Drone strikes in Pakistan are now at their lowest level in five years, as Islamabad protests almost every attack. The CIA also appears to have abandoned ‘signature strikes’ on suspected militants fitting certain patterns of behaviour – at least for the present. Almost all attacks in recent months have been against named al Qaeda and other militant leaders.
As drone strikes fell in Pakistan they rose steeply in Yemen, as US forces aided a major military campaign to oust al Qaeda and other Islamists from southern cities. A parallel CIA targeted killing programme killed numerous alleged militants, many of them named individuals. Yet US officials took more than three months to confirm that American planes or drones had killed 12 civilians.
. . . . . . . .
One reason for a decline in Pakistani strikes may have been growing hostility. Some 74% of polled citizens said they viewed the US as an enemy, and uniquely Pakistan bucked a global trend to register as the only nation favouring Mitt Romney for president. In contrast, the American public appears to staunchly support covert drones – in one poll 83% of respondents were in favour of the strikes.
The British High Court was called on in April to look into US covert drone strikes and possible British co-operation, which some lawyers in the UK insist is illegal. Days before the end of the year the High Court declined to investigate. After years of inactivity, US and Pakistani courts also began to consider legal questions surrounding the campaign.
In light of evidence that a cover-up is underway concerning the Sandy Hook school massacre, I’m reposting the following article by Michael Kelley of the Business Insider, first published on Tuesday 7th August 2012. Readers of my firsttwo articles on the Sandy Hook massacre will recognize alarming similarities between the two events.
Notice at the end of Kelley’s article that Holmes’ court records were sealed. What I conclude from this is that the evidence collected by police directly contradicts the lone gunman narrative. This would mean that here too a cover-up has taken place, the logical reason for which is that it was done to protect the real perpetrators.
In truth, the public may well just be sick of hearing stories about “lone gunmen.” Of all possible horrors, this one, even more than the Benghazi killings, is loaded with political implication, not just “gun control,” but a clear attack on the security of every American family.
Today, Michael Harris, former Republican candidate for governor of Arizona and GOP campaign finance chairman, in an internationally televised news broadcast, cited “Israeli revenge” in, what he called, “the terrorist attack in Connecticut.”
Harris cited Israeli “rage” against the US and against President Barack Obama. By “Israel,” we mean “Netanyahu.”
The mission was to teach America a lesson, knowing that “America would take the punishment, keep “quiet,” and let a ‘fall guy’ take the blame.”
Phi Beta Iota:We have no direct knowledge but agree that there is no way an autistic kid did this and then made the rifle disappear after he was suicided. Who exactly (no fewer than two others and probably three) remains to be established. With regard to Michael Harris' assertions, we would only observe that anyone who doubts the venality of Zionists (not the average Jew) need look no further than the USS Liberty. The murderous attack by Israeli forces in unmarked aircraft and patrol boats killed 34 and wounded 171 US sailors. It was covered up by order of the President at the time, and that cover-up maintained for years there-after, threatening the families of those killed and wounded by Israel with loss of benefits and pensions if they talked. We tend to doubt the Israeli connection, but we will never, ever, forget the USS Liberty as the defining perfidy in Israel's view of the USA as a shiksa that does not count.
“Most Americans, their minds focused at the moment on the tragic slaughter of 20 young children aged 5-10, along with five teachers and a school principal in Connecticut by a heavily-armed psychotic 21-year-old, are blissfully unaware that their last president, George W. Bush, along with five key members of his administration, were convicted in absentia of war crimes earlier this month at a tribunal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
They are unaware because the US corporate media have ignored the story, just as that same corporate media have failed to note that the crimes of which Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and five White House lawyers, were convicted all could apply equally well to current President Barack Obama and his administration.
In my “quickie” article published less than an hour after the news broke about the Connecticut school shooting, I tried to inject some historical context into the discussion – and do it as fast as possible. Since we know that many if not most “lone nut” massacres are actually false-flag operations, we might as well assume that this one is too. Getting that message out early, in order to shape public opinion while it is still malleable, should be a top priority of everyone who wants to put the real terrorists out of business.
THEN we can get around to picking apart the details. Enter Lori Price and Clare Kuehn.
Lori Price of Citizens for Legitimate Government quickly and brilliantly deconstructs false-flag massacres. If you are going to subscribe to one email news service, other than VT, it should be CLG News.
Lori asks a very good question here: Was Adam Lanza’s internet record scrubbed?
I put this first bit together to make it easier to grasp the depth and breadth of this scholarly and legal indictment.
Scholar Names Top US War Criminals
More Than Thirty Top U.S. Officials Guilty of War Crimes
According to the distinguished American international law authority, Francis Boyle, a Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, Champaign, and the author of numerous books on the subject, “More than 30 top U.S. officials, including presidents G.W. Bush and Obama, are guilty of war crimes or crimes against peace and humanity,” and “legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany.” “In international legal terms, the U.S. government itself should now be viewed as constituting an ongoing criminal conspiracy under international law,” Boyle said in an address Dec. 9th to the Puerto Rican Summit Conference on Human Rights at the University of the Sacred Heart in San Juan. The serial aggressions of the U.S. violate such basic documents of international law as the Nuremberg Charter, the Nuremberg Judgment, and the Nuremberg Principles, Boyle said. As well, they violate the Pentagon’s own U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 on The Law of Land Warfare, which applies to the President himself as Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Armed Forces under Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. U.S. administrations since 9/11 may be charged with “crimes against peace” for their attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Syria, “and perhaps their longstanding threatened war of aggression against Iran,” Boyle said. Boyle said the so-called “targeted killing” of human beings in a non-battlefield situation is “pure murder” under basic principles of Anglo-American common law and international criminal law. And in this case, where these murders are both widespread and systematic, these murders constitute a Crime against Humanity under Article 7(1)(a) of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court. Although the United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, Boyle said, “nevertheless President Obama is subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC and its Prosecutor for murdering people in ICC member States.”
Boyle's List of War Criminals:
Civilian Both presidents since 2001
Their vice-presidents – Dick Cheney and Joseph Biden
Secretaries of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta
Secretaries of State Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, and Hillary Clinton
National Security Advisors Stephen Hadley, James Jones, and Thomas Donilon
Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and James Clapper
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Directors George Tenet, Leon Panetta, and David Petraeus
Military
Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Some Regional Commanders-in-Chiefs, especially for the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), and more recently, AFRICOM
Chairman General Martin Dempsey, U.S. Army
JCS members including Admiral James Winnefeld Jr.; General Raymond Odierno, Chief of Staff of the Army; General James Amos, Commandant of the Marine Corps; Admiral Jonathan Greenert, Chief of Naval Operations; and General Mark Welsh, Chief of Staff of the Air Force
Central Command heads since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan include Lt. General Martin Dempsey; Admiral William Fallon; General John Abizaid; General Tommy Franks; Lt. General John Allen; and current commander General James Mattis. General Carter Ham of AFRICOM bears like responsibility.
