WTF?!? - Obama Killing Too Many Terrorists

[kpete]

Too Many Dead Terrorists
Marc Thiessen, former President Bush's speechwriter and the author of Courting Disaster, now complains that President Obama is killing too many terrorists.

"Today, the Obama administration is no longer attempting to capture men like these alive; it is simply killing them. This may be satisfying, but it comes at a price. With every drone strike that vaporizes a senior al Qaeda leader, actionable intelligence is vaporized along with him. Dead terrorists can't tell you their plans to strike America."

Read more: http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/02/11/too_many_dead_terrorists.html#ixzz0fFZYmw3R

[Robb]

1. Coming from Thiessen, the takeaway should be we need to kill more. nt

[Mari333]

2. pot calls kettle black.

[Rabrrrrrr]

3. Fucking hell - they really are the party of no, aren't they?

Never fucking satisfied.

And then if the terrorists were captured instead, Obama would be criticized for feeding and housing them and allowing them to continue spewing their garbage.

[KansDem]

4. "Dead terrorists can't tell you their plans to strike America."

Live ones can...and did.

[NC_Nurse]

5. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. So obvious.

[NJmaverick]

6. "Dead terrorists can tell you their plans to attack America"

I find dead terrorists generally are not all that much of a threat to our Country.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

7. Right for the Wrong Reasons

Extrajudicial assassinations are illegal in the US, internationally and just plain wrong.

Lots of innocents are under those bombs as well.

[Goldstein1984]

12. The most fundamental of points

and the most slippery of slopes. And it didn't start in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Extrajudicial extermination is illegal, and unconstitutional when the target is a U.S. citizen. Did I forget to mention, immoral?

And the innocents... I understand that the term applied to noncombatants killed during drone attacks is "bug splat"...

"Killing civilians, it seems, was part of the Pentagon’s plan right from the beginning. According to Nairn, a feasibility study done by the Pentagon before the 2003 invasion of Iraq showed that of the 22 attacks planned the first day, approximately 30 civilians would be killed in each attack. The study referred to the civilian deaths as “bug splat.” This study was presented to Gen. Tommy Franks, who said to go ahead, do them all."

and...

"Investigative journalist Allan Nairn, interviewed Jan. 6 on WBAI Radio’s “Democracy Now!” explained that the U.S. had implemented the “El Salvador Option” in Iraq. This meant copying the death squads Washington set up in Central America in the 1980s under Gen. Stanley McCrystal’s direction. This killing of local leaders is flippantly called “man hunting,” said Nairn."

Source: http://www.workers.org/2010/world/yemen_0211/

[Nuclear Unicorn]

13. Your link would never survive public ridicule...

Sorry, that's just the way it is.

but perhaps a better tack would be to suspend all drone strikes until "all questions" could be cleared.

[Goldstein1984]

14. Then the public has my ridicule

Those who aren't happy with a source and always open their minds long enough to do a quick Google search:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/08-3

http://panafricannews.blogspot.com/2010/02/expanding-war-to-yemen-pentagon-war-on.html

http://motherjones.com/politics/2008/03/us-militarys-assassination-problem

On edit: fixed typo

[Nuclear Unicorn]

15. Alas...

...until you are president you are dependent upon them to bring pressure to bear on those who are in power.

Be that as it may, thanks for the links. :hi: :hug:

[Goldstein1984]

16. You're welcome

I read the reference to "bug splat" some time back, so I knew other links were out there.

When I am President I assume that Wall Street will be dictating my every move.

I don't believe Washington answers to the public anymore, so I'm relying on future history to set things right. My charitable contributions now go to NGOs working to ensure that misdeeds are made public and documented, and that history will call a war criminal a war criminal. When I started this effort, I assumed the man I voted for in 2008 wouldn't be among the infamous, but I believe history will prove otherwise.

[Ozymanithrax]

8. Drones are used because we can't get people in to capture them...

They guys an idiot that would bitch if he were hung with a new rope.

[libodem]

Gross

They want them alive to have somebody to torture. Most of the time I can not get my head around the cognitive dissonance that it takes to think about this crap.

Remember the Iraq battle fields where our military leadership was so pissed about the nerve of men who fought back not being in 'uniforms'. They were described as being disguised as civilians.

Remember sometime shortly after we invaded Afghanistan about 2000 Afghan men were just slaughtered on the spot after a few were rounded up and carted off.

Remember the Bush administration arguing that we do not torture we use enhanced interrogation: it's only semantics. A fucking word game to them.

We can't torture prisoners of war according to the Geneva Conventions so they are 'called' detainees.

Only a word game to them.

Remember the 3 dead prisoners at Gitmo who hung 'themselves', with rags stuffed down their throats so far that they were unmovable, the hands and feet were tied, they (all 3) simultaneously did exactly the same put their heads through the nooses (tightened them) and jumped off something. This was called: Asymmetrical warfare? OMG!!!! As if those prisoners were fighting back in a way that made the military look bad?????

Why isn't sending a drone Asymmetrical warfare? Sarah Palin's helicopter wolf hunts seem more fair.

All in all I'm sick of the 1984 Orwellian doublespeak, marketing and advertising sell of these outlandishly unfair shitty fucking wars and the Republicans who love and support the nefarious oil and pipeline projects they are really all about. I'm sick of the Dems who have been hijacked into supporting it all. Only to have them kicked in the teeth for doing so.

It's all just fucked up and I don't get it.

[libodem]

9. Gross

They want them alive to have somebody to torture. Most of the time I can not get my head around the cognitive dissonance that it takes to think about this crap.

Remember the Iraq battle fields where our military leadership was so pissed about the nerve of men who fought back not being in 'uniforms'. They were described as being disguised as civilians.

Remember sometime shortly after we invaded Afghanistan about 2000 Afghan men were just slaughtered on the spot after a few were rounded up and carted off.

Remember the Bush administration arguing that we do not torture we use enhanced interrogation: it only semantics. A fucking word game to them.

We can't torture prisoners of war according to the Geneva Conventions so they are 'called' detainees.

Only a word game to them.

Remember the 3 dead prisoners at Gitmo who hung 'themselves', with rags stuffed down their throats so far that they were unmovable, the hands and feet were tied, they (all 3) simultaneously did exactly the same put their heads through the nooses (tightened them) and jumped off something. This was called: Asymmetrical warfare? OMG!!!! As if those prisoners were fighting back in a way that made the military look bad?????

Why isn't sending a drone Asymmetrical warfare? Sarah Palin's helicopter wolf hunts seem more fair.

All in all I'm sick of the 1984 Orwellian doublespeak, marketing and advertising sell of these outlandishly unfair shitty fucking wars and the Republicans who love and support the nefarious oil and pipeline projects they are really all about. I'm sick of the Dems who have been hijacked into supporting it all. Only to have them kicked in the teeth for doing so.

It's all just fucked up and I don't get it.

[jtuck004]

10. Mr. Thiessen must be on a quest

to give meaning to the phrase "to damn with faint praise". He talks about how effective we are at killing "terrorists" with drones, then says we would gain more if we undertook to capture and interrogate them. He knows this will drive American casualties higher, makes me wonder how many American soldiers he is comfortable with losing, allowing them to bleed out on the sands of Pakistan, alone and afraid, for his quest. 5000, 10,000? I wish he would speak out loud to that. Because though we could do that, the value of doing so in a war which is likely to gain us so little is next to nothing.

We need to make it easy for the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan to give up Osama Bin Laden. Not an easy task, because deeply held in their culture, maybe as deep as in their DNA, is the need to protect people their enemy wants. We have made ourselves the enemy, however, to a great number of people there who were our friends in times past, who were shocked and saddened by 9/11 and subsequent events. Then we could help these good people rebuild their countries. Or maybe just forget him and help them rebuild anyway. Terrorists are going to be a fact of life for at least the next 3-4 generations. People are being taught in the extremist madrassas (not all madrassas teach these philosophies, but a few still do). They are encouraging some not to fight, but to marry and have families, and their children are being groomed to be the "terrorists" of the next generation. Our drones and soldiers won't stop that. But a girl's school in the village just might.

Or maybe nobody really cares anymore, and the "keep America safe" theme is just a smokescreen, just a delaying action to keep our forces in place to act against Iran when the time comes. And it sure looks some people are trying to make that happen, on both sides.

[Carni]

11. Damn! You're blinding me with all those hearts!

It's a shame you're so unpopular (lol)

But seriously as to the topic here WTF? INDEED!