US drone strike kills 8 in Pakistani school, 5 children

[n2doc]

Just hours after a promise not to launch any more drone strikes against Pakistan for the duration of their peace talks with the Taliban, a US drone pounded a religious school in Hangu.

The attack killed eight people, including three teachers and five students. A number of others were wounded in the attack, and drones continued to loom overhead after the attack.

It’s noteworthy for a lot of reasons, and not just that it broke yet another promise. Hangu is not in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where US drone strikes have almost exclusively hit, but is in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwah (KP) Province. Hitting a proper province is much more controversial within Pakistan, and a major backlash is expected on a national level.

But that may pale in comparison to the backlash on a provincial level, as the KP Province is ruled by Pakistani Tehreek-e Insaf (PTI), an anti-drone party ruled by Imran Khan which had threatened to blockade the NATO supply route through its province into occupied Afghanistan if the drone strikes didn’t end. They gave an initial deadline of November 20… the day of the latest attack, so it will likely be interpreted locally as timed explicitly to spite them.

more

http://www.hangthebankers.com/us-drone-strike-kills-8-in-pakistani-school-5-children-dead/

[Dreamer Tatum]

1. kick nt

[joelz]

2. yea but its only a

war crime if you recognize the legitimacy of international law

[LittleBlue]

3. RIP

More victims of murder by drone.

[seveneyes]

4. Someone is misrepresenting the truth

Who to believe? A UsaToday news report says 5 militants killed:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/11/21/pakistan-drone-strike/3661207/

Or a HangTheBankers website says 3 teachers and 5 students.

[RC]

6. Those school kids were all militants. Problem solved.

BTY, when was the last time Congress declared war on a country and which country might that be?

This arrangement could be understood in two ways. The first is that the president has the power to engage military forces in war on his own authority, and the Congress, if it chooses, can declare the president's action a war. That's what we have now. The legal infirmity of this approach is that if the framers intended the president to conduct a war on his own authority, they would not have included a provision for Congress to declare war, for declaring war would be a pointless act.

The second way to understand the language of the Constitution is that only the Congress can involve the country in war, and after it does that, the president has the duty and authority to command the armed forces. This interpretation gives effect to both the Congressional and presidential roles, but that's what we don't have now.

One of the justifications for the present arrangement is that limited military actions are not war. Instead, they are police actions or limited military engagements. But not war.

Anyone can see the fallacy of this by simply considering what we would think if a foreign state landed troops in the Continental United States or fired a missile into Florida. We would think that was war. George Bush had no difficulty concluding we were at war when Al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center.

An additional difficulty with our present practice is that it places the well-being of the entire country and possibly the world in the hands of one man. That is self-evidently insane and not something the framers, with their penchant for checks and balances, were likely to intend.

http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/09/presidential-authority-constitution-power-declare-war/

[KoKo]

8. "Democracy Now" reported it this Morning....

Children were killed.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. The Dawn (Pakistani newspaper) report the website takes it from just calls them 'people'

and describes it as a 'seminary', meaning a place of religious study for adults.

Tal police official Sher Zaman said six people were killed in the attack. The six include Kaleemullah, Abdul Rehman, Mufti Hamidullah Haqqani, Maulvi Ahmed Jan, Abdullah and Gul Marjan, he said.

Moreover, sources told Dawn.com that Jan is said to be a key leader associated with the Haqqani network.

Official sources said Jan, believed to be a key leader of Haqqani network, had come to visit madrassah teacher Gul Marjan.
...
Mufti Naimatullah, the in-charge of the seminary, however said that those killed in the strike have been identified as Maulvi Usman, a Pakistani national, while the other four killed were Afghans.

http://dawn.com/news/1057599

And only the headline of 'Hang the Bankers' calls them children.

[Comrade Grumpy]

5. I feel safer already. A couple more drone strikes and it'll be all over. Right?

[malaise]

7. Good Effin' grief

When is enough enough!!

[Glassunion]

10. Yeah!

Mission accomplished and stuff!

[PowerToThePeople]

11. But when

[NuclearDem]

12. But we have to stay in Afghanistan for the women and children!

[woo me with science]

13. K&R

[woo me with science]

14. kick

[Bonobo]

15. I would argue that Obama earned his Nobel with this deal.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024084704

Ooops, wrong thread.

[Bonobo]

16. I wish you "cranks" would stop talking about this!

Haven't you got the updated list?

[woo me with science]

17. kick

[The Midway Rebel]

18. k&r