Tag: perpetual war

Iran Accuses Israel Of Seeking To Provoke “Full-Blown War” With Brazen Assassination

Since news broke hours ago of the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, on the streets in a city just east of Tehran, Iranian leaders have blamed an Israeli assassination plot.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said there were “Serious indications of Israeli role” in killing of Fakhrizadeh, who subsequently died of his wounds in a hospital. What Iran has dubbed a terrorist attack reportedly involved a hail of machine gun fire and a suicide bomber explosion.

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Biden’s pick for US spy chief played a central role in Obama’s secretive drone war that resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths

President-elect Joe Biden has received applause across the political spectrum over his picks for top foreign policy and national security roles in his incoming administration. But human rights groups and progressives have expressed concern about his choice for director of national intelligence (DNI), Avril Haines. 

Haines, a former deputy CIA director who would be the first woman to serve as the top US spy chief if confirmed, played a central role in crafting the legal framework surrounding the Obama administration’s controversial, secretive drone war.

As a widely-cited 2013 Newsweek profile put it: “Haines was sometimes summoned in the middle of the night to weigh in on whether a suspected terrorist could be lawfully incinerated by a drone strike.”

“My concerns about her are more my concerns about the Obama administration,” Andrea J. Prasow, the deputy Washington director of Human Rights Watch, told the New York Times. “With these cabinet picks, we are returning to the previous administration instead of making bold and forward-leaning picks.”

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Shocking New Figures Show How Just Much the US is Fueling the Violence in Yemen

Despite presenting itself as a force for good and peace in the Middle East, the United States sells at least five times as much weaponry to Saudi Arabia than aid it donates to Yemen. The State Department constantly portrays itself as a humanitarian superpower with the welfare of the Yemeni people as its highest priority, yet figures released from the United Nations and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) show that since the war in Yemen began, the U.S. government has given $2.56 billion in aid to the country, but sold over $13 billion in high-tech weapons to Saudi Arabia, the leader of the coalition prosecuting a relentless onslaught against the country.

Figures like these are always debatable. What constitutes legitimate “aid” is a question everyone would answer differently. Furthermore, the $13 billion figure does not include the enormous weapons deal Saudi Arabia signed with Donald Trump in 2017, which will reportedly see the Kingdom purchase $350 billion over ten years.

SIPRI is skeptical of the size of these numbers, but if they prove to be correct, once the orders begin arriving, they will make the paltry aid donations seem like small change by comparison. Sales include all manner of military equipment, from radar and transport systems to F-15 fighter jets, TOW missiles, Abrams tanks, and Paladin howitzers.

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‘The Machines Did The Killing’: Obama Awkwardly Defends Drone Kill List In New Memoir

Former President Barack Obama still can’t shake his legacy as the “drone president” given he still holds the record for number of ordered covert assassination strikes via drones.

“There were ten times more air strikes in the covert war on terror during President Barack Obama’s presidency than under his predecessor, George W. Bush,” one prior human rights study found.

“Obama embraced the US drone program, overseeing more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency. A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush,” the study said.

This infamously included not only the killing of Yemeni-American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki due to his suspected al-Qaeda links, but also his son, 16-year-old US citizen and Colorado native Abdulrahman Anwar al-Awlaki, by a drone airstrike ordered by Obama on October 14, 2011. The boy was not even suspected of a crime upon his death while he had been casually eating dinner with this friends at a cafe in Yemen. 

The Obama administration later claimed the teen’s death was “collateral damage” and despite lawsuits related to the CIA operation, no US official has ever been held accountable for literally assassinating two US citizens without trial or so much as filing official charges. 

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