The Briefing Room
General Category => World News => Topic started by: EC on October 25, 2013, 01:19:33 pm
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Should be in scandal watch too, this.
Via the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/25/president-us-assassinated-mother
The last time I saw my mother, Momina Bibi, was the evening before Eid al-Adha. She was preparing my children's clothing and showing them how to make sewaiyaan, a traditional sweet made of milk. She always used to say: the joy of Eid is the excitement it brings to the children.
Last year, she never had that experience. The next day, 24 October 2012, she was dead, killed by a US drone that rained fire down upon her as she tended her garden.
Nobody has ever told me why my mother was targeted that day. The media reported that the attack was on a car, but there is no road alongside my mother's house. Several reported the attack was on a house. But the missiles hit a nearby field, not a house. All reported that five militants were killed. Only one person was killed – a 65-year-old grandmother of nine.
My three children – 13-year-old Zubair, nine-year-old Nabila and five-year-old Asma – were playing nearby when their grandmother was killed. All of them were injured and rushed to hospitals. Were these children the "militants" the news reports spoke of? Or perhaps, it was my brother's children? They, too, were there. They are aged three, seven, 12, 14, 15 and 17 years old. The eldest four had just returned from a day at school, not long before the missile struck.
But the United States and its citizens probably do not know this. No one ever asked us who was killed or injured that day. Not the United States or my own government. Nobody has come to investigate nor has anyone been held accountable. Quite simply, nobody seems to care.
I care, though. And so does my family and my community. We want to understand why a 65-year-old grandmother posed a threat to one of the most powerful countries in the world. We want to understand how nine children, some playing in the field, some just returned from school, could possibly have threatened the safety of those living a continent and an ocean away.
Most importantly, we want to understand why President Obama, when asked whom drones are killing, says they are killing terrorists. My mother was not a terrorist. My children are not terrorists. Nobody in our family is a terrorist.
My mother was a midwife, the only midwife in our village. She delivered hundreds of babies in our community. Now families have no one to help them.
And my father? He is a retired school principal. He spent his life educating children, something that my community needs far more than bombs. Bombs create only hatred in the hearts of people. And that hatred and anger breeds more terrorism. But education – education can help a country prosper.
I, too, am a teacher. I was teaching in my local primary school on the day my mother was killed. I came home to find not the joys of Eid, but my children in the hospital and a coffin containing only pieces of my mother.
Our family has not been the same since that drone strike. Our home has turned into hell. The small children scream in the night and cannot sleep. They cry until dawn.
Several of the children have had to have multiple surgeries. This has cost money we no longer have, since the missiles also killed our livestock. We have been forced to borrow from friends; money we cannot repay. We then use the money to pay a doctor, a doctor who removes from the children's bodies the metal gifts the US gave them that day.
More at link.
The Guardian, as I constantly remind people, is a very left wing paper. Also very good at actual acts of journalism.
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Obama thinks this is all just one big video game. Pow! Kill! Woo hoo!
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You know - if he had an ounce of courage he'd be actively dangerous.
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Obama is not the only one responsible for his tragedy. Our Congress is a collection of cowardly, greedy men & women that spend their time pursuing self-interest projects.
That's why Obama has free reign to send drones into places that kill innocent people.
The state of our country is on their heads as well as our spite house occupant.
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Obama is not the only one responsible for his tragedy. Our Congress is a collection of cowardly, greedy men & women that spend their time pursuing self-interest projects.
That's why Obama has free reign to send drones into places that kill innocent people.
The state of our country is on their heads as well as our spite house occupant.
No - he isn't and you are correct.
He is CO. His responsibility. "The buck stops here" didn't die out just because he got elected.
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You know - if he had an ounce of courage he'd be actively dangerous.
I think you can say that about most progressives/leftists in this country. In fact, when they screw their courage to the sticking point, you invariably end up with terrorists, like the weather underground, whose numbers included one of Obama's mentors, Bill Ayers.
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We have never had a President with so little heart, and so little conscience.
He could care less about who is killed by his policies.
But the author (and victim) is right.
The American people won't find out about the death of innocents.
Because Obama is above the law. Above morality. Above decency.
And his sycophants in the media will cover for him every time.
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Obama is not the only one responsible for his tragedy. Our Congress is a collection of cowardly, greedy men & women that spend their time pursuing self-interest projects.
That's why Obama has free reign to send drones into places that kill innocent people.
The state of our country is on their heads as well as our spite house occupant.
That's an excellent point Olivia.
goopo