USA = WarCrimesR-Us <--THIS is "the story".

[99th_Monkey]

This is so disgusting, I don't have words; except to say it makes me ashamed
to be a US citizen.

~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ * ~~~~ *

Bureau Investigation Finds Fresh Evidence of CIA Drone Strikes on Rescuers
If proved, US targeting of rescuers who respond to scene of earlier explosions are clearly "war crimes"
Thursday, August 1, 2013 * Bureau of Investigative Journalism * Chris Woods with additional reporting by Mushtaq Yusufzai

A field investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in Pakistan’s tribal areas appears to confirm that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) last year briefly revived the controversial tactic of deliberately targeting rescuers at the scene of a previous drone strike. The tactic has previously been labelled a possible war crime by two UN investigators.

The Bureau’s new study focused mainly on strikes around a single village in North Waziristan – attacks that were aimed at one of al Qaeda’s few remaining senior figures, Yahya al-Libi. He was finally killed by a CIA drone strike on June 4 2012.

Congressional aides have previously been reported as describing to the Los Angeles Times reviewing a CIA video showing Yahya al-Libi alone being killed. But the Bureau’s field research appears to confirm what others reported at the time – that al-Libi’s death was part of a sequence of strikes on the same location that killed up to 16 people.

If correct, that would indicate that Congressional aides were not shown crucial additional video material.

The CIA has robustly rejected the charge. Spokesman Edward Price told the Bureau: ‘The CIA takes its commitment to Congressional oversight with the utmost seriousness. The Agency provides accurate and timely information consistent with our obligation to the oversight Committees. Any accusation alleging otherwise is baseless.’

Tactic revived

The Bureau first broke the story of the CIA’s deliberate targeting of rescuers in a February 2012 investigation for the Sunday Times. It found evidence of 11 attacks on rescuers - so-called ‘double-tap’ strikes – in Pakistan’s tribal areas between 2009 and 2011, along with a drone strike deliberately targeting a funeral, causing mass casualties.

Reports of these controversial tactics ended by July 2011. But credible news reports emerged a year later indicating that double-tap strikes had been revived.

International media including the BBC, CNN and news agency AFP variously reported that rescuers had been targeted on five occasions between May 24 and July 23 2012, with a mosque and prayers for the dead also reportedly bombed.

The Bureau commissioned a report into the alleged attacks from Mushtaq Yusufzai, a respected journalist based in Peshawar, who reports regularly for NBC and for local paper The News.

Over a period of months, Yusufzai – who has extensive government, Taliban and civilian contacts throughout Waziristan – built up a detailed understanding of the attacks through his sources.

His findings indicate that five double-tap strikes did indeed take place again in mid-2012, one of which also struck a mosque. In total 53 people were killed in these attacks with 57 injured, the report suggests.

Yusufzai could find no evidence to support media claims that rescuers had been targeted on two further occasions.

No confirmed civilian deaths were reported by local communities in any of the strikes. A woman and three children were reportedly injured in one of the attacks. Yusufzai says: ‘It is possible some civilians were killed, but we don’t know’.

However a parallel investigation by legal charity Reprieve reports that eight civilians died in a double-tap strike on July 6 2012 (see below), with the possibility of further civilian deaths in a July 23 attack.

Islamabad-based lawyer Shahzad Akbar says Reprieve’s findings are based on interviews with villagers from affected areas.

‘On both occasions [in July] our independent investigation showed a high number of civilians who were rescuers were killed in the strikes,’ says Akbar.

MORE: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/01-4

[Wilms]

1. "Terrorists" do that sort of thing all the time.

Fact is, real journalists are known to rush toward things most run away from. So there's value in a second strike.

[99th_Monkey]

2. Journalists are the new "terrorist"

along with anyone who tells a journalist embarrassing truths.

[rusty fender]

3. But it's ok when the CIA does it because

they likely had a warrant.

[99th_Monkey]

5. A secret warrant, from a secret court, as per secret laws, to defeat a secret enemy.

hmm.. there seems to be a pattern developing here.

[Hubert Flottz]

13. Careful...

the Secret Police are watching 99% of America now.

[WillyT]

4. K & R !!!

[baldguy]

6. Funny, when the Tea Baggers brought out the "Obama = Hitler" sign, everyone on DU got offended.

Now it seems to be a prerequisite fact for some people here.

[99th_Monkey]

7. "some people"

are pissed off about a bizzillion broken promises. Deal with it.

[baldguy]

15. Not every unfulfilled promise is the result a nefarious plot

And even the best political leaders can't do everything they want to do. If you don't realize that it happens, and get pissed off every time it does, then you've got the naivete of a child.

[99th_Monkey]

16. That lame case for O was maybe tenable during his first term

now, esp. with the NSA thing, not so much.

[bvar22]

21. Who "brought out the "Obama = Hitler" sign" ??

Or are you just making stuff up again?

[Electric Monk]

24. Quite a few, actually. Tea Partiers, Glenn Beck, et al.

Many examples here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/obama-hitler

[bvar22]

29. I KNOW the TeaBaggers did that, but...

...the above poster directly indicated that some on DU have done the same with THIS comment:

"Now it seems to be a prerequisite fact for some people here."

I want to see the posts on DU referenced by that comment,
OR
is he just making stuff up?

[matthews]

8. These are war crimes. (Especially for the I hate GG/ES crowd)

Sunday, Feb 5, 2012 08:51 AM CDT

U.S. drones targeting rescuers and mourners

A new amply documented report demonstrates the use of American tactics that are almost certainly war crimes

By Glenn Greenwald

A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.

Although the drone attacks were started under the Bush administration in 2004, they have been stepped up enormously under Obama.

There have been 260 attacks by unmanned Predators or Reapers in Pakistan by Obama’s administration – averaging one every four days.

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/05/u_s_drones_targeting_rescuers_and_mourners/

**

[reusrename]

9. I'm pretty sure Petraeus was fired because of the war crimes.

He was in charge of the drone program when the "double tap" drone strikes occurred.

These were the strikes that targeted emergency responders in violation of the First Geneva Convention. Any "grave breach" in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party is a war crime under US law.

The "double tap" strikes were made public about a month before Obama's re-election,

Petraeus was asked to resign a couple of days after the vote.

About a month later the UN announced the investigation into the attacks.

[DeSwiss]

10. These ''soldiers'' drone the funerals......

...of the people they've already killed with their drones in the hopes of picking-off anyone they missed. Any family members are collateral damage. Wife. Children. Mother, father. They don't give a shit.

They do this: IN. OUR. NAME.

- Ashamed? God, I have a hard time remembering when I wasn't. We're fucking barbarians.....

K&R





Wake. The. Fuck. Up.

[GiaGiovanni]

12. Sigh

Not much else to add

[Hubert Flottz]

11. Wouldn't it be funny if some of the spooks and generals that cooked this kind of thing up...

ended up under the knives of the many great Pakistani doctors, practicing medicine in almost every major city in America.

Two doctors from Pakistan did my bypass almost 15 years ago. I owe my life to their skilled hands.

Those doctors still have family in Pakistan.

If you were these doctors, would this story piss you off?

How are we defeating terrorism, by causing more hatred abroad every four days with these DUMB weapons?

[DeSwiss]

14. It's not intended to ''defeat'' terrorism.....

...but to increase our insecurities. That way the MIC stays ensconced into every facet of our lives. If we resist, the American citizen is morphed into the enemy combatant. Fuck, due process.

- And they are legitimated as are all the things they do, ''to protect us.''

[font color=gray size=3]A Different Perspective[/font]

''No one who lives in error is free.'' ~Euripides
-
"Battle not with monsters - lest ye become a monster." ~Friedrich Nietzsche
-
"To fight the empire is to be infected by its derangement. Whoever defeats part of the empire becomes the empire; it proliferates like a virus... thereby it becomes its enemies." ~Philip K. Dick
-
"When masses are made to believe something negative, they may create what they did not want, which is how for instance the 'N.W.O.' works. You are believing it is taking shape, so it will take shape and so-called think tanks and political theorists are major players in helping this take shape by bombarding us with the 'facts' that it is taking shape. Those facts claim that you are giving-in to their power everyday, and they control you more... while in reality you are in full control.

So the people who are 'waking up' to it are the ones who are creating it. They say: ''Resist, the control being forced upon humanity. React, when they do their political manueverings to bring about less sovereignty and greater suffering for the nations of the world.''

But we mustn’t resist and react to this control. As Carl Jung said, ''What you resist, persists.'' What the powers that be want is for us to become that radical element (again it doesn’t matter which side we choose). We can be either for them or against them. If we react and if we resist, we give them the manipulative power to push the agenda along. By resisting and reacting, we are demonstrating that we believe in the underlying, subliminal and hypnotic suggestion of this reality, thereby making it our reality, and the events they wish to occur concerning humanity, and that they wish to appear real, will occur and it becomes our reality.

Do not pay attention to the 'world events', they are all orchestrated to make you pay attention to them. The struggle you should pay attention to is on a personal level."

~The Insider

[99th_Monkey]

17. And to make sure we have an adequate number of NEW Terrorists in the pipeline

Otherwise how could we keep conjuring up an endless "war on terror" for
the Munitions Industry? Gotta have new fodder at the ready.

[Hubert Flottz]

18. To "Defeat Terrorism" was how all this "Sweeping New Power" was sold to us

By BushCo.

To make all these "SWEEPING" changes to our country, seems to me like an admission, that the terrorists have won, in their battle to destroy democracy in the USA.

[DeSwiss]

19. There was never any kind of ''win'' possible.

But we Americans are a simple peaceable folk. We don't question such things. It's unseemly. We listen without hearing so we don't have to understand. We do without understanding so we won't question and bring attention to ourselves. Homogeneity is paramount, all the while we tout individuality and free will.

- We brought nothing with us. We own nothing while we're here, we're just renters. And we can never take anything away with us when we go. So what's to win???

"To fight the empire is to be infected by its derangement. Whoever defeats part of the empire becomes the empire; it proliferates like a virus... thereby it becomes its enemies."

~Philip K. Dick

[Electric Monk]

20. ...but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now...

[bvar22]

22. Imagine how YOU would feel IF

..Some Foreign Country sneaked a stealth a drone in here and BOMBED YOUR neighborhood,
and killed YOUR children and Friends,
and MAIMED many others.
And THEN when the Rescue Workers arrived,
BOMBED THEM AGAIN killing the Rescue Workers and survivors from the 1st Bombing,

...and THEN said it was "OK" and "legal" because they "suspected" that a "terrorist" might have been hiding nearby.

[font size=3]"Sorry about your kids and all, man, but we suspected that somebody we think might have been a terrorist, or had a connection with somebody we think might have been a terrorist was there....somewhere."[/font]



Can YOU IMAGINE?
If you can't, thats OK.
That requires something called "empathy",
and I've been told that some people lack that capacity.

[99th_Monkey]

23. +100 ~nt

[RC]

26. +100

That is exactly it. Way too many in this country cannot imagine any other country actually attacking us,because we are the best at being the most holy. We can do no wrong because we are the greatest nation ever.
All together now! USA, USA, USA! RA, RA, RA! Everything we do is good! Yea Team! And again...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

25. I'm sure the murderers will be pursued, indicted, and tried just like Manning has been.

Probably on the same day that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are tried.

Won't they?

[99th_Monkey]

27. When You See Pigs Flying

And not until.

[Logical]

28. Kick! n-t