U.S. Drone Kills 16-Year-Old Pakistani Boy Days After He Attends Anti-Drone Organizing Meeting

U.S. Drone Kills 16-Year-Old Pakistani Boy Days After He Attends Anti-Drone Organizing Meeting

www.democracynow.org

A group of Pakistanis met in Islamabad late last month to discuss the impact of U.S. drone strikes in their communities. One of the attendees was a 16-year-old boy named Tariq Aziz, who had volunteered to learn photography to begin documenting drone strikes near his home. Within 72 hours of the meeting, Aziz was killed in a U.S. drone strike. His 12-year-old cousin was also killed in the Oct. 31 attack.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
Ron Paul: Drone attacks are reason 'people of Pakistan can't stand our guts'
For Our Allies, Death From Above

As many as 3000 people have been killed in Pakistan by U.S. covert drone war, 175 of them children.

There is a strong implication that this was an intentional targeted killing by the CIA of Tariq Aziz and his 12 year old cousin while traveling. Notice "while traveling", that means in the open, easily identifiable by cameras on the drone. Not "collateral damage" of a bystander in a militant compound.

As Pratap Chatterjee says in the interview:

But more than that, the very fact that I personally was able to meet them in an open, public meeting in Islamabad, I question as to whether the CIA is really attempting to identify people before they kill them, because if this person was a militant, they could well have met them in Islamabad, as did hundreds of other people. And at the press conference, there were—I counted 23 cameras. At the jirga, there were a dozen cameras. There are thousands of people in the streets of Islamabad. It would have been so easy for the CIA, the ISI, to come question these kids, to have taken them aside, even put them in jail or interrogated them, send them to Guantánamo. But instead they chose to kill them.

The US wants complete control over what news gets out of Pakistan concerning drone strikes, which evidently includes the killing of journalists and others with cameras seeking to document the numbers of civilians, including women and children, being killed.


www.democracynow.org
(visit the link for the full news article)

I can't imagine how disturbing it would be living in an area with regular drone strikes. It's something out of a horror movie. I think drones are an important part of our arsenal but are used far too often. Like a cops tazer.

The pilots of these drones never get to see the mangled bodies of the children they kill. They might be a little hesitant about pushing the kill button if they did see what they do. I'll bet they are kept like slaves and not allowed contact with the outside world. They are the Borg, resistance is futile.

reply to post by Domo1

I can't imagine how disturbing it would be living in an area with regular drone strikes.

The New York Times article that I linked to above:

The next day, the jirga lasted several hours. I had a translator, but the gist of each man’s speech was clear. American drones would circle their homes all day before unleashing Hellfire missiles, often in the dark hours between midnight and dawn. Death lurked everywhere around them.
www.nytimes.com...

That article was written by another one of the journalists Clive Stafford Smith, an American lawyer, director of Reprieve, who was also at the Jirga meeting Friday before last.

reply to post by earthdude

The pilots of these drones never get to see the mangled bodies of the children they kill.

I think they do see the faces quite clearly in those highly sophisticated surveillance cameras. They push the buttons then go out for a drink. Those based stateside go home and read bedtime stories to their own children. Our best and brightest turned into dehumanized, desensitized monsters.

reply to post by pthena


That is why everyone loves US.

I love you America - I'm serious

Originally posted by pthena
There is a strong implication that this was an intentional targeted killing by the CIA of Tariq Aziz and his 12 year old cousin while traveling. Notice "while traveling", that means in the open, easily identifiable by cameras on the drone. Not "collateral damage" of a bystander in a militant compound.

Individuals are not easily identifiable from altitude. They are very hard to identify, especially if they are traveling in a closed vehicle. If the attack takes place "in the dark hours between midnight and dawn," the target is just a man-shaped blob.

Well if he was learning photography and had a camera on him then that alone makes him a suspected terrorist. So be a nice sheeple and do not document anything. It will get you into trouble or killed.

.......................

Originally posted by FurvusRexCaeli

Originally posted by pthena
There is a strong implication that this was an intentional targeted killing by the CIA of Tariq Aziz and his 12 year old cousin while traveling. Notice "while traveling", that means in the open, easily identifiable by cameras on the drone. Not "collateral damage" of a bystander in a militant compound.

Individuals are not easily identifiable from altitude. They are very hard to identify, especially if they are traveling in a closed vehicle. If the attack takes place "in the dark hours between midnight and dawn," the target is just a man-shaped blob.

when they can read a newspaper at night from spy satellites they damn sure can i.d people walking on the ground in the open from a drone. Cowards tools used from a distance to make killing easier. That boy and his cousins death were no accident it was deliberate cold-blooded murder to silence him and warn others to stay silent.
S.O.P for the corrupt old bastards in dizzy city and C(aught) I(n the) A(ct) one of the oldest plays in their books..
Condolences to the families of the boys..

reply to post by FurvusRexCaeli


have you seen or heard of of FLIR imaging?

The people targeted arn't just blobs, you can clearly see them and what their doing.

reply to post by pthena


Welcome to the sucessfull breeding programme of truely depraved humans . This all started in the 80s children . The direct programming and influences on them by movies that were ultra violent and millitant and then the push button video games.
All the little humans are being breed to be mindless killers if they are so inclined to video games .

Originally posted by Expat888
when they can read a newspaper at night from spy satellites they damn sure can i.d people walking on the ground in the open from a drone.

Perhaps when they can read newspapers at night from spy satellites they can, but that time has not arrived, so they can't. Do you want to know how targets are actually identified?

reply to post by AaronWilson

I've done much more than see or hear of FLIR, thanks.

What a heart breaking story. It is also important to remember, even when there is a real militant target and when the innocents killed are in fact "collateral damage", the family members of those killed as well as friends or significant others will be permanently impacted. So while initially it may seem the ends justify the means, in the end those who care about the innocents killed may very well become militants themselves or even terrorists as they may very understandably develop a vendetta against the United States. So my point is, drones can very easily backfire and cause the opposite of the intended purpose. While I don't support drones strikes in Pakistan, I have a close friend whose father pilots those drones and I know he is not an evil person, so I try to be as diplomatic as possible when discussing this issue. I can say to this is Insha'Allah.

reply to post by Anusuia

All the little humans are being breed to be mindless killers if they are so inclined to video games .

a quick google search for " military funded video games " gets a whole lot of hits. Here's an important thought from one of the hits:

Military propaganda video game Halo 3 dominates marketOct. 23 2009
Halo 3 is a dream recruiting tool for the military, a perfect amalgam of propaganda and entertainment that highlights all of the unrealistic, hyper-machismo badassery of Hollywood-style war, while completely whitewashing the moral relativism of real-world conflicts.
. . .
Microsoft made $170 million on the first day of Halo 3’s release. It estimated 1 million players were online within 20 hours of the release, and Halo 3 has now sold more copies than the Harry Potter video game series. The Army has spent over a million dollars to sponsor the game precisely because they want access to that huge pool of bodies just waiting to be tossed into conflict zones.

I enjoy playing computer games myself, mostly strategy and fantasy RPG. I completely avoid first person shooters. They are very disturbing.

It's Judgement Day, only it's not God who decides who lives and who dies on this planet.


They should really put an offensive Laser on the drones. Instead of killing the kid they could have heated up the frontal lobe of his brain giving him a directed energy lobotomy. Nobody would have even known he was shot at with a directed energy weapon.

Why are they still using cave men weapons? Missiles...? Oh...they are cheaper....and they can do it freely as Pakistan can't secure it's own airspace.

reply to post by pthena


I'll wager that there is far more to this story that what has been given.

In Afganistan a drone isn't going to target two individuals unless they were doing something obvious to draw attention such as digging on a road to bury an explosive.

In Pakistan, the drones are used to target--not without mistakes--leaders of some ranking in the Taliban in vehicles and gatherings. So the reported killing of two young boys in Pakistan leads me to suspect that the story is bogus to a large degree. Perhaps they were burying a bomb and it exploded and a drone was blamed? How better to make martyr?

Ignore the propaganda.

A terrorist was killed and it should be celebrated.