Five Things They Don't Tell You About Drone Strikes

by Mehdi Hassan @ Huffington Post

Yesterday, I was a panellist on BBC1's Sunday Morning Live show on which, for once, I was able to debate the morality of the Obama administration's CIA drone programme in Pakistan. There has been little discussion of the specific details of the programme in the mainstream media, on either side of the pond, and the recent US presidential debate on foreign policy saw moderator Bob Schieffer ask Mitt Romney (and not Barack Obama) a single, loaded and unfocused question on the issue.
Now, in the wake of a Pakistani man taking the British government to court over its alleged involvement in the killing of his father in a US drone strike in Waziristan, British media organisations are starting to pay attention. But here are five things they - politicians, journalists, security 'experts', etc - don't tell you about drone strikes - four out of five of which I managed to squeeze into yesterday's discussion on the BBC (and which resulted in fellow panellist and former home secretary David Blunkett, to his credit, suggesting he may have to rethink his support for drones):

A Wave of Sexual Terrorism in Iraq

Behind the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and her family lies a far larger story of what's happened to women in Iraq since they were 'liberated' by the Bush administration. - It is crazy that these women are sitting there on the floor of a prison cell with a goddamn man and gun standing over them. At the very maximum, these women may have somehow assisted their men to get these brutal soldiers, these beasts in human form, these rapists and sodomists, out of their blessed country. Is that a crime?? It is much more likely that these women on the floor have done nothing at all. They were picked up to be used by animals. - WPA

Going Rogue: NATO War Crimes in Libya

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"Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a victim of lies", says Yvonne Ridley

By M. Khalid Rehman, Karachi

During Musharraf's rule, the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan Mulla Abdus Salaam Zaeef was caught by Pakistani authorities and handed over to the Americans. He was sent to the Guantanamo camp but was freed in 2005. The United Nations removed his name from its list of terrorists in July 2010.

Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist, was also kidnapped by Pakistani authorities and sold to the US. She has been convicted in a US federal court of assault with intent to murder her US interrogators. She is incarcerated in New York and is awaiting a likely sentence of life in prison, which will be announced on September 23. Her entire case was built on lies, says Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist and war correspondent to Afghanistan told a group of Pakistani journalists at the residence of Dr Aafia's sister in Karachi on September 14.

Talking to journalists in Karachi, Yvonne Ridely said, "Some lies started wars--like President Bush's war on Iraq; and some lies destroy lives of individuals--like the statement that a frail woman imprisoned in a cell snatched the gun of an American soldier and tried to attack him."

Yvonne Ridley expressed surprise that the American trial judge in Aafia's case was not interested in the Aafia's past record, and had insisted only on knowing what had happened during those few minutes in the cell where Aafia was held in Afghanistan. The entire case is a big farce as it was never proved that Aafia fired any shots or even picked the gun. The British journalist said, "Lying comes easy to Americans."

Ridley interviewed Afghan police chief and other officials. She found that the translation of their statements in the court were distorted. "It was a mis-trial. Aafia is the most wronged woman on the planet in history, She was separated from her children, and so brutally abused that she has lost her mind. How can you try in a court of law a woman who is not in her right mind because of the tortures she was submitted to in military custody and from whom her children had been snatched?. Is this American definition of the rule of law?" Ridley remarked.

This makes one think why can the United States release a Taliban government functionary but afraid of releasing a mother of three little children?