Not since Andrew(Old Hickory)Jackson have we had such a blood thirsty Leader.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/27/17, M Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Boardman writes: "Now Donald Trump is a war criminal just like his
predecessors. That didn't take long."
A General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper stands on the runway. (photo: U.S. Air Force)
Trump's First War Crimes: Assassinations by Drone
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
27 January 17
New president joins Bush and Obama as killers-in-chief
Now Donald Trump is a war criminal just like his predecessors. That didn't
take long. Over the inaugural weekend, while the president was obsessing
about the size of his crowd, his government also let loose two drone
strikes
against defenseless Yemen, reportedly killing an estimated 10 people, some
of whom could possibly have been terrorists about to strike somewhere in
Yemen. Three of these people were on a motorcycle hit by one drone, the
other seven were in a vehicle hit by the other drone.
The United States is not formally at war with Yemen but strikes the country
with drones whenever it feels like it. The U.S. also maintains a naval
blockade of Yemen, contributing to near-famine in the region's poorest
country, which has never been able to produce enough food to feed its 25
million people. And since March 2015, the U.S. has supported and
participated in the undeclared, illegal war of aggression launched by Saudi
Arabia and its allies with U.S. blessings.
President Trump is not known to have a coherent policy on Yemen, whose war
he inherits from the Obama administration. In answer to a question about
providing "military aid to Saudi Arabia during its conflict with Yemen,"
Trump answered: "No, we should stay out of conflicts that are not an
immediate threat to our security." Most mainstream media, who rarely
bothered President Obama about Yemen, have not asked President Trump to
clarify his apparent stand against participating in wars we're already
participating in.
President Trump has let it be known that he plans to sign an executive
order
to bar any immigrants from Yemen and other countries from coming to the
U.S., because they're Muslims and if we couldn't bomb them there we'd have
to bomb them here.
The ten drone victims in Yemen were part of a total death toll of about 75,
according to The New York Times, based on "Yemeni news reports." Most of
the
killing resulted from fighting on the ground in the southwest of the
country
near the Red Sea, where Saudi-allied forces supporting the deposed Yemeni
president have launched an offensive against the forces of the Houthis, who
toppled the Yemeni government more than two years ago. The Times report is
silent on whether President Trump personally ordered the drone strikes that
killed ten alleged "terrorists."
The Washington Post reports more directly: "The first drone strikes under
President Donald Trump were carried out in central Yemen over the weekend,
the Pentagon said Monday [January 23]." According to the Post, U.S. drone
strikes in Yemen, which started many years ago, have increased in the past
two years:
The United States maintains a small ground presence of Special Operations
forces in Yemen that coordinates with troops from the United Arab Emirates,
who are fighting al Qaeda, while another U.S. detachment provides limited
intelligence to Saudi-led forces that are focused on defeating the Houthis.
Since 2014, more than 10,000 people have died and 40,000 have been wounded
in the civil conflict, according to a recent statement by the United
Nations.
The "civil conflict" so-called is in fact a civil war engulfed in an
international invasion with perhaps a dozen nations participating in a
fight
that also includes both al-Qaeda and ISIS. Both terrorist groups control
significant portions of Yemen, as do the Houthis and the Saudi-backed
deposed government.
Based on Pentagon briefings, the Post reported only five fighters killed by
drone strikes, with no mention of any others killed or not. This report
said
those killed were al-Qaeda fighters, not Houthis, as the Times reported.
The
Pentagon asserted that these drone strikes "did not require approval by
recently appointed Defense Secretary James Mattis or Trump." The Post did
not say who approved the strikes, if anyone. President Obama was understood
to have personally approved drone strikes designed to kill suspected
terrorist leaders.
While the Post omits mention of the fighting that killed 65 or so in the
southwest, it does report that "U.S. aircraft also carried out bombing
missions in Iraq and Syria in recent days in support of local forces
attacking Mosul and advancing on the Islamic State's self-declared capital
of Raqqa." The Post mentions no casualties.
According to The Guardian, the first drone strikes of the Trump
administration killed only three al Qaeda operatives, with no mention of
any
other deaths, "security and tribal officials said." The Guardian also
reported that the Obama administration left office after a years-long drone
killing spree:
U.S. intelligence officials said as many as 117 civilians had been killed
in
drone and other counter-terror attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere
during Obama's presidency. It was the second public assessment issued in
response to mounting pressure for more information about lethal U.S.
operations overseas.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism puts Obama's killings at ten times
the number of Bush administration drone assassinations. According to
reports
logged by the bureau, the Obama death toll was between 384 and 807
civilians
at wedding parties, funerals, and more mundane activities.
The Obama exit may have been splashier than otherwise reported. According
to
Democracy Now, in a report that requires the reader to believe more than
100
terrorists were neatly segregated as precision targets:
The Pentagon says a U.S. airstrike and U.S. drone strikes in Idlib, Syria,
killed more than 100 people Friday. U.S. officials say the victims of the
airstrike were al-Qaeda fighters. But the Syrian opposition group Jabhat
Fateh al-Sham says the airstrike hit its camp and that the victims were not
al-Qaeda fighters. Jabhat Fateh al-Sham is the new name for the group
al-Nusra, which says it broke from al-Qaeda in 2016. The airstrike was one
of the final military acts of Obama's presidency.
While the numbers of the dead may be hard to verify, there is no dispute
that three consecutive American presidents have sanctioned killing
civilians
with drones as the price they're willing to pay to sometimes kill actual
terrorists. In a rational time, it would be an undisputed war crime and an
impeachable offense for a U.S. president to order the assassination of
people, including Americans citizens, based on mere suspicion.
So now the question becomes - with President Trump now joining the circle
of
war-criminals-in-chief - why is there no article of impeachment before the
House of Representatives? This is the third opportunity to impeach a
murderous president for acts of official assassination that are patently
unconstitutional. Maybe Rep. John Lewis of Georgia might take it on, as a
response to Donald Trump's recent tweet about him: "rather than falsely
complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or
results. Sad!"
Some people might ask: Why impeach Trump for what Bush and Obama got away
with? Others might wonder: Why begin to worry about hypocrisy now? And
still
others might say: How come we've been waging war for two years on one of
the
world's poorest countries?
[Note: a possible correction might be called for if the premise of this
article turns out not to be true. If this is NOT President Trump's first
war
crime, the author regrets the error and requests that the administration
identify the president's actual first war crime.]
________________________________________
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America,
Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award
nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
A General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper stands on the runway. (photo: U.S. Air Force)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
Trump's First War Crimes: Assassinations by Drone
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
27 January 17
New president joins Bush and Obama as killers-in-chief
ow Donald Trump is a war criminal just like his predecessors. That didn't
take long. Over the inaugural weekend, while the president was obsessing
about the size of his crowd, his government also let loose two drone
strikes
against defenseless Yemen, reportedly killing an estimated 10 people, some
of whom could possibly have been terrorists about to strike somewhere in
Yemen. Three of these people were on a motorcycle hit by one drone, the
other seven were in a vehicle hit by the other drone.
The United States is not formally at war with Yemen but strikes the country
with drones whenever it feels like it. The U.S. also maintains a naval
blockade of Yemen, contributing to near-famine in the region's poorest
country, which has never been able to produce enough food to feed its 25
million people. And since March 2015, the U.S. has supported and
participated in the undeclared, illegal war of aggression launched by Saudi
Arabia and its allies with U.S. blessings.
President Trump is not known to have a coherent policy on Yemen, whose war
he inherits from the Obama administration. In answer to a question about
providing "military aid to Saudi Arabia during its conflict with Yemen,"
Trump answered: "No, we should stay out of conflicts that are not an
immediate threat to our security." Most mainstream media, who rarely
bothered President Obama about Yemen, have not asked President Trump to
clarify his apparent stand against participating in wars we're already
participating in.
President Trump has let it be known that he plans to sign an executive
order
to bar any immigrants from Yemen and other countries from coming to the
U.S., because they're Muslims and if we couldn't bomb them there we'd have
to bomb them here.
The ten drone victims in Yemen were part of a total death toll of about 75,
according to The New York Times, based on "Yemeni news reports." Most of
the
killing resulted from fighting on the ground in the southwest of the
country
near the Red Sea, where Saudi-allied forces supporting the deposed Yemeni
president have launched an offensive against the forces of the Houthis, who
toppled the Yemeni government more than two years ago. The Times report is
silent on whether President Trump personally ordered the drone strikes that
killed ten alleged "terrorists."
The Washington Post reports more directly: "The first drone strikes under
President Donald Trump were carried out in central Yemen over the weekend,
the Pentagon said Monday [January 23]." According to the Post, U.S. drone
strikes in Yemen, which started many years ago, have increased in the past
two years:
The United States maintains a small ground presence of Special Operations
forces in Yemen that coordinates with troops from the United Arab Emirates,
who are fighting al Qaeda, while another U.S. detachment provides limited
intelligence to Saudi-led forces that are focused on defeating the Houthis.
Since 2014, more than 10,000 people have died and 40,000 have been wounded
in the civil conflict, according to a recent statement by the United
Nations.
The "civil conflict" so-called is in fact a civil war engulfed in an
international invasion with perhaps a dozen nations participating in a
fight
that also includes both al-Qaeda and ISIS. Both terrorist groups control
significant portions of Yemen, as do the Houthis and the Saudi-backed
deposed government.
Based on Pentagon briefings, the Post reported only five fighters killed by
drone strikes, with no mention of any others killed or not. This report
said
those killed were al-Qaeda fighters, not Houthis, as the Times reported.
The
Pentagon asserted that these drone strikes "did not require approval by
recently appointed Defense Secretary James Mattis or Trump." The Post did
not say who approved the strikes, if anyone. President Obama was understood
to have personally approved drone strikes designed to kill suspected
terrorist leaders.
While the Post omits mention of the fighting that killed 65 or so in the
southwest, it does report that "U.S. aircraft also carried out bombing
missions in Iraq and Syria in recent days in support of local forces
attacking Mosul and advancing on the Islamic State's self-declared capital
of Raqqa." The Post mentions no casualties.
According to The Guardian, the first drone strikes of the Trump
administration killed only three al Qaeda operatives, with no mention of
any
other deaths, "security and tribal officials said." The Guardian also
reported that the Obama administration left office after a years-long drone
killing spree:
U.S. intelligence officials said as many as 117 civilians had been killed
in
drone and other counter-terror attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere
during Obama's presidency. It was the second public assessment issued in
response to mounting pressure for more information about lethal U.S.
operations overseas.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism puts Obama's killings at ten times
the number of Bush administration drone assassinations. According to
reports
logged by the bureau, the Obama death toll was between 384 and 807
civilians
at wedding parties, funerals, and more mundane activities.
The Obama exit may have been splashier than otherwise reported. According
to
Democracy Now, in a report that requires the reader to believe more than
100
terrorists were neatly segregated as precision targets:
The Pentagon says a U.S. airstrike and U.S. drone strikes in Idlib, Syria,
killed more than 100 people Friday. U.S. officials say the victims of the
airstrike were al-Qaeda fighters. But the Syrian opposition group Jabhat
Fateh al-Sham says the airstrike hit its camp and that the victims were not
al-Qaeda fighters. Jabhat Fateh al-Sham is the new name for the group
al-Nusra, which says it broke from al-Qaeda in 2016. The airstrike was one
of the final military acts of Obama's presidency.
While the numbers of the dead may be hard to verify, there is no dispute
that three consecutive American presidents have sanctioned killing
civilians
with drones as the price they're willing to pay to sometimes kill actual
terrorists. In a rational time, it would be an undisputed war crime and an
impeachable offense for a U.S. president to order the assassination of
people, including Americans citizens, based on mere suspicion.
So now the question becomes - with President Trump now joining the circle
of
war-criminals-in-chief - why is there no article of impeachment before the
House of Representatives? This is the third opportunity to impeach a
murderous president for acts of official assassination that are patently
unconstitutional. Maybe Rep. John Lewis of Georgia might take it on, as a
response to Donald Trump's recent tweet about him: "rather than falsely
complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or
results. Sad!"
Some people might ask: Why impeach Trump for what Bush and Obama got away
with? Others might wonder: Why begin to worry about hypocrisy now? And
still
others might say: How come we've been waging war for two years on one of
the
world's poorest countries?
[Note: a possible correction might be called for if the premise of this
article turns out not to be true. If this is NOT President Trump's first
war
crime, the author regrets the error and requests that the administration
identify the president's actual first war crime.]
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America,
Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award
nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
