We dream about drones, said 13-year-old Yemeni before his death in a CIA strike

[polly7]

Mohammed Tuaiman becomes the third member of his family to be killed by what he called ‘death machines’ in the sky months after Guardian interview

VIDEO

A 13-year-old boy killed in Yemen last month by a CIA drone strike had told the Guardian just months earlier that he lived in constant fear of the “death machines” in the sky that had already killed his father and brother.

“I see them every day and we are scared of them,” said Mohammed Tuaiman, speaking from al-Zur village in Marib province, where he died two weeks ago.

“A lot of the kids in this area wake up from sleeping because of nightmares from them and some now have mental problems. They turned our area into hell and continuous horror, day and night, we even dream of them in our sleep.”

Mohammed Saleh Tauiman was 13 when the Guardian gave him a camera to record his family life. Photograph: guardian.co.uk

When the Guardian interviewed Mohammed last September, he spoke of his anger towards the US government for killing his father. “They tell us that these drones come from bases in Saudi Arabia and also from bases in the Yemeni seas and America sends them to kill terrorists, but they always kill innocent people. But we don’t know why they are killing us.

“In their eyes, we don’t deserve to live like people in the rest of the world and we don’t have feelings or emotions or cry or feel pain like all the other humans around the world.”

"He wasn’t a member of al-Qaida. He was a kid"
Maqdad

Full article: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/10/drones-dream-yemeni-teenager-mohammed-tuaiman-death-cia-strike

(An older article but included as a link in an email.)

* these *'ing killing machines.

[think]

1. K&R. Indiscriminate killing is not justice. It's tantamount to murder...

[polly7]

2. Yes it is, and also terror - it's terrorism. nt.

[think]

3. I am saddened and feel for the people who must worry day in and day out whether a drone might take

their life or the life of a loved one.

While we don't hear as much about drone strikes they still occur. And for the people in these middle east countries like Yemen the drones hover overhead unceasingly...

The UN Says US Drone Strikes in Yemen Have Killed More Civilians Than al Qaeda

By Samuel Oakford

September 15, 2015 | 4:00 am

American drones strikes may have killed as many as 40 Yemeni civilians over the past year, the UN reported on Monday, offering a tally of the human cost of the long-running US campaign against al Qaeda in Yemen, which has continued amid the chaos of country's current war.

The data on drone strikes came from the latest report on Yemen issued by the UN's Office of the High Commissioner For Human Rights (OHCHR), which compiled accounts of human rights violations from July 1, 2014 to June 30 of this year.

The US first launched armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over Yemen in 2002, but the bulk of strikes carried out by the aircraft have taken place since since 2011. According to figures maintained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's Drone War program, as many as 101 civilians have been killed by confirmed drone strikes in Yemen, plus 26 to 61 others killed by "possible extra drone strikes." Between 156 and 365 civilians have also been killed in other covert missions since 2002, according to the group.....

Read more:
https://news.vice.com/article/the-un-says-us-drone-strikes-in-yemen-have-killed-more-civilians-than-al-qaeda

[polly7]

5. Yes, especially the children.

And without mental health aid, they're forced to live a nightmare day and night, month after month. I've dealt with extreme anxiety and was able to get meds and therapy for it - knowing how horrible the mental and physical torture of it can get, I can't imagine the suffering of these people, with nowhere to turn.

Every single death should be on the nightly news. Killing has gotten so easy - and so easy to ignore. As far as I'm concerned, these chicken-shit, cowardly death machines should be banned just as any other weapon used to commit war-crimes - cluster bombs, chemical weapons, etc. Just the fact that they're being used to bomb and kill civilians in so many places without even having to declare 'war' on these people boggles the mind. It's all disgusting.

[atreides1]

4. American Exceptionalism!!!

Only, we're not exceptional, we murder in cold blood, just like ISIS...only we do so with technology! The only difference in an ISIS terrorist, beheading a victim, and a drone operator, firing a missile into a village, is how the murder is committed!!!

[Downwinder]

6. Who has authority to approve extrajudicial killing?

[felix_numinous]

7. The war against terror

increased terrorism. The last peace accord was with Carter, enemy of all warmongers. How on Earth are we supposed to broker any deal now, they have ruined our international standing beyond repair.

[Bayard]

8. Extermination

How is this any different than the killer drones in Terminator?

[FourScore]

9. I am so so sorry, Mohammed. Peace to your family.

[polly7]

15. I look at these pictures of the young people there

and am always struck by their thinness and frailty - yet they smile. The children play in the dust and dirt and hide until the planes above are gone and they can come back out - contrast that with all the opportunities given to our children here in the west. I'm so sorry too. Mohammed was a very brave, handsome boy who only wanted peace and to take care of his family. Sometimes this world is just too cruel to take it all in - there are thousands of Mohammeds killed, traumatized, made homeless, orphaned .. in these unnecessary horrific acts of - whatever it is, it's not war. These thin, poverty-stricken people attacked by million dollar robots day after day, year after year, and not a thought is given to them by our wonderful, transparent western media. A horrible, disgusting shame that should affect every person claiming to have a soul.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

10. But...But...But...

He was in the area of terrorists, so ya know he shouldn't have been there. But since he was there he must have known who the terrorists were, abd if he knew who the terrorists were then he's as good as a terrorist...

We need to stop this practice or thesame reasoning will be used against us...you know...the good guys.

[awoke_in_2003]

11. These actions assure we will have

new "terrorists" to fight. How many of these will grow up having their family killed by drones? How will they decide to fight back? It is all part of the plan.

[Avalon Sparks]

12. What plan do you think

I'm curious what you think.

[awoke_in_2003]

14. To always have an enemy

with an enemy you can somehow justify the bloated defense budget. Plus, keeping the public scared makes them easier to control. After the end of the Cold War, we had to focus our military to other targets, legitimate or not.

[polly7]

16. That's it exactly.

The MIC, weapons manufacturers, 'reconstruction contracts', theft of resources, relegating formerly functioning nations to brutal austerity and big bank ownership ...... and, you really can't have all this war on 'terror' unless you create actual terrorists.

It's a sick, ugly game.

[Baobab]

18. profitable

$$$$

[Avalon Sparks]

13. Wtf

A Reaper drone costs $28 million; one Hellfire missile (Lockheed Martin/Raytheon) costs about $70,000; one Paveway bomb (Lockheed Martin/Raytheon) about $20,000. The total cost of one weapons load for a Reaper – four Hellfire/ two Paveway – is at least $320,000, a third of a million dollars.

This is how the US spends its tax dollars while creating more terrorists.

Screw college education
Screw healthcare
Screw our info structure
Screw clean drinking water

Unbelievable.

[awoke_in_2003]

17. Excellent post...

along with dollar figures. Well done.

[Baobab]

19. The first two are barred by our trade policy.. really evil trade policy they hide from us

___BARREDScrew college education
___BARREDScrew healthcare

Screw our info structure ??
Screw clean drinking water Old public is okay, new public probably barred see


http://www.iatp.org/files/GATS_and_Public_Service_Systems.htm

[robertgodardfromnj]

20. Very sad

Good article, btw. Makes you think.

[Judi Lynn]

21. We read the article when it was originally published, am so sick at heart we killed this young man,

too. He was a fine, intelligent, good person who had experienced more pain in his life than any one of good will would sanction.

And for what? Why murder these precious people?

I don't get it, I'll never support it.

Thank you, polly, for letting us know.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

22. I wonder if someone...

...can name/list any/all organizations/individuals more worthy, based on their well established track record, of being entered on the US terrorist watch list than our own CIA.

Good luck with that to whomever would like to try.

[polly7]

23. US/Saudi Aggression in Yemen Celebrated by Co-Aggressor UAE

by William Boardman / April 20th, 2016

On March 26, the first anniversary of the UAE’s unprovoked attack on Yemen as part of the Saudi-led coalition of mostly Arab states, the UAE’s official media published a document about the carnage in Yemen illustrative of George Orwell’s observation: “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” The truth about the war in Yemen is a largely unreported secret. The UAE officially hides that truth from itself in an editorial in The National (which follows in its entirety, section by section). It begins with the headline:

“After a year in Yemen, our resolve is firm”

After a year in Yemen, the US/Saudi coalition has managed to reduce the region’s poorest country to an almost unthinkable condition, where some 20 million Yemenis – about 80% of the population need humanitarian assistance. In a country both under attack and on the verge of mass famine, what does “our resolve is firm” really mean if not continued crimes against humanity? The UAE editorial’s first sentence has no discernible meaning at all.

The start one year ago of Operation Decisive Storm comes as a reminder of the importance of the war in Yemen.

The anniversary of an aggression – that the Saudis proclaimed would be brief and decisive – is important mostly for its irony. An official Saudi press release of March 25, 2015, quoted the Saudi ambassador to the US saying: “The operation will be limited in nature, and designed to protect the people of Yemen and its legitimate government from a takeover by the Houthis. A violent extremist militia.” By then the “legitimate” government of Yemen had fled to the Saudi capital of Riyadh. Not only has more than a year of US/Saudi-led war failed to achieve any significant military success, it has produced collateral damage on a massive scale, making the country of 25 million people perhaps the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. This reality makes a mockery of the UAE editorial’s next assertion.

The UAE joined the Saudi-led coalition campaign driven by its commitment and dedication to maintaining security and establishing peace in the region.

This is, almost literally, Orwellian in its “war is peace” mindset. From the start, the US/Saudi aggression has violated international law and committed war crimes against Yemeni civilians, using cluster bombs made in the USA (and sold to the Saudis with US taxpayer subsidies). The recently-released US State Department annual human rights report on Saudi Arabia for 2015 soft-pedals the allies’ slaughter of civilians in Yemen, and omits Saudi-dropped US cluster bombs entirely (perhaps because their lingering impact killing children over years and decades is deucedly hard to assess accurately, whereas profits can be tallied almost immediately). The full despicability of the Obama administration’s position on these inhumanities is revealed in its official unwillingness to speak on the record about the blatant hypocrisy of its morally indefensible defense of the murder of civilians for profit as reported in The Intercept.

The UAE has long been a source of support for the Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh), as have Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait – all part of the coalition waging war on Yemen. Editorially, the UAE cloaks itself in the mantle of state legitimacy.

The coalition responded to the call by Yemen’s president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi to restore his internationally recognised government to power.

To call the Hadi government “internationally recognized” is to fudge the reality that the Hadi government has only limited recognition among Yemenis. Hadi came to power through what US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power called, somewhat falsely, the “peaceful, inclusive, and consensus-driven political transition under the leadership of the legitimate President of Yemen, Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi.” One problem with this US formulation is that Hadi’s “legitimacy” derives from his being installed as president by an international diplomatic coup, followed by his election in a race in which he was the sole candidate. Essentially, there is no legitimate government of Yemen and has not been for decades at least. The present war of aggression by outside powers intervening in a multifaceted civil war relies for its justification on a variety of dishonest fictions. The Houthis are a sub-group of the Shi’ite Zaidis, who number about eight million in Yemen. The Zaidis governed northwest Yemen for 1,000 years, until 1962. The UAE editorial invents a different historical identity.

This criminal brutality has been documented over and over by non-governmental organizations. Most recently, on April 7, Human Rights Watch issued a report centered on the war crime of bombing a civilian market, killing 97 civilians, 25 of them children. This is no isolated incident. The responsibility and guilt for these atrocities extends to those who sell the weapons as well as those who use them. As Human Rights Watch reported in part:

Since March 26, 2015, the UN and nongovernmental organizations have documented numerous airstrikes by coalition forces that violate the laws of war. The UN Panel of Experts on Yemen, established under UN Security Council Resolution 2140 (2013), in a report made public on January 26, “documented 119 coalition sorties relating to violations” of the laws of war.

Human Rights Watch has documented 36 unlawful airstrikes – some of which may amount to war crimes – which have killed at least 550 civilians. Human Rights Watch has also documented 15 attacks in which internationally banned cluster munitions were used in or near cities and villages, wounding or killing civilians…. The coalition has used at least six types of cluster munitions, three delivered by air-dropped bombs and three by ground-launched rockets….

Full article: http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/04/ussaudi-aggression-in-yemen-celebrated-by-co-aggressor-uae/