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and The War President drones on
latest update in our ongoing series on "The War President" :
Barack O'Blackwater is outsmarted with $26 software in Iraq
while his warmongering booms from Afghanistan to Pakistan
On January 23, 2009, only three days into Barack Obama's term as America's New Same-Old War President, he ordered drone missile attacks in the Waziri tribal region of Pakistan. In the following 10 months in office, Obama gave new meaning to his slogan "Change You Can Believe In" by breaking George W. Bush's dubious achievement records, with more violations of national sovereignty and international law, more "collateral damage" of homes and public buildings, more loss of life and limb suffered by innocent poor civilians.
According to the report Revenge of the Drones filed in October by The New America Foundation, a D.C. think tank, Barack Obama already had "ratcheted up the American drone program" by waging 41 drone offensives in Pakistan, contrasted with a total of 34 for Bush's full final year. Moreover, the report's fresh analysis of both administrations' use of drones, from Bush in 2006 to Obama in October 2009, estimates civilian deaths totalling between 31 and 33 percent. Obama is granted credit, so to speak, for having "killed a slightly lower percentage of civilians" i.e. 25%.
Obama's hypocritical policy of Peace Through War is all too familiar to the common people of Pakistan as well as to their lofty government and religious leaders. From their close-up-and-personal view on the ground, little else can unite the country's disparate groups quite like death and destruction visited upon their heads by yet another spoiled and arrogant U.S. president, cavalierly and coldly deciding their fate from his safety and comfort half a world away.
His warmongering likewise has drawn fire from Philip Alston, U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, mandated to investigate violence against civilians and other violations of human rights. At a U.N. meeting in New York City on October 27th, Alston told members of the General Assembly's social-humanitarian-cultural committee that Barack Obama's use of drones via the Central Intelligence Agency "is killing a significant number of people, and there is absolutely no accountability"— repeating much of Alston's prior criticism in a similar report back in June, and once again eliciting no direct public response from Obama beyond his quacks-like-Bush, walks-like-Bush employment of the notorious private contractor, Xe Services, better known under its former name of Blackwater, in the CIA's MQ-1 Predator drone program, and his claim that Alston and the U.N. supposedly have no jurisdiction over "killings that occur in the context of an armed conflict" no matter whether Obama's locus of interest is Pakistan, Colombia, or his ancestral homeland of Kenya.
Is this president different from Bush? The warmonger's acceptance of a Nobel prize for peace is the latest instance of bitter irony that he could accomplish the impossible: Obama actually might be worse than Bush's harshest critics ever imagined.
latest update!
Meanwhile, Barack Obama reportedly has ordered the U.S. Air Force to deploy Predator and MQ-9 Reaper planes, along with the unarmed top-secret "Beast of Kandahar" stealth drone for reconnaissance, throughout Afghanistan and Iraq. Is Blackwater/Xe involved in any of those programs? The mercenary company is already in place there; they have a long lucrative contract with the signatures of Obama and Congress tucked in their pocket. You can safely bet they and their cohorts at Triple Canopy and DynCorp will keep their bloody hand in the war game, until We the People whack them hard from knuckles to head.
Could President O'Blackwater's waste of lives, minds and money possibly be a bigger, sicker and sadder joke?
According to his own "intelligence" and "defense" officials— cited by Siobhan Gorman at the Wall Street Journal, echoed in reports filed by CBS correspondents Elizabeth Palmer and Declan McCullagh among many others in the mainstream press— the overeducated Commander-in-Chief has been outmaneuvered by enemies making clever use of $26 shareware programs to intercept and crack the drones' video feeds. Some American surveillance video has no encryption whatsoever; encrypted data has been easily cracked by a cheap Windows tool called SkyGrabber that "intercepts satellite data (movie, music, pictures)" for offline downloading to a person's computer. Designed by Sky Software Inc., which doesn't publicize a real-world address but is likely the invention of a Russian programmer and maybe a partner or two, SkyGrabber's trialware installer is a 3.5MB download (a small Inno setup) from the company's webpages. It can be unlocked via typical registration methods.
endnotes
- Deadly missiles strike Pakistan by BBC News, January 2009. «The second attack was aimed at the house of a Taleban commander about 10km (six miles) from the town of Wanna, local reports said. But officials told the BBC that the drone actually hit the house of a pro-government tribal leader, killing him and four members of his family, including a five-year-old child. More than 20 attacks have been carried out from drones on targets in north-western Pakistan in recent months, sparking protests from Pakistan's government.»
- US Still Paying Blackwater Millions by Jeremy Scahill, The Nation, August 2009. «since President Barack Obama took office in January the State Department has contracted with Blackwater for more than $174 million in "security services" alone in Iraq and Afghanistan and tens of millions more in "aviation services." Much of this money stems from existing contracts from the Bush era that have been continued by the Obama administration. While Obama certainly inherited a mess when it came to Blackwater's entrenchment in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has continued the widespread use of armed private contractors in both countries. Blackwater's role may be slowly shrinking, but its work is continuing through companies such as DynCorp and Triple Canopy.»
- Revenge of the Drones : An Analysis of Drone Strikes in Pakistan by Peter Bergen & Katherine Tiedemann, New America Foundation, October 2009. «Obama, far from curtailing the drone program he inherited from President George W. Bush, has instead dramatically increased the number of U.S. Predator and Reaper drone strikes. There have been 43 strikes in Pakistan this year (two while Bush was still in office), compared to 34 in all of 2008. None of the strikes under either Bush or Obama has targeted Osama bin Laden, who seems to have vanished like a wraith.»
- UN rights expert voices concern over use of unmanned drones by United States by UN News Centre, October 2009. «The use of pilot-less drones by the United States to target militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan will be regarded as a breach of international law unless Washington can demonstrate that it follows the appropriate precautions and accountability mechanisms, an independent United Nations human rights expert warned.»
- Record AfPak Drone Attacks Under Obama May Violate International Law Amy Goodman's interview of Philip Alston, October 2009. «We speak to one of the most high-profile critics of the US drone program: Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Alston says the US government's use of Predator drones may violate international law.»
- The risks of the C.I.A.'s Predator drones by Jane Meyer, The New Yorker, October 2009. «The U.S. government runs two drone programs. The military's version, which is publicly acknowledged, operates in the recognized war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and targets enemies of U.S. troops stationed there. As such, it is an extension of conventional warfare. The C.I.A.'s program is aimed at terror suspects around the world, including in countries where U.S. troops are not based. It was initiated by the Bush Administration and, according to Juan Zarate, a counterterrorism adviser in the Bush White House, Obama has left in place virtually all the key personnel. The program is classified as covert, and the intelligence agency declines to provide any information to the public about where it operates, how it selects targets, who is in charge, or how many people have been killed.»
- Obama leaning toward 34,000 more troops for Afghanistan by Jonathan S. Landay, John Walcott and Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers, November 2009. «military officers, particularly in the Army, warn that committing more troops to Afghanistan could risk "breaking" the force by reducing the time soldiers can spend at home between deployments, overtaxing equipment and destroying families. Those problems could worsen if Iraq's January elections are delayed or disrupted, and with them the administration's timetable for withdrawing U.S. forces from that country.»
- U.S. Predator Drones Vulnerable to Hackers interview of Siobhan Gorman by Here and Now radio show host Robin Young, WBUR/Boston University, December 17, 2009. «Pentagon and U.S. intelligence officials say Iraqi militants have managed to use $26 over-the-counter software to hack into unmanned drone surveillance video feeds, with the potential ability to monitor U.S. military operations. We speak to Siobhan Gorman, intelligence correspondent with the Wall Street Journal.»
Series: The War President
articles indicated for further reading:
· Casting Out Our Lesser Evil
· Winning The Peace: The Obamazation of Our Nation
· The White House Memo of Mistaken Identity
· Obama Sells Out The Sioux
· Invisible Women, Good Indians, Taxpayers Like You: An Olympic Triple Screw
His acceptance speech “was notable for its dominant theme of war” according to Reuters.
Obama accepts peace Nobel, defends “just wars”
by Ross Colvin and Wojciech Moskwa
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-44626520091210
You are right, Victoria. He is so much like Bush, only worse. We are screwed!
No Petaluma, there are millions of us and only one of him. We won’t be screwed if we stand up together and fight back. It’s We the People, not sheeple.
He lied about bringing our soldiers home from those Muslim hellpits. He lied about Blackwater. That company gets millions while our boys and girls can’t get proper care when they’re brain injured and paraplegics.
What Obama needs is a good impeachment.
my free Art Gallery has a page of animated Impeach Obama banners and buttons to put on your blog sites:
get “Impeach the Jackass Now!” web stickers
Great article Victoria. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?
I just read in the Times that we are working to bring the USA more in line with poorer countries, to cut emissions, let the poor and sick die off, and slow the present economy … so that we may become the central office of a WAR economy, in which we provide world police services. The editorial stated that, in the end, we should look more like (are you ready) the Ukraine.
The New World Order starring Presidente Borat Obama.
With apologies to our politically correct readers:
MacDonaldvitch vill sell Yak burgers and ve vill all have to speak like Borat, in common language of province. Ve vill all have ox for plow, and make big fire every Christmas for roasting whatever we catch. Rat, maybe.
VIVA! The Ukraine States in America. Ve drive 1972 Pintos and crouch in mud huts. Ve vear long underwear for coldness and make musics with stones and sticks. Ve have potato wodka and get drunk like silly squirrels. Ve LIKE it!
Thank you whole lot of much, Mister Presidente Borat!!!
Vooopeeee!
Jessica says
“Ve drive 1972 Pintos”
Nyet! Too much luxury spoils da workers! Ve drive Yugo efficiency *hatchback. Now ve so proudly call it da Obamamobile.
*some models only 1 active door
Maybe the Nobel Peace Prize was a final act of desperation. As though they were thinking, “Surely if we give him the prize and the money he’ll see the irony of his position and take the hint. Who couldn’t see the irony? Who!”
Yeah, that would be America. That’s who. . . .
Ordinary Americans understand irony. They know real desperation. Homelessness is rising in America. Hunger is increasing. Americans die each day for lack of medical care that is technologically available but socio-economically unreachable.
Obama is the one who doesn’t get it. He is blinded by hubris.
I don’t know what the Nobel prize committee’s excuse is. Maybe they have none.
Your comment did get me thinking! I almost replied to you with A Comment That Should Have Been A Post.
This topic deserves a[nother] full article where we can continue the conversation. Are you game, cdw1103? 
Stay tuned!
Just posted!
New peace-prize-related comments etcetera can be made there.