Login HereWhere is the outrage?
Missiles that witnesses say came from an unmanned drone flattened a suspected militant safehouse Sunday in Pakistan's tribal area along the Afghan border. State television said the strike killed about 20 people.
Witnesses said a drone dropped seven missiles on the sprawling, mud-brick compound about three miles outside Wana, the main town in South Waziristan. Only U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan are known to operate unmanned drones in the region, and they have launched attacks over the Pakistani border before.
Remember the week-long, non-stop hysteria when Sen. Obama said that he would strike high value al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan?
St. McCain sneered that it was "naive," George W. Bush ridiculed the idea of bombing our "ally," Willard called him "Dr. Strangelove," and the wingnut chorus enthusiastically piled on, characterizing Obama's position as advocating an "invasion" of Pakistan.
Well.
I look forward to St. McCain's and the wingnuttery's stern denunciations of the Bush Administration for naively and recklessly invading our ally today.
I'm sure they're going to be coming fast and furious, as soon as this story gets out.
Yep.
Share This 
Spotlight
ZED!
Obama is so far ahead of the curve of the rest of these politic-o’s, it’s saddening.
Saddening because of the pathetic tear-him-down cynicism driven by Clinton and McCain and enabled and added-on by the old school media.
O’Bama ‘08.
Enjoy your green beer today pups, ’cause the green that was the economy is “rainin’ down” on us thanks to BushCo neocon [aka incompetent] governance.
Prairie Today: Fire and Brimstone
As usual, the media will spin this in favor of the Neocons. Obama must be the one to craft an I Told You So in an effective manner. Obama can make some hay with this if he handles it right. And he is just the guy to handle it right.
BT: Don’t forget to add the brilliance of the State Department putting out the notice for Americans in Pakistan to avoid areas frequented by Westerners and then later that night, five FBI agents, in Pakistan to investigate bombings earlier in the week, get hit by a bomb, while they were in an outdoor dining area frequented by Westerners.
Reckless, maybe?
BBC News and Asia Times have so far been silent on this one…
President McCain is in Iraq, meeting with al Maliki, just before Cheney arrives. This was carefully staged to have McCain be president for a day.
Bush is bombing our Allies!
OT:
Has HRC dropped out of the race for the sake of the Democratic party yet? At our county convention in Iowa on Saturday the HRC supporters were outnumbered almost 2 to 1. Barack picked up another 10 delegates.The last report I saw stated Hillary would need to take almost 70% of the remaining delegates just to pull even in the delegate count. Why won’t she step down on behalf of the party? Or are her personal ambitions more important than the unity of the Democratic party?
Imagine the repeated news bulletins if President Obama or President Clinton were in office when “Al Qaeda” blew up 4 FBI agents in Pakistan.
-G
McCain is now on an In Your Face tour in Iraq.
the question answers itself.
And for him to get used to Cheney, his new puppet master.
America has turned into a Groundhog Day nightmare.
-G
Yes, how reckless of you, Obama, to recommend an attack inside a sovereign country whose government teeters on the brink of collapse. While the de facto president and his would be successor sit in conference in a nearby country (at the command center monitoring the attack?) they’ve invaded and allowed to descend into nearly unrecoverable chaos. Tsk, tsk. What will Miss Pig Missile have to say about that?
Seven missles. That means a predator B completely loaded with ordanence, no extra fuel. They expected to be attacking when they launched.
I’m probably in the minority here, I think we OUGHT to be hitting the AQ types whereever we can find them. Including Pakistan. It just bothers me that Obama isn’t allowed to say that, but Bush is allowed to DO it.
Boxturtle (Sleep well, Osama…when we find you, you’ll never know)
Oh, Obama recommended such an attack only in extremis, when all other options had been considered, tried and had failed, and only to defend a vital US interest. Is this Cheney’s substitute for the Niagra his blood pressure won’t allow him to take? Expect to read on January 21st that Big Dick has become CEO of Blackwater subsidiary, De-Stabilizers-R-US.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Hillary also pile on in an attempt to imply that Obama is radical kook?
Wait for the blowback.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Irish Jim and all the others here, since everyone knows that everyone is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day!
Morning BT. Morning Firepups.
So which ally do we bomb next?
In the minority, but not alone.
Of course, the assumption that the target was properly identified in a timely manner might be a stretch
The problem is that he should have done it in 2002 when he had Osama on the run and chose to outsource the chase. Too little, too late now.
Well everyone knows we are going to bomb Pakistan if the need arises. It’s just not polite to say it out loud.
why now ?
seriously, everyone has known for at least 2 years Taliban/AQ were living large in Waziristan, our ‘ally’ Musharaff signed a deal (with militants, and not tribal elders as he claims) then removed his troops from the province 10/06
what triggered this ? NATO pressure ?
Witcha bro
actionable intel?
Wasn’t this the second strike in the last couple of months. They advertised they killed a major Al Qaeda figure a while back and Obama pointed out that it supported his contention.
Thank You. Happy St. Patty’s to you also. Erin Go Bragh!
The Dow seems to think that bombing Pakistan is a good idea… Only down about 13 now.
that was kinda my poorly made point - one could all but GoogleEarth Mullah Omar’s house any time within the last 16 mos.
glad to see you and all of chez raven safe from the storms, btw
OT:
I really liked this article from Frank Schaeffer over at HuffPo.
Looks as if the Right Wing Extremists and Hillary’s camp have teamed up to try and bring down Barrack. I wonder why?
Thx, it was pretty hairy in the surrounding counties but not so much here.
cause she is one of them?
It will be interesting, in a OH MA GAWD LOOKIT THAT CAR WRECK, kinda way to see just how big a pile of shit the chimp and his other war criminals can heap up for whoever wins this next Presidential election. Nice to see the chimp and Obama agree on foriegn policy though. Yep, ol Obama is WAY ahead of the curve pups, WAY ahead…Odin help us.
Formerly known as #2!
I am having a hard time following the logic of this thread.
Are you arguing this is a good thing and therefore Obama’s statement was
prescient?
Or, that it is a bad thing, but that others were being hypocritical for chastising Obama for advocating a poor policy?
wTF is wrong with these batshit crazy Bushco ass monkeys? Jesus fucking wept.
The outrage has all been stored in cheney’s man size safe, along with all the blackmail phone intercepts.
Isn’t it funny how the mitilta movment just sorta faded into the backgroud these last eight years? You can(sucker)bet that they’ll be back with a vengence when a Dem is in the WH
Of course
yes
I think the title implies sarcasm since that it what Obama was called when he opined that we should whack these suckers if we get a chance.
Let’s just hope that Pakistan’s military doesn’t develop a nationalist attitude about attacks within their border.
What would they do?
The Southern Poverty Law Center says that the hate groups operating in the US has gone up 48% since 2000 and is now at 888.
See, also, this article in The Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl.....kistan.usa
Patrick Cockburn in The Independent on the need for (in his case, a UK) official inquiry into the causes and consequences of invading Iraq.
http://www.independent.co.uk/o.....96775.html
I’ll be holding my breath for the US version of these stories - and the US inquiry.
The military controls the nukes.
So you think they would launch at the U.S.?
Nah. No ICBM capability.
But, possession being 9/10ths . . .
I think the Pakistani Military sees India as being their major problem.
Not CONUS. They don’t have the enough range for their missles and no refueling capacity for their F-16s(which we were nice engough to sell them). They do have the range to strike any number of US assets in the ME though.
India isn’t launching drones into Pakistan.
Very few sites on the internet are loading for me today and the cable company says that it is a nation-wide access problem. Are any of you also unable to access NYTimes, WaPost, or Yahoo?
I can load all 3. Cable/wifi comcast
Well, this is a side argument, but I really don’t think it’s in the interest of the Pakistani government or military to do more than a protest if we launch limited strikes in an area they know they don’t control. I’m not saying I’m particularly for it, if we don’t have exceptional intelligence, but only that I don’t think they can afford to take too great an exception to it.
I would say it’s the gross hypocrisy in attacking Obama for what this government must have known it was contemplating. Nothing new for the Rove White House, but still deplorable. And considering Obama’s comment credible and prescient, not because he’d be willing to attack (any manager can fire a missile or an employee), but because he qualified his comment by saying he would do it under very limited circumstances.
The Bush administration has no credibility because, in its desire to show off the biggest dong in town, it doesn’t credibly qualify its threats about when the use of unusual force (here, an attack within the territory of an allied state) would be appropriate, and has no credibility left should it claim such exigent circumstances existed here.
Nor, sadly, are its claims credible until verified that it struck legitimate targets rather than just another hostel or wedding party. Locals, of course, contend the missiles killed innocents, which is often but not always true and rarely reported. We’ll have to wait and hope we find out. But not a bad distraction from the financial markets meltdown, eh? A cynicism that would be unwarranted in other administrations, but which we would be foolish not to consider with this one.
No problems from here in FL with a Cox cable modem.
Pakistan has nukes. While it may be unlikely that they would threaten to us them directly, they can certainly place a nuke into the hands of someone else with no compunction at all about making use of it
(Kinda the way Bush/Cheney are with nukes…figuring they are just another tool in the military toolbox).
Don’t mean to sound alarmist. I’m just not comfortable with the al-Qaeda sympathizers who pepper the Pakistani military.
I had some difficulty with some features on Yahoo. Like the address book.
we’ve attacked waziristan with drones already, a few years ago……pakistani gov denied it, said they did the bombing, but remnants of it were ours…….
was done to take out young tribal leader….head guy in the whole area..sorry, don’t remember his name…….
#2 alqueda /s
he was the one that the pakistani government made a deal with……..then he broke the treaty, so we went in and bombed him.
some info about this was on an old frontline called return of the taliban………they re-aired it a month or so ago, i wrote the ombudsman about it, cuz it was an old show, and they pawned it off as new, so the time-speak people did was inaccurate-ie-when they said ”last year”, etc…….wasn’t last year, was few years ago……they wrote nice letter back, and made it into the ombudsman’s column.
so, only new thing here is that pakistan is saying out front that it’s us doing the bombing.
when before they denied it.
happy st. patrick’s day!
(from a mc——-)
All 3 load right away for me on the West Coast
With a minor addition, this is what I wrote in a thread last night:
Anyone who has read my comments knows how much respect I have for ace NYT reporter Michael Gordon. Well, he has another signature piece of idiocy out.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03…..ref=slogin
In this one, Gordon engages in revisionist history blaming Paul Bremer for the disbanding of the Iraqi army. Of course, Bremer did sign the order but by putting all the responibility on Bremer he is taking it all off Bush and Rumsfeld. Who are some of his sources? Well one is the ever serious and trustworthy Doug Feith. OK, stop laughing. Gordon maintains that disbanding the Iraqi army was not the original plan and indeed it was not. What Gordon fails to mention is that Bush fired the guy Jay Garner whose idea it was to keep the Iraqi army together only a few weeks into his job and replaced him with (insert dramatic pause) Paul Bremer. Making the whole exercise even more improbable is that Gordon accomplishes it without a single mention of Dick Cheney, Ahmed Chalabi, or Paul Wolfowitz, but such lapses can be excused I suppose when one is writing fiction.
At best Senator Obama is pandering to the know nothings in the USA or at worse has forgotten his childhood. Human beings will put up with a lot if it caused by persons who look and sort of talk like you, witness George W Bush. But, if the death and tribulation is caused by outsiders, all hell breaks loose.
A war of attrition by occupying two Middle East countries and bombing of suspected Al Qaeda operatives from Somalia to Pakistan will only kill lots of civilians and recruit more followers to their cause. There are a heck of a lot more of them than there are of us. Either we pull back, secure our borders and achieve energy independence or the death and destruction done in our names will return and visit the USA.
Which basically means that Pakistan’s only real option is to bend over and take it with a smile.
I’m not having web trouble
We witness the continued creation of a new reality.
Over and over and over again.
It really is a very effective strategy. Amoral, inhuman, dishonest, but effective nonetheless.
-G
Gordon can lap my nads along with Bill Kristol.
They’re most pragmatic option is to say that they approved it, which may have been the case. I didn’t hear any huge Pakistani complaint over the last occasion.
One would hope that the targets were exceptional, given that we’ve used military force in another sovereign state without apparently obtaining its pre-approval - at a time when China has just closed the nearby Tibetan borders, ejected the press and injected its military, and seems about to implement a brutal and deadly crackdown.
Yes, Virginia, there really is a reason not to legitimize the use of deadly force just because you can. Avoiding the consequences of doing that is why, after tens of millions of deaths in the first fifty years of the twentieth century, nation states established the United Nations.
I’ve had no problem, either here at work or at home earlier. It may just be something amiss with your cable company?
Correction: Their
Seems like Hillary’s camp have teamed up with Right Wing Extremists more often than not lately. Perhaps they have some somethings in common?
Thanks for the feedback. This may be what the techies are telling the customer service people to say. They are getting hammered and still trying to be pleasant. I wouldn’t want their job today.
I am generally reluctant to buy into this theory.
Nukes are very traceable. Any nation or element that signs on to a first strike strategy against the US is signing a death warrant for themselves and their family and their nation most likely.
-G
There was way too much negative press about attacking Iran so they had to do the next best thing, attack Pakistan. Look without war there is no war profiteering so we must have war… the more the better I guess. And besides we have to restore our good friend in Democracy, Mushariff, to power.
In this one, Gordon engages in revisionist history blaming Paul Bremer for the disbanding of the Iraqi army. Of course, Bremer did sign the order but by putting all the responibility on Bremer he is taking it all off Bush and Rumsfeld. Who are some of his sources? Well one is the ever serious and trustworthy Doug Feith. OK, stop laughing.
I’m not laughing.
Dougie and Woof Woof lost relatives in the Holocaust.
Naturally, they were fans of De-Nazification.
Worked in ‘45, gotta work now.
Brilliant.
I got into Yahoo this morning without a problem. Haven’t tried the NYT or Wapo.
Financial market meltdown => time for a wag the dog.
A little OT for the angry few.
yup, Abu Hamza Rabia, initial claims he was killed by Pakistani military disproven when villages displayed remnants of US Hellfire missles
tragically, the journalist who revealed this; Hayat Ullah Khan was murdered his body found 6 month later
wiki
And he earned every cent of it. I think you underestimate how difficult it is not simply to run a company into the ground but bury it 6 feet under.
you’ll love this :D
morning pups
bad news just keeps rolling in, huh?
Nuttin to say
About the only dog left to wag is Iran. Which is the reason Fallon had to go.
Give the man a break, willya? He doesn’t know how to play the violin.
You know, you are right. And filling in all that dirt to cover your tracks ain’t easy
you don’t have to cover up the tracks when you run the investigators too
I read that Iran was not the consideration that triggered Fallon leaving. Supposedly, it was that he wanted to continue withdrawing troops from Iraq and Petraeus didn’t.
Ah yes. Convenient that
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/...../2501.html
Oct. 03, 2006
60 minutes
watch onlineweb sitetranscript
FRONTLINE reports from the lawless Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and reveals how the area has fallen under the control of a resurgent Taliban militia. Despite the presence of 80,000 Pakistani troops, the Taliban and their supporters continue to use the region as a launching pad for attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan. Off limits to U.S. troops by agreement with Pakistan’s president and long suspected of harboring Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, the area is now considered a failed state. President Pervez Musharraf tells FRONTLINE reporter Martin Smith that Pakistan’s strategy, which includes cash payments to militants who lay down their arms, has clearly foundered. In a region little understood because it is closed to most observers, FRONTLINE investigates a secret front in the war on terror.
Producer(s): Martin Smith
like i said, this report was from 2006, and we had already used drones to bomb pakistan/waziristan……..
OT: John Edwards scheduled for the Tonight Show this Thursday. Anyone heard what his might be about?
http://www.nbc.com/The_Tonight.....2008.shtml
I think the difference here, is that Obama actually shared with the public what he intends to do. Bush and Company didnt appear to differ in policiy on this specific issue, except in terms of how they would engage (or mislead) the public on said policy.
I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. Strategically, if you give your enemy a place where he can withdraw, refit, recruit, and rearm-a sanctuary-it is almost impossible to defeat him, and this is exactly what al-Queda has in Waziristan. Pakistan an ally? Please. The Pakistani military and especially the intelligence service (ISI)gives all indication of being lousy with AQ assets-witness MUsharraff’s “peace treaty” with the tribes in Waziristan, after which cross-border attacks into Afghanistan increased three-fold, while we were forbidden to counterattack on Pakistan soil. Remember the deputy of the ISI who wired 100K to Muhammed Atta the week before 9/11? I believe he was fired-NOT extradited.
It seems to me, if you actually WANT to fight a war on terror, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more target-rich enviroment than Pakistan.
Of course, they do ALL owe Obama an apology.
No, that’s just the false distinction they made, since they’ve said all along they’ll do the same thing.
thank you both. just the kind of dark twisted humor to tickle my funny bone today.
Tax season! I love this part. I have to drop cash into my IRA soon in order to obtain the tax benefits for 2007. I’ve been holding off and holding off because the market just keeps going down. I wanted to time it such that I would lose the least possible in a declining market. HAH! No matter when I drop the money into the IRA I will immediately lose it’s value as the market keeps going south.
I am forced to cough up into a fund that is losing value by the minute so I can fail to recoup my “investment” in 20+ years and retire on nothing. Social Security is likely to be tanked, my military retirement is almost as unlikely to be honored, and now my IRA…
I should have been buying gold and simply keeping it buried in a strongbox, but now with gold over $1000/oz, it is too steep for me to go there either. I’m tossing money into apparitions like my IRA so I can avoid paying Uncle Sam taxes so he can go to war and further bankrupt the nation. Bad money after worse money is all it is.
yeah cbl at 78—YES! that’s it!
you are a whiz……..
sorry, i dont understand. Bush said, “its naive and bad to inform the enemy on what you are going to do, then he does exactly what he told you you were wrong for admitting you would do. To me, that’s “we’re close on policy, but different on disclosure”.
sorry for the triple post. I didnt click 3 times.. dont know what happened
My best guess is that Bush considered it a twofer. The bit about it not reflecting a change in policy is just so much bullshit.
You are just the kind of person we have been looking for. A true, red white and blue, investor in this great country of ours. Please tell your friends how they can to make an investment for our future.
Bush also said Clinton should have a date to get out of Bosnia, and that no President should go into another country without a plan and date certain for getting out. Bush is a sock puppet for Darth, that bastard is pure evil.
No, Bush’s doctrine says if you harbor a terrorist, you’re as guilty as one, and that we have a right to strike anyone, anytime who does so.
I heard that he’s getting ready to endorse (Hillary Rodham Clinton) prior to the primary in NC, maybe prior to PA.
O/T jeebus Taylor Marsh’s voice is on my teevee….make it stop
Remember when people used to harp on the fact that Clinton governed by the polls? I never understood what the problem with that was in that the polls tell the politicians what the people are thinking and what they want. I would be delighted if Darth and Bush governed by the polls. We wouldn’t be where we are now. IMO
I was an Edwards supporter but who cares what he thinks now? He was silent for so long that most of us have moved along
Primary needs to end quickly, I don’t know that the party can bear it any longer
Didn’t Edwards and Obama recently cancel a meeting at the last minute?
Source please, Ann?
I think it was rescheduled and they did meet.
“I look forward to St. McCain’s and the wingnuttery’s stern denunciations of the Bush Administration for naively and recklessly invading our ally today.”
From the ongoing hypocrisy files, they will somehow find a way to differentiate, and will split the finest of hairs to make Bush’s version OK and Obama’s verbotten. And now that thier military coup installed soldier-puppet Musharraf has been categorically deposed by his own people, could this represent some sort of planned provocation, a spark that might give Busherrif an excuse for another coup?
I gotta say I can not see him going there unless clinton2 has promised him that she will support a number of his issues. Both candidates are in desperate need of a southern white man on their ticket so they should be bidding for his delegates/support/etc. They will both have to bid high and he should not settle for less than the max.
Big dog actually cared what people thought and tried to help society as a whole. Bush and Darth couldn’t care less what the average person has to endure to survive in this country so why bother with polls.
Obama went to SC to meet with him.