US drones kill Pakistani mosque-goers

This video from Scotland says about itself:

In Pollokshields on June 4th 2010 at a public meeting at which Labour Party Pakistan general secreary Farooq Tariq also spoke, SSP’s James Nesbitt spoke on the War on Terror in Pakistan and Afghanistan, how it’s not working and how the war in Pakistan is a secret war: it hasn’t even been declared!

So although the people of Pakistan are only too keenly aware of the bombs dropping on their villages in the drone attacks, the western public are largely ignorant of the fact, thinking that the attacks have been confined to Afghanistan.

He compared it with the Vietnam War where they also dropped thousands of tonnes of bombs on Cambodia and Laos. Laos became the most bombed country in history. Likewise with Pakistan, it has been reported that the “War on Terror” has involved pursuing some Taliban over the border of Afghanistan into Pakistan, but they fail to mention the drones carpet-bombing whole villages full of innocent civilians in that part of Pakistan, basically destroying any town where there is a mosque, in case it might be Taliban-controlled.

By Bill Van Auken in the USA:

US steps up drone war on Pakistan

25 May 2012

US drone attacks in northwest Pakistan killed at least 14 people in little more than 24 hours, including 10 who died in a Thursday morning missile strike on a mosque.

The escalation of the US drone war comes in the wake of the NATO summit in Chicago, where the Obama administration and the Pakistan Peoples Party government of President Asif Ali Zardari failed to reach an agreement on the reopening of a supply route for US-NATO occupation troops in Afghanistan. The route, which goes from the port of Karachi to the Afghan border, was closed by Islamabad in protest over US air strikes that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers last November.

The new drone strikes are the most lethal manifestations of Washington’s displeasure at Pakistan’s failure to rapidly bow to US demands. The aftermath of the summit has also seen threats in Congress to cut off aid to Pakistan and a hysterical political and media campaign over a Pakistani court’s sentencing of a CIA informant who helped prepare the Navy Seal raid that ended in the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

Thursday’s missile strike by a pilotless US drone demolished a mosque in Mir Ai Bazar, a village in the North Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan. Local officials reported that the unmanned plane fired two missiles demolishing the building and leaving 10 dead and several others wounded.

“Fear prevailed in the area as almost five drones were seen flying in the air after the incident,” local sources told the Pakistani daily Nation. The threat that the aircraft would fire more missiles prevented villagers from trying to rescue people from the rubble.

“The drone fired two missiles and hit the village mosque where a number of people were offering Fajr (morning) prayer,” Roashan Din, a local tribal leader, told NBC News. He confirmed that 10 bodies had been pulled from the wreckage of the mosque.

While US officials described the target of the attack as a “compound,” multiple Pakistani sources have confirmed that the building hit was a mosque.

Doctors at the Mir Ali hospital reported that six wounded had been admitted, with one dying there and four others remaining in critical condition.

The missile strike follows another attack on Wednesday in which four people were killed and several others injured. As in all such attacks, the victims were described as “suspected militants.” Wednesday’s strike targeted a house near Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan.

These drone attacks are deeply unpopular in Pakistan, where it is estimated that they have killed as many as 3,000 people, most of them civilians. The report of the destruction of a mosque and more civilian casualties will no doubt fan growing anti-American sentiments, further complicating the attempts of the Zardari government and the Obama administration to reach a deal on reopening the Pakistan supply route.

Pakistan’s Foreign Office condemned the latest drone strikes, describing them as a “total violation” of Pakistani territory and sovereignty. Foreign Office spokesman Moazzam Khan characterized the US attacks as “illegal violations of international law and unacceptable.”

Drone Warfare: Killing Our Civil Liberties With a Joystick. Ed Kinane, Truthout: “Drone warfare is cowardly. A technician jiggles a joystick. Seconds later, thousands of miles away, a Reaper drone robot airplane fires a Hellfire missile, maiming or dismembering unsuspecting, unarmed, often unidentified human beings. That technician, along with his or her chain of command, plays god – a god who takes no risk in taking those human lives”: here.

USA: Drone Program Aims to “Accelerate” Use of Unmanned Aircraft by Police: here.

Medea Benjamin, OR Books: “Internationally renowned activist Medea Benjamin has written a compelling case against drones. One of the most fearful aspects is that drone technology is growing so rapidly in so many nations that soon the nations the US deems enemies will be using them against our forces and us. Furthermore, there is about to be an explosion of drone use domestically that will be used for surveillance and potentially for firing on perceived criminals or enemies of the state”: here.

Congress Should Ban Armed Drones Before Cops in Texas Deploy One: here.

An Interview With Medea Benjamin About the Life-and-Death Decisions of Drone Warfare. Mark Karlin, Truthout: “One poll shows that eight out of ten Americans support the use of lethal drones. That’s because drones have been posed as a cheap alternative for killing our enemies that puts no American lives at risk and only hits the ‘bad guys.’ In reality, they are not all that cheap (especially since they are constantly crashing), they kill lots of innocent people, and while they don’t put pilots at risk, they stir up anti-American sentiment and provoke new attacks against us”: here.

Nearly half a million Pakistanis are estimated to have fled fighting between soldiers and militia on the Afghan border with more than 264,000 registered for aid, officials said Monday: here.

A REPORT published yesterday by Stanford University and New York University warns that the CIA’s drone campaign ‘terrorises men, women and children’ in North-West Pakistan ‘twenty-four hours a day’: here.