Rep. Michele Bachmann Completely Baffles John Brennan With Bizarre Questions During CIA Hearing

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15. Actually, US & NATO were flying armed drones in Libya before Benghazi. Question isn't so bizarre.

According to The Guardian, both American and UK pilots were operating armed US drones during the NATO airstrikes that took down the Ghadaffi regime in 2011. Bachman (who is, I agree, bizarre) appears to have actually been asking a reasonable question (gasp) about when that stopped and when and if such flights were commenced by the CIA in Eastern Libya prior to the Benghazi attack.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/26/british-pilots-drones-libya

British pilots flew armed US drones in Libya, MoD reveals

Disclosure comes 10 months after end of a campaign in which the government insisted no British drones were involved

Nick Hopkins
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 July 2012 13.26 EDT

RAF pilots flew armed US drones as part of Nato's military effort in last year's Libyan conflict, the Ministry of Defence has revealed.

The disclosure, slipped out in a parliamentary answer, comes 10 months after the end of a campaign in which the UK government had insisted no British drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), were involved.

Though that remains true, the MoD has admitted RAF personnel on an exchange programme in the US flew American Predator drones, which were a key component of the air campaign.

The US announced last April it was deploying two patrols of armed UAVs above Libya and they launched numerous missile strikes against buildings, tanks and other military equipment being used by forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi.

Between April and October the Predators conducted 145 air strikes in Libya, the Pentagon said. It is not known how many missions were flown by the British, or how many targets were destroyed by them.

The deployment of drones has become a hugely sensitive subject, primarily because of the way the Americans have used them for cross-border raids on Taliban and al-Qaida suspects in Pakistan.

Please, see, related post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021333915