C.I.A.: A Spy Agency Authorized to Kill by Remote Control.
April 8, 2013 - For the last ten years U.S. ‘warriors’ ensconced in bunkers
on U.S. soil have piloted unmanned Predator drones whose missiles assassinate
the handpicked ‘enemies’ of America in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
These remote controlled strikes, carried out by operatives of the C.I.A.
have killed an estimated three thousand people alone (176 of them children) in the
tribal areas of Pakistan’s Waziristan region. No figures are available for Yemen
and other countries.
In a just published book ‘The Way of the Knife’ the authors tell how the
CIA was converted from a spy agency to an assassination squad. The book’s
authors argue that after the CIA’s clandestine prisons, in which inmates were
tortured, became too public the agency was empowered to kill rather then capture
suspects.
In the past CIA 007 agents remained anonymous. However the new
breed of CIA killer demands recognition as a computer screen hero. So the
Pentagon minted another bravery medal ‘The Distinguished Warfare Medal’
awarded ‘for extraordinary achievements’ to those joystick pilots guiding Predator
drones to their human targets.
Even more puzzling the new medal ‘for extraordinary achievement’ is so
prestigious it outranks the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart, the medals won for
bravery in combat. The high ranking of the Drone Medal has infuriated U.S.
soldiers – those grunts on the ground doing the real fighting.
The video killings by the U.S. have caused no more then minor ripples in
the mass media or were simply dismissed as a necessity of our times and an
antidote to burgeoning ‘terrorism’ (a phenomenon that could also be called
‘resistance’ to ‘occupation’ of countries in the Middle East and Asia.)
The legitimizing of these remote controlled assassinations to the point
of awarding medals for them is setting a dangerous precedent for an international
community which still vaunts itself for prosecuting war crimes for everyone except
villains from our superpower and its close allies.
We are rapidly entering the era when ‘Big Brother’ decides who can live
and who must die in order to ensure the safety of ‘our’ system of life, a life run in
reality by a minute mega-affluent minority determined to safeguard its own
dominance and fabulous wealth.
Currently the debate in Washington is not whether to curtail or eliminate
the drone killer program but whether the program should remain in the hands of the
CIA which after all, so law makers argue, was created as a spy agency and not a
killer squad.
Abominations tend to snowball.
Israel has been using drone strikes for years to kill alleged Palestinian
‘terrorists,’ combatants others might call ‘freedom fighters.’
Already drone strikes have been ‘hired out’ by the CIA in return for
‘benefits.’
When Waziristan rebel Nek Muhammed successfully fought Pakistan’s
army in his tribal homeland the CIA in 2004 (at the dawn of the drone program)
offered to ‘take out’ the bothersome rebel for the Pakistanis.
According to the authors of ‘The Way of the Knife’ and the New York
Times the CIA offered to kill Muhammed but in return demanded airspace access
over Pakistan for future drone missions into Afghan and Waziristan regions where
Al Qaeda operatives were believed to hide out.
Muhammed was ‘taken out’ (with the usual number of collateral
victims) and became a martyr to his people. And today, nine years later, CIA
drones continue to fly killer missions eliminating those enemies of the U.S.
someone in the American hierarchy adds to a blacklist of ‘persons to be
neutralized’ (permanently).
No doubt, as always in human history, remote controlled kills will
become more sophisticated in future. They may become so efficient that anyone
considered an ‘enemy’ anywhere in the world can be ‘neutralized’ without fuss,
without publicity and surely without the current and inevitable ‘collateral damage.”
Ends
Uli Schmetzer was a former foreign correspondent for Reuters and the Chicago Tribune.
He is the author of four books available in print and e-book on www.amazon.com
April 8, 2013 - For the last ten years U.S. ‘warriors’ ensconced in bunkers
on U.S. soil have piloted unmanned Predator drones whose missiles assassinate
the handpicked ‘enemies’ of America in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
These remote controlled strikes, carried out by operatives of the C.I.A.
have killed an estimated three thousand people alone (176 of them children) in the
tribal areas of Pakistan’s Waziristan region. No figures are available for Yemen
and other countries.
In a just published book ‘The Way of the Knife’ the authors tell how the
CIA was converted from a spy agency to an assassination squad. The book’s
authors argue that after the CIA’s clandestine prisons, in which inmates were
tortured, became too public the agency was empowered to kill rather then capture
suspects.
In the past CIA 007 agents remained anonymous. However the new
breed of CIA killer demands recognition as a computer screen hero. So the
Pentagon minted another bravery medal ‘The Distinguished Warfare Medal’
awarded ‘for extraordinary achievements’ to those joystick pilots guiding Predator
drones to their human targets.
Even more puzzling the new medal ‘for extraordinary achievement’ is so
prestigious it outranks the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart, the medals won for
bravery in combat. The high ranking of the Drone Medal has infuriated U.S.
soldiers – those grunts on the ground doing the real fighting.
The video killings by the U.S. have caused no more then minor ripples in
the mass media or were simply dismissed as a necessity of our times and an
antidote to burgeoning ‘terrorism’ (a phenomenon that could also be called
‘resistance’ to ‘occupation’ of countries in the Middle East and Asia.)
The legitimizing of these remote controlled assassinations to the point
of awarding medals for them is setting a dangerous precedent for an international
community which still vaunts itself for prosecuting war crimes for everyone except
villains from our superpower and its close allies.
We are rapidly entering the era when ‘Big Brother’ decides who can live
and who must die in order to ensure the safety of ‘our’ system of life, a life run in
reality by a minute mega-affluent minority determined to safeguard its own
dominance and fabulous wealth.
Currently the debate in Washington is not whether to curtail or eliminate
the drone killer program but whether the program should remain in the hands of the
CIA which after all, so law makers argue, was created as a spy agency and not a
killer squad.
Abominations tend to snowball.
Israel has been using drone strikes for years to kill alleged Palestinian
‘terrorists,’ combatants others might call ‘freedom fighters.’
Already drone strikes have been ‘hired out’ by the CIA in return for
‘benefits.’
When Waziristan rebel Nek Muhammed successfully fought Pakistan’s
army in his tribal homeland the CIA in 2004 (at the dawn of the drone program)
offered to ‘take out’ the bothersome rebel for the Pakistanis.
According to the authors of ‘The Way of the Knife’ and the New York
Times the CIA offered to kill Muhammed but in return demanded airspace access
over Pakistan for future drone missions into Afghan and Waziristan regions where
Al Qaeda operatives were believed to hide out.
Muhammed was ‘taken out’ (with the usual number of collateral
victims) and became a martyr to his people. And today, nine years later, CIA
drones continue to fly killer missions eliminating those enemies of the U.S.
someone in the American hierarchy adds to a blacklist of ‘persons to be
neutralized’ (permanently).
No doubt, as always in human history, remote controlled kills will
become more sophisticated in future. They may become so efficient that anyone
considered an ‘enemy’ anywhere in the world can be ‘neutralized’ without fuss,
without publicity and surely without the current and inevitable ‘collateral damage.”
Ends
Uli Schmetzer was a former foreign correspondent for Reuters and the Chicago Tribune.
He is the author of four books available in print and e-book on www.amazon.com