Wednesday, May 21, 2014

U.S. DRONES IN CHAD TO FIND NIGERIAN SCHOOLGIRLS

THIS SOUNDS SO MUCH LIKE WHAT EISENHOWER DID WHEN HE PUT AMERICAN "ADVISORS" IN VIETNAM!

BUT THEN, ARE THESE "80 TROOPS" ACTUALLY "BOOTS ON THE GROUND" TROOPS OR DRONE WORKERS?
THEY ARE DRONE WORKERS, IT TURNS OUT.

President Obama on Wednesday deployed about 80 Armed Forces personnel to Chad to help find the Nigerian schoolgirls who have been missing since April.
However, the personnel, whose deployment Obama announced in a "War Powers Notification" letter that he sent to Speaker of the House John Boehner and the president pro tempore of the Senate Patrick Leahy, are not "boots on the ground." Their main priority is to work on drones — not walk through a forest to search for the missing girls.
“The military personnel sent to Chad are simply there to launch, recover, and maintain unmanned aerial systems; that’s their bailiwick, Lt. Col. Myles B. Caggins III, a Defense Department spokesman, tells Mashable. "I assure you their passion is simply ensuring the aircraft can spend maximum time searching for the abducted schoolgirls; these troops will remain at an airstrip in Chad.”
The news came as ABC reported that the U.S. had moved "additional unarmed Predator aircraft" into the country to fly longer surveillance missions over NE Nigeria.
Chad, which borders Nigeria's east, provides easy access from the skies to the region where officials suspect the Islamic militant group Boko Haram is keeping nearly 300 kidnapped girls.

A senior Obama administration official said the military personnel were deployed to Chad with the consent of that government. Some will maintain the unmanned aircraft involved in the mission and the rest will provide security for the group.
The girls were taken in April from a boarding school close to Nigeria's border with Cameroon, Niger and Chad in a sparsely populated region. Their whereabouts are unknown.

WELL, THE "CONSERVATIVES" LIKE THAT "WAR HERO" McCAIN HAVE BEEN PUSHING FOR THIS, THE GEARS OF THE GREAT MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX ARE LOOKING FOR NEW TERRITORY, SO OBAMA CAVED IN AND WE ARE NOW "OFFICIALLY" IN CHAD...AS IF WE HAVEN'T BEEN THERE FOR YEARS AND YEARS!

Some have called for Obama to send actual troops into Nigeria, including Senator John McCain in a May 13 interview with The Daily Beast, who said he'd deploy the troops "in a New York minute."
“If we rescued these young girls, it would be the high point of the [President Obama’s] popularity,” McCain said.

I CALL BULL MANURE ON McCAIN's  REMARKS!

HOWEVER..."'The U.S. government has also sent officials from the State Department and the FBI to Nigeria to help in the search.'"
FBI, STATE DEPARTMENT?
WHY?
TO CHAD AND NOT NIGERIA?
WHY?


WE HAVE HAD TROOPS IN AFRICA SINCE 2002!


THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION CALLED IT "THE WAR ON TERROR" WHEN BUSH #2 FIRST SENT TROOPS INTO AFRICA.
CATCHY NAME, APPEALING TO THE AMERICAN MASSES.


In October 2002, the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) was established in Djibouti at Camp Lemonnier.
[SOURCE: "DOD Needs to Determine the Future of Its Horn of Africa Task Force". Government Accountability Office.]
It contained approximately 2,000 personnel including US military and special operations forces (SOF) and coalition force members, Combined Task Force 150 (CTF-150).
The program expands as part of the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative as CJTF personnel also assist in training the armed forces of Chad, Niger, Mauritania and Mali. However, the 'War on Terror' does not include Sudan, where over 400,000 have died in an ongoing civil war.

On 8 January 2007, the US launched the Battle of Ras Kamboni by bombing Ras Kamboni using AC-130 gunships.  

7 years ago, 6 February,2007, under the name "Operation Enduring Freedom", during the George W. Bush presidential term, American troops began "boots on the ground" in the horn of Africa.

Since 2002, since G.W. Bush, 12 YEARS – still ongoing!

THE FIRST USE OF ARMED DRONES WAS...UNDER GEORGE W. BUSH!
The first reported drone strike against Al Qaeda happened in Yemen in 2002. The CIA ramped up secret drone strikes in Pakistan under President George W. Bush in 2008.

In February 2001, the first Hellfire missile was test-fired from a Predator UAV. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 suddenly created a new demand for Hellfire-equipped Predators to hunt down terrorists in remote areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Air Force put the weaponized Predator into immediate use in OEF and hit approximately 115 targets in Afghanistan during the first year of its combat operations. The CIA also began to use Predators to target al Qaeda operatives elsewhere in the Middle East. In November 2002, a Predator was credited with killing an al Qaeda operative in Yemen, who was thought to be responsible for the USS Cole bombing in October 2000.
[NOTE: THE COLE INCIDENT WAS SIMILAR TO THE GULF OF TONKIN FALSE FLAG UNDER LBJ...IF YOU NEED A REASON TO INVADE ANOTHER NATION, JUST CREATE YOUR OWN!]
At least some CIA strikes don’t have to get White House signoff. The director of the CIA can reportedly green-light strikes in Pakistan.

AND WHO GAVE THE CIA SUCH POWER? 
HERE'S A HINT: IT HAPPENED WHEN WE BEGAN THAT "WAR ON TERROR". REMEMBER WHO DID THAT?

October 26, 2009 The Wall Street Journal revealed that during the Bush Administration the C.I.A. had considered setting up hit squads to capture or kill Al Qaeda operatives around the world. The furor grew when the Times reported that the C.I.A. had turned to a private contractor to help with this highly sensitive operation: the controversial firm Blackwater, now known as Xe Services. Members of the Senate and House intelligence committees demanded investigations of the program, which, they said, had been hidden from them. And many legal experts argued that, had the program become fully operational, it would have violated a 1976 executive order, signed by President Gerald R. Ford, banning American intelligence forces from engaging in assassination.

Drones Over Africa: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

This week the New York Times reported that the US is planning to establish a new base for its drones in north-west Africa.  While the base is to be used initially to fly unarmed surveillance drones, according to the article the US does not rule out the possibility of using the base to launch drone strikes in the future.  One day after the NYT piece, Reuters reported the base would be established in Niger.  According to “a senior government source” says Reuters, “the U.S. ambassador to Niger, Bisa Williams, made the request at a meeting on Monday with President Mahamadou Issoufou, who immediately accepted it.” Mali will no-doubt be one of the initial targets of the US drones, bordering as it does on Niger.

OBAMA'S PEOPLE HAVE MERELY STEPPED IT ALL UP A FEW NOTCHES, BUT NOT AS MUCH AS SOME IN CONGRESS WOULD LIKE...

HYPOCRISY RULED THEN, RULES NOW!
In July, 2001, two months before Al Qaeda’s attacks on New York and Washington profoundly altered America’s mind-set, the U.S. denounced Israel’s use of targeted killing against Palestinian terrorists. The American Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, said at the time, “The United States government is very clearly on record as against targeted assassinations. . . . They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that.”

Yet once America had suffered terrorist attacks on its own soil the agency’s posture changed, and it petitioned the White House for new authority.
Within days, President Bush had signed a secret Memorandum of Notification, giving the C.I.A. the right to kill members of Al Qaeda and their confederates virtually anywhere in the world. Congress endorsed this policy, passing a bill called the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF).

Seven years later [THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN 2009], there is no longer any doubt that targeted killing has become official U.S. policy.
IN 2008, G.W. BUSH WAS RECORDED LYING TO REPORTERS, SAYING, "' “I want to dispel the notion that all of a sudden America is, you know, bringing all kinds of military to Africa. It’s just simply not true,” WHEN HE HAD ALREADY ESTABLISHED BASES IN DJIBOUTI, ETHIOPIA, BURKINA FASO,  MAURITANIA, UGANDA, AND THE SEYCHELLES.
PLANS WERE ALSO IN THE WORKS FOR THE BASE IN THE SUDAN.


General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the defense contractor that manufactures the Predator and its more heavily armed sibling, the Reaper, can barely keep up with the government’s demand. The Air Force’s fleet has grown from some fifty drones in 2001 to nearly two hundred; the C.I.A. will not divulge how many drones it operates. The government plans to commission hundreds more, including new generations of tiny “nano” drones, which can fly after their prey like a killer bee through an open window.

Since 2004, Philip Alston, an Australian human-rights lawyer who has served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, has repeatedly tried, but failed, to get a response to basic questions about the C.I.A.’s program—first from the Bush Administration, and now from Obama’s.

When he asked, in formal correspondence, for the C.I.A.’s legal justifications for targeted killings, he says, “they blew me off.” (A C.I.A. spokesperson told me that the agency “uses lawful, highly accurate, and effective tools and tactics to take the fight to Al Qaeda and its violent allies. That careful, precise approach has brought major success against a very dangerous and deadly enemy.”) Alston then presented a critical report on the drone program to the U.N. Human Rights Council, but, he says, the U.S. representatives ignored his concerns.
Alston describes the C.I.A. program as operating in “an accountability void,” adding, “It’s a lot like the torture issue. You start by saying we’ll just go after the handful of 9/11 masterminds. But, once you’ve put the regimen for waterboarding and other techniques in place, you use it much more indiscriminately. It becomes standard operating procedure. It becomes all too easy. Planners start saying, ‘Let’s use drones in a broader context.’ Once you use targeting less stringently, it can become indiscriminate.”

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT, NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN.
AFRICA HAS MANY, MANY NATURAL RESOURCES, IS A "RIPE PLUM" FOR THE PICKING BECAUSE ALL BUT ONE OF ITS NATIONS ARE CONSIDERED "THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES", IMPOVERISHED, IN CHAOS, UNABLE TO SETTLE AGE-OLD DISPUTES AMONGST TRIBESMEN.
THESE NATIONS DON'T HAVE THE FINANCES TO GET AT THOSE NATURAL RESOURCES ON THEIR OWN.
CHINA, THE USA, RUSSIA, FRANCE, GREAT BRITAIN, INDEED EVERY "MAJOR POWER"
ON EARTH ARE ALL SO WILLING TO "HELP" NATIONS LIKE NIGERIA, CHAD, ETHIOPIA, SUDAN...FOR A PIECE OF THE PIE.

SURELY YOU DON'T THINK THAT AFTER 2 1/2 CENTURIES THE U.S. ACTUALLY GIVES A DAMN ABOUT AFRICAN PEOPLE, DO YOU?
WE'VE WATCHED THEM STARVE, DO WITHOUT, AND KILL EACH OTHER SINCE THE 1700s!

BUT, RIGHT NOW, WE'RE SHORT ON TOO MANY THINGS HERE THAT WE CAN HAVE "OUT OF AFRICA", SO BACK IN WE GO TO SEE IF THIS TIME WE CAN PRY THOSE BURIED TREASURES OUT OF THAT AFRICAN SOIL.
IF NOT, WE'LL JUST DO WHAT WE'VE ALWAYS DONE, ABANDON SHIP IN AFRICA.


OBAMA MADE "PEACE" AND BRINGING OUR MILITARY HOME, CLOSING GUANTANAMO (GITMO), AND "GOVERNMENT TRANSPARENCY" A BIG PART OF HIS CAMPAIGN ...A LOT OF EMPTY PROMISES.
THAT IS A COMMON HABIT AMONG OUR DAMNABLE POLITICIANS...ALL OF THEM, EVERY SINGLE ONE.
THEY LIE!
THEY ALWAYS LIE!
THEY CAN'T TELL A TRUTH !
NONE OF THEM!


AND WE CAN SEE THE LIES!
BUT WE DON'T STOP VOTING IN THE LIARS!
DOESN'T THAT MAKE US WORSE THAN THEM?




OTHER SOURCES:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175567/

http://www.wired.com/2012/08/somalia-drones/all/

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