Air Strikes Pushing Pakistan into Khmer Rouge Type Genocide

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Air Strikes Pushing Pakistan into Khmer Rouge Type Genocide

Post by ben ttech »

Could U.S. Air Strikes Push Pakistan into Khmer Rouge Type Genocide?


Tomdispatch.com / By Pratap Chatterjee and Tom Engelhardt
Could U.S. Air Strikes Push Pakistan into Khmer Rouge Type Genocide?

As in the 1960s in Cambodia, U.S. air strikes are having a devastating effect in Pakistan, not just on the targeted communities, but on public consciousness throughout the region.



Almost every day, reports come back from the CIA’s “secret” battlefield in the Pakistani tribal borderlands. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles -- that is, pilot-less drones -- shoot missiles (18 of them in a single attack on a tiny village last week) or drop bombs and then the news comes in: a certain number of al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders or suspected Arab or Uzbek or

Afghan “militants” have died. The numbers are often remarkably precise. Sometimes they are attributed to U.S. sources, sometimes to the Pakistanis; sometimes, it’s hard to tell where the information comes from. In the Pakistani press, on the other hand, the numbers that come back are usually of civilian dead. They, too, tend to be precise.

Don’t let that precision fool you. Here’s the reality: There are no reporters on the ground and none of these figures can be taken as accurate. Let’s just consider the CIA side of things. Any information that comes from American sources (i.e. the CIA) has to be looked at with great wariness. As a start, the CIA’s history is one of deception. There’s no reason to take anything its sources say at face value. They will report just what they think it’s in their interest to report -- and the ongoing “success” of their drone strikes is distinctly in their interest.


Then, there’s history. In the present drone wars, as in the CIA’s bloody Phoenix Program in the Vietnam era, the Agency’s operatives, working in distinctly alien terrain, must rely on local sources (or possibly official Pakistani ones) for targeting intelligence. In Vietnam in the 1960s, the Agency’s Phoenix Program -- reportedly responsible for the assassination of 20,000 Vietnamese -- became, according to historian Marilyn Young, “an extortionist’s paradise, with payoffs as available for denunciation as for protection.” Once again, the CIA is reportedly passing out bags of moneyand anyone on the ground with a grudge, or the desire to eliminate an enemy, or simply the desire to make some of that money can undoubtedly feed information into the system, watch the drones do their damnedest, and then report back that more “terrorists” are dead. Just assume that at least some of those “militants” dying in Pakistan, and possibly many of them, aren’t who the CIA hopes they are.

Think of it as a foolproof situation, with an emphasis on the “fool.” And then keep in mind that, in December, the CIA’s local brain trust, undoubtedly the same people who were leaking precise news of “successes” in Pakistan, mistook a jihadist double agent from Jordan for an agent of theirs, gathered at an Agency base in Khost, Afghanistan, and let him wipe them out with a suicide bomb. Seven CIA operatives died, including the base chief. This should give us a grim clue as to the accuracy of the CIA’s insights into what’s happening on the ground in Pakistan, or into the real effects of their 24/7 robotic assassination program.

But there’s a deeper, more dangerous level of deception in


Washington’s widening war in the region: self-deception. The CIA drone program, which the Agency’s Director Leon Panetta has called “the only game in town” when it comes to dismantling al-Qaeda, is just symptomatic of such self-deception. While the CIA and the U.S. military have been expending enormous effort studying the Afghan and Pakistani situations and consulting experts, and while the White House has conducted an extensive series of seminars-cum-policy-debates on both countries, you can count on one thing: none of them have spent significant time studying or thinking about us.



this goes on for several more pages...


http://www.alternet.org/story/145576/co ... e_genocide" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LB05Df01.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"disaster is the mother of necessity" rSin

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Air Strikes Pushing Pakistan into Khmer Rouge Type Genocide

Post by bubbabush »

Into the mid '90s, my step-mom was still running special-services carpet tours to Peshawer and the Khyber every year in the Spring. That woman knows carpets like a bazari, and only bought the smallest knots in West Pakistan when she went there, they are the pure products of child labor and she made quite a bit of money off of them. Of course, like all true capitalists, she didn't need any of it.

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Air Strikes Pushing Pakistan into Khmer Rouge Type Genocide

Post by J.D. »

bubbabush wrote:Into the mid '90s, my step-mom was still running special-services carpet tours to Peshawer and the Khyber every year in the Spring. That woman knows carpets like a bazari, and only bought the smallest knots in West Pakistan when she went there, they are the pure products of child labor and she made quite a bit of money off of them. Of course, like all true capitalists, she didn't need any of it.

~O~

No capitalists “need any of" the money they earn? Not a single one of them needs a single penny of it?

Go ahead and just try to prove that to be true.

And to think you are baffled why I call you a Socialist.

Socialism is simply Communism for people without the testosterone to man the barricades.

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Air Strikes Pushing Pakistan into Khmer Rouge Type Genocide

Post by A Bloke Down The Pub »

J.D. wrote:Socialism is simply Communism for people without the testosterone to man the barricades.
You're repeating yourself.





And being way too simplistic.

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Air Strikes Pushing Pakistan into Khmer Rouge Type Genocide

Post by bubbabush »

Yeah, like all true capitalists, she didn't need the money. I know that you don't understand it, but it's not my job to hold your hand.

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Air Strikes Pushing Pakistan into Khmer Rouge Type Genocide

Post by messy slob »

Liberals Get a War President of Their Very Own
http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e24617.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Despite their superficial differences, both parties fervently agree on the crucial importance of making life easier for apex predators.

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Air Strikes Pushing Pakistan into Khmer Rouge Type Genocide

Post by J.D. »

A Bloke Down The Pub wrote:
J.D. wrote:Socialism is simply Communism for people without the testosterone to man the barricades.
You're repeating yourself.
Certain things are worth repeating. It happens all the time.


And being way too simplistic.
Some things only appear to be simplistic if the person thinking about them is too limited to fully understand them and grasp them and those who simply want to reject what it said because it does not fit what they want and need to believe will attempt to make them appear more simplistic than they are in hopes of discrediting them.

I wonder which of the two best fits you in this case. My guess is the former, no .. make that the latter .. no .. wait ... no ... ok, in your case I am sure its both. You can’t grasp and understand it but you still fear and hate the truth you cannot see and worry others will understand it so you use the tactic for both reasons.

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Air Strikes Pushing Pakistan into Khmer Rouge Type Genocide

Post by bentech »

this was good...
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Air Strikes Pushing Pakistan into Khmer Rouge Type Genoc

Post by Jesús Malverde »

BB and Bloke were excellent contributors; J.D., not so much.
One for the rook

One for the crow

One to rot

and one to grow

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Air Strikes Pushing Pakistan into Khmer Rouge Type Genoc

Post by Intrinsic »

Messy slob, I enjoyed al lthe back and forth over GW. He could really argue logically which was annoying, :grin: but at least he would concede a point, and open my eyes couple times

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