On December 30 of last year, ABC News reported on a 16-year-old Pakistani boy, Tariq Khan, who was killed with his 12-year-old cousin when a car in which he was riding was hit with a missile fired by a U.S. drone. As I noted at the time, the report contained this extraordinary passage buried in the middle:

Asked for documentation of Tariq and Waheed’s deaths, Akbar did not provide pictures of the missile strike scene. Virtually none exist, since drones often target people who show up at the scene of an attack.

What made that sentence so amazing was that it basically amounts to a report that the U.S. first kills people with drones, then fires on the rescuers and others who arrive at the scene where the new corpses and injured victims lie.

In a just-released, richly documented report, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, on behalf of the Sunday Times, documents that this is exactly what the U.S. is doing — and worse:

U.S. drones targeting rescuers and mourners [continued]

Faking It: How the Media Manipulates the World into War

So let me get this straight… WE invade their airspace with a spy drone and Iran and China are conducting asymmetrical warfare against US?!

Then they go on to say that drones are accurate and a good advantage for the U.S.? According to some reports up to 50 civilians die per Al-quaeda leader killed. How is that accurate?

This is war propaganda at it’s finest and these actors from CNN do it with such a straight face.

Zakaria and Baer: Downed U.S. drone an intel catastrophe [continued]

U.S. military personnel stationed at Shamsi Air Base in Pakistan have started to leave after the country’s government told them to go following a NATO attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border.

“Two U.S. cargo planes reached Shamsi Airport and the loading of the equipment and other cargo items has also started,” an official privy to developments at Shamsi base told NBC News.

More than 70 U.S. Marines and CIA operatives who were present at Shamsi Base are due to leave.

Shamsi Air Base, situated in Baluchistan Province in south-west Pakistan, was used by the CIA to operate drone aircraft, which carried attacks inside Pakistan tribal areas.

Military ties between Pakistan and U.S. have hit an all-time low following the NATO attack, with Pakistan’s military canceling all official visits to the U.S.

CIA, US Marines start to leave Pakistan drone base [continued]

Following the latest report that the Iranian military has shot down a US drone in eastern Iran, radio host Stephen Lendman told RT such US reconnaissance missions point towards greater ambitions for domination, which might lead to all-out war.

­With diplomatic tensions reaching a boiling point between Iran and the West, Lendman believes such spying operations are part and parcel of a greater war that the United States has been waging against Iran for decades. 

“Since the 1970s America has had a running on-and-off war with Iran, basically wanting to change the regime, to make it subservient to US interests, and Iran has the crazy notion that it believes it has the right to its own sovereignty, to run its own government, to conduct its own affairs, it doesn’t have to answer to Washington. Washington disagrees, and therein lies the conflict,” he said.

Drone downed in Iran: ‘US great game could spark WWIII’ [continued]

The tragic “friendly fire” incident at the weekend, in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were allegedly killed in a Nato airstrike, raises many questions. Who shot first? How should Pakistan respond? What is the future for the already traumatised US-Pakistan relationship?

But surely the biggest question, after a decade of conflict, is this: Should the United States even have launched military action in Afghanistan in the first place? And was the magnitude of the attacks on September 11, 2001, as great as to mean there was no choice but to launch military operations?

Setting aside the support of the international community, the United States still chose to act unilaterally against Afghanistan, claiming self–defence. There was much debate at the time over the legality of the initial use of force. Yet the devastation that the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan have experienced over the last decade as US and coalition forces have battled Taliban militias almost makes that debate seem trite.

Interestingly, the justification for the war has transformed from self-defence, to an even less well defined fight against global terrorism. Meanwhile, Pakistan-based Taliban have replaced al-Qaeda as the central enemy in a war that has gradually come to be seen by Afghans as regime enforcement.

Whatever the reason given for military action, it has become increasingly clear that a dangerous precedent was set in Afghanistan. The justification for the use of force as self-defence has been increasingly utilised by opportunistic states to meet the challenge of insurgents and rebels, and this unwanted development of the doctrine of pre-emptive and preventive self-defence now poses a grave threat to international peace and security.

The folly of drone strikes [continued]

Pakistan has permanently closed its borders to Nato convoys supplying international troops in Afghanistan, according to the country’s interior minister, following an air strike that killed 24 soldiers at the weekend

Crisis Between the US and Pakistan After NATO Attack on Broader [continued]

…During the current year 72 drone strikes has been carried out and from 2004, nearly 2780 people has been killed; meanwhile the intelligence institutions in their latest research report said that only 17 percent terrorists belonging to al-Qaeda and Taliban has been killed during these attacks.

Most of people killed in the drone attacks are innocent and include women, children and aged people and during the current year 46 drone attacks were carried out in North Waziristan Agency, 22 in South Waziristan Agency and two attacks were carried out in FATA and other areas of KPK….

Pak terms 83 percent people killed during drone attacks in past seven years ‘innocent’ [continued]

Today, the United National Antiwar Committee and the Muslim Peace Coalition, representing national and local Muslim organizations in the U.S., held a massive anti-war rally. The rally, against America’s endless wars and cutbacks in the U.S., seems to be a grab bag of various ongoing crises and issues in American foreign policy. They write on their website:

Today’s Peace Rally Against Endless US Wars And Cutbacks [continued]

“We are gathering data on collateral damage, figures of innocent people getting killed and property being destroyed … and we will take this issue to the UN,” Khokar told the National Assembly on Tuesday.

“These are extra judicial killings … a clear violation of human rights and we will raise this issue at international forums,” the adviser added in response to a barrage of criticism on the government by opposition members on what they called a dismal condition of human rights in Pakistan.

UN to be approached over drone strikes [continued]