsible for keeping the American public in the dark on the particulars of a U.S. counterterrorism program that has killed thousands of people overseas?" via Poynter.org
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Drones preceded Obama but he accelerated their use. Times Square bomber cited US drone attacks as his motivation:
5/29/12, "Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will," NY Times, Jo Becker, Scott Shane
"Drones have replaced Guantánamo as the recruiting tool of choice for militants; in his 2010 guilty plea, Faisal Shahzad, who had tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square, justified targeting civilians by telling the judge, “When the drones hit, they don’t see children.”"
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Times Square bomber lived in Pakistan where hundreds were killed by US drones in 2009:
9/18/2010, "Inside the mind of the Times Square bomber," The Observer/Guardian UK, Lorraine Adams with Ayesha Nasir
"In 2009, Shahzad
abandoned his Shelton home and went to live with his parents in their
posh neighbourhood in Peshawar (Pakistan). During that year, 47 drone attacks killed 411 people in Waziristan."...
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2009 Obama drone attack in Yemen killed dozens of civilians including women and children:
2/6/13, "CIA operating drone base in Saudi Arabia, US media reveal," BBC
"Construction of the drone base was ordered after a December 2009 cruise missile strike in Yemen, according to the New York Times.
It was the first strike ordered by the Obama administration, and ended in disaster, with dozens of civilians, including women and children killed."...
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Obama "performed a great service for Al Qaeda." The Nation
2/4/12, "Washington's War in Yemen Backfires," The Nation, J. Scahill (Mar. 5 issue)
"President Obama’s first known authorization of a missile strike on Yemen, on December 17, 2009, killed more than forty Bedouins, many of them women and children, in the remote village of al Majala in Abyan. Another US strike, in May 2010, killed an important tribal leader and the deputy governor of Marib province, Jabir Shabwani, sparking mass anger at the United States and Saleh’s government. “I think these airstrikes were based on false intelligence from the regime, because that is the nature of the contractor,” Qahtan charges. “The contractor wants to create more work in return for earning more money.” The October drone strike that killed Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, a US citizen, and his teenage cousin shocked and enraged Yemenis of all political stripes. “I firmly believe that the [military] operations implemented by the US performed a great service for Al Qaeda, because those operations gave Al Qaeda unprecedented local sympathy,” says Jamal, the Yemeni journalist. The strikes “have recruited thousands.” Yemeni tribesmen, he says, share one common goal with Al Qaeda, “which is revenge against the Americans, because those who were killed are the sons of the tribesmen, and the tribesmen never, ever give up on revenge.” Even senior officials of the Saleh regime recognize the damage the strikes have caused. “People certainly resent these [US] interventions,” Qirbi, the foreign minister and a close Saleh ally, concedes. Such resentments mingle easily with the political and religious message of Al Qaeda and with the growing radicalization of the religious landscape, particularly in impoverished areas neglected by the Yemeni government, like Abyan. “Of course, when people are in that kind of circumstance then they need to hold on to some kind of ideological banner, so they start talking about the Caliphate and all that stuff,” says Iryani. At large rallies held by opponents of Saleh’s regime in Sanaa, prominent conservative imams deliver stinging sermons denouncing the United States and Israel. The United States may see AQAP as a membership organization with a finite number of members who can be taken out through a drone- and Tomahawk missile–fueled war of attrition, but there are varying shades of support and involvement among broader segments of Yemeni society. While there are certainly some foreign operatives in AQAP, the majority of those described as “militants” are Yemenis who belong to powerful tribes. “In recent months, Ansar al Sharia appears to have attracted a number of new members,” says Johnsen, the Yemen scholar at Princeton. “The group has essentially attempted to flatten itself out in Yemen in order to appeal to as many people as possible, which means that it takes the popular parts of AQAP’s platform, while downplaying the more controversial sections.” While General Sumali talks of the need to “cleanse” Abyan of the “terrorists,” it is hardly that simple. The US bombs and the Yemeni military shelling of Zinjibar have increased support for Ansar al Sharia, allowing it to fulfill its claim that it is a defender of the people in the face of an onslaught backed by America. The attacks also serve as hard evidence that, as Awlaki and the leaders of AQAP alleged, the United States intends to target Yemen as it has Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. “I wish to send a message to my brothers and the honorable people of Abyan,” declared Abu Hamza al Murqoshi, the emir of Ansar al Sharia, in a videotaped “Message to Abyan” posted in late January. “The entire world has united against us with this treacherous government,
which has demolished your homes and destroyed the infrastructure. You have joined the fight against this state and its allies,the Americans.”"...(begin half way down page)
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A recent Zogby poll in six Arab countries found Obama has driven anti-American sentiment even higher than it was under George Bush. (parag. 25 in article)
9/19/11, "How Obama's destabilizing the world" Salon.com, Nick Turse
"American troops are on the ground in an increasing number of volatile countries -- and they're making things worse.... It involves at least 97 countries, across the bulk of the global south, much of it coinciding with the oil heartlands of the planet. A startling number of these nations are now in turmoil, and in every single one of them -- from Afghanistan and Algeria to Yemen and Zambia -- Washington is militarily involved, overtly or covertly,
- in outright war or what passes for peace.
In addition to its own military efforts, the Obama administration has also arranged for the sale of weaponry to regimes in arc states across the Middle East, including Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirate, and Yemen....
A semi-secret drone war in that nation's (Pakistan) tribal borderlands, involving hundreds of missile strikes and significant, if unknown levels, of civilian casualties, has been only the most polarizing of Washington's many ham-handed efforts. When it comes to that CIA-run effort, a recent Pew survey of Pakistanis found that 97 percent of respondents viewed it negatively....
Earlier this year, in Egypt and Tunisia, long-time U.S. efforts to promote what it liked to call "regional stability" -- through military alliances, aid, training, and weaponry -- collapsed in the face of popular movements against the U.S.-supported dictators ruling those nations. Similarly, in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, popular protests erupted against authoritarian regimes partnered with and armed courtesy of the U.S. military. It's hardly surprising that, when asked in a recent survey whether President Obama had met the expectations created by his 2009 speech in Cairo, where he called for "a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world," only 4 percent of Egyptians answered yes. ...
With Americans balking at defending arc-of-instability nations, with clear indications that military interventions don't promote stability, and with a budget crisis of epic proportions at home, it remains to be seen what pretexts the Obama administration will rely on to continue a failed policy -- one that seems certain to make the world more volatile
- and put American citizens at greater risk."
9/27/12, "Pat Caddell Says: Media Have Become “Enemy of the American People"," Accuracy in Media, Roger Aronoff
"“I think we’re at the most dangerous time in our political history in terms of the balance of power in the role that the media plays in whether or not we maintain a free democracy.” (Pat) Caddell noted that while First Amendment protections were originally provided to the press so they would protect the liberty and freedom of the public from “organized governmental power,” they had clearly relinquished the role of impartial news providers.
Nowhere was this more evident than during the tragic death of a U.S. ambassador in Libya that was covered up for nine days [as of 9/21] because the press and the administration did not want to admit it was a terrorist attack.
“We’ve had nine day of lies over what happened because they can’t dare say it’s a terrorist attack, and the press won’t push this,” said Caddell. “Yesterday there was not a single piece in The New York Times over the question of Libya. Twenty American embassies, yesterday, are under attack. None of that is on the national news. None of it is being pressed in the papers.”
Caddell added that it is one thing for the news to have a biased view, but “It is another thing to specifically decide that you will not tell the American people information they have a right to know.”
He closed his talk with these words: “The press’s job is to stand in the ramparts and protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from organized governmental power.
When they desert those ramparts and go to serve—to decide that they will now become an active participants—when they decide that their job is not simply to tell you who you may vote for, and who you may not, but, worse—and this is the danger of the last two weeks—what truth that you may know, as an American, and what truth you are not allowed to know, they have, then, made themselves
a fundamental threat to the democracy, and, in my opinion, made themselves the enemy of the American people.
And it is a threat to the very future of this country if…we allow this stuff to go on, and…we’ve crossed a whole new and frightening slide on the slippery slope this last two weeks, and it needs to be talked about.”"
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