Obama's secret wars: Jeremy Scahill

[Hannah Bell]

Despite the perception that we know what is happening in Afghanistan, what is rarely discussed in any depth in Congress or the media is the vast number of innocent Afghan civilians that are being killed on a regular basis in US night raids and the heavy bombing that has been reinstated by General David Petraeus...

As the war rages on in Afghanistan and--despite spin to the contrary--in Iraq as well, US Special Operations Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency are engaged in parallel, covert, shadow wars that are waged in near total darkness and largely away from effective or meaningful Congressional oversight or journalistic scrutiny.

The current US strategy can be summed up as follows: We are trying to kill our way to peace. And the killing fields are growing in number.

The most visible among these shadow wars is in Pakistan where the United States regularly bombs the country using weaponized drones. As we now know from diplomatic cables made public by Wikileaks, Pakistan's Prime Minister told a senior US official in Islamabad, "I don't care if (the US bombs Pakistan) as long as they get the right people. We'll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it...."

What is clear is that US officials have consistently misled the American and Pakistani people on the extent of US military operations inside Pakistan. The reality is that US soldiers are fighting and dying in Pakistan despite the absence of a declaration of war.

One of the most off-the-radar wars the US is currently waging is in the areas around the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden, where US forces are increasingly militarily engaging forces from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)....

While the stated US position is that the US military role in this region is limited to training and weapons support, we now know that on multiple occasions the US has launched cruise missiles carrying cluster bombs at villages in Yemen, killing scores of people...

US forces have also struck multiple times in Somalia and have used the Ethiopian Army as a proxy force to cover the role of US Special Operations troops in a shadow war against al Shabaab and other militant groups.

These ongoing shadow wars confirm an open secret that few in Congress are willing to discuss publicly--particularly Democrats: When it comes to US counterterrorism policy, there has been almost no substantive change from the Bush to the Obama administration.

The Obama administration's expansion of Special Forces activities globally stems from a classified order dating back to the Bush administration. Originally signed in early 2004 by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, it is known as the “AQN ExOrd," or Al Qaeda Network Execute Order....

As a Special Operations veteran told me, "The ExOrd spells out that we reserve the right to unilaterally act against al Qaeda and its affiliates anywhere in the world that they operate."

http://socialistworker.org/blog/critical-reading/2010/12/10/obamas-secret-wars

[truedelphi]

1. While the media let us think in 2008 that if we voted for Barack Obama, we

Would be voting in <horror of horrors> a young black man who had grown up on Food Stamps.

That thought was one of the things that led me to vote for him. (That and the fact that Kucinich wasn't given a chance.)

But in actuality he spent most of his life with a mom who worked for the Ford Foundation.

And many more people are now starting to see who it is we really elected. The "people" we thought he'd be serving are now being foreclosed on, while the people he really serves are opening up their Holiday Bonuses.

So it is sad, but not shocking, to find this out about these wars.

[aquart]

3. Those of us who pointed those things out were chanted down

with a rousing chorus of the inane "Yes, we can!"

[Blue_In_AK]

9. "Yes, we were." n/t

[T Wolf]

2. Sliding among sadness, shame, anger, embarassment, nausea, disappointment,

disbelief (at the insanity, not the unfortunate likelihood of it), and more, I'm left with wondering IF there actually is anything that can be done to stop the obscenities being committed in our name, even if we know nothing about them.

People in the US need to at least be aware of the actions we condone, accept, and pay for, if only to have a chance at feeling something that might one day create empathy in us. Only when enough people truly care will anything be done, whatever the tactics used to bring about the change.

Thanks for posting this.

[LinkUP]

4. Hope

It does exist, even if the one who promised it was lying. Bernie sanders FTW. I dont want to tell people I'm an American liberal at the moment becuase of these truths I've had to swallow, but the base of the last election still knows how messed up things are, and want to change it more than ever now. Have just been trying to clue everyone I know into all the latest happenings, and the Mainstream Media is soo ineffective that none of the people I've talked to about wikileaks have known what the data in them was all about at all.

[Norrin Radd]

5. kr

[BlueIris]

6. How can anyone be shocked by this?

Not saying it's acceptable, but I figured out this was the way it was going to go in February of 2009.

[sabrina 1]

7. I love Jeremy Scahill for continuing to tell the truth about these

criminal wars.

People should read the released Wikileaks docs about the Mercenary armies we are now using in both these wars. There are more mercenaries in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, than U.S. soldiers.

What they are doing there, the chaos and wild west outlaw behavior is unbelievable and to think it is in our name and paid for by our tax dollars. Randomly killing people all over the place, sometimes even their own people, drunk, boorish, under no restrictions, they are hated. Not to mention that some of them are from countries where dictatorships ruled.

No wonder they want to silence Wikileaks. It gives us a real look at the wars so much money is being spent on. All they are are a criminal enterprise where the money flows freely into the hands of the MIC and its enablers. Corruption and criminality at its worst.

[bvar22]

8. Stop funding it.

Drop your "taxable" income,
and learn to live well on less.