US ‘Expands Yemen Drone Strikes Policy’
MILITARISM, 30 Apr 2012
Al Jazeera – TRANSCEND Media Service
CIA and Pentagon given right to launch attacks even when identity of those in harm’s way is not known, reports say.
Barack Obama has approved a new policy shift which allows the Central Intelligence Agency and the US military to launch drone attacks in Yemen when the identity of those who could be killed is not known, according to US media reports.
The Washington Post, quoting administration officials, said on Thursday [26 Apr 2012] that the US president approved the use of “signature” strikes this month.
It also said that the killing of an alleged al-Qaeda fighter earlier this week near the border to Yemen’s Marib province was among the first attacks carried out under the new authority.
The shift in policy is said to mark a significant expansion of the drone war against what the US alleges to be a group affiliated with al-Qaeda which is located in Yemen.
The Wall Street Journal quotes US officials as saying that the amended policy includes targeting fighters whose names are not known but who are deemed to be “high-value terrorism targets, or threats to the US”.
Some congressional officials have expressed concern over the use of such signature strikes, stating that they raise the likelihood of killing fighters who may not be involved in plots either to do with attacks against the US, or affiliated with al-Qaeda, potentially angering the local population and pushing them to join in the struggle against the US.
The Wall Street Journal quotes a US official as saying “Every Yemeni is armed, so how can they differentiate between suspected militants and armed Yemenis?”
The signature strikes have to be approved by Yemen before they are conducted, according to Yemeni and US officials.
In a related development, Yemeni officials rejected on Wednesday a request from the CIA and US military to expand the signature strikes to the target of groups who they deem to be fighters.
US officials say the CIA and US military had asked the White House for permission to target larger groups if intelligence points to al-Qaeda-related activity, as the CIA does in Pakistan’s tribal regions.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive strategic matters.
Go to Original – aljazeera.com
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As Lester Brown noted at his Earth Policy Institute web site, the Republic of Yemen has experienced massive immigration into their nation from eastern Africa during recent years. Tens of thousands of people have fled violence, hunger and disease, from that region, and on over into the Yemeni republic. At first, endless cheap labor seems very attractive, yet over time, this endless poverty puts a mighty strain on the economy. We have seen this first-hand in the United States, where the welfare system is faltering, while certain contractors get rich. The Yemeni republic stands to lose its main resouce – that is, oil – in approximately ten years. What is happening there at the present is merely the prelude to what is to be expected in the not-too-distant future. It is convenient for governments to seek the path of least resistance, and to ascribe the atmosphere of violence there to “terrorism”; yet there are moral consequences that are not being taken into consideration, while the demographic reality is being ignored. Be careful that you don’t yield up your soul. If you don’t believe in an after-life, then you could find yourself in some very real trouble when you leave this world someday.
“Terrorism” is a “loaded word” that generates an emotional response from the uneducated and naive. The reality of the pressures of over-population should be given equal time; yet we have seen the Catholic voting block put up barriers to promoting artificial birth control (going in the wrong direction, fellas), as a kind of “reaction formation” to the little sexual abuse scandal that the Catholic Church has had to handle. Who will take responsibility for this misdirected policy? The same hierarchy that took responsibility for the sexual abuse of little boys, across the wide ocean blue, I can just bet . . . .
There is a method for determining right social policy that is treated in political discussions as though it were a social disease. The truth regarding a social policy – for example, the promotion of family planning – could be determined if only hierarchs of the rank of the Pope were to consider this method more closely. (I would include Rev. Billy Graham in this order of rarefied clerical hierarchs.) In the Old Testament there was an attempt to know the will of God through the seeking of knowledge through the oracle. In the New Testament, at, for example, John 6:1,2 it is stated that people followed Jesus of Nazareth because of the miraculous signs that he had performed on the sick. Our society seems determined to “exclude God from human history,” as my Study Bible explains this situation. We need religious leaders who encourage individuals to seek knowledge of God, and signs and revelations from God. I don’t see that happening. Even people who regularly attend church services probably regard this as being unrealistic. This same sub-culture probably skips the study of Scripture, preferring instead to have a kind of fast-food religion where you don’t have to respond to the precept to live on every word of God.
“Put more drones on the border, and secure our borders. Fight our forest fires with the kind of money that Americans have been so willing to spend on conflicts half the distance around the globe. Get better equipment to save our forests from the ruin of fires, and employ those laborers who would no longer be quite so necessary for fighting forest fires, as laborers who could clear the debris from forests that give those fires extra fuel to burn faster. Recycle that forest floor debris for compost or ethanol fuel. Use the grain for feeding humans.