In February of this year, the CIA flew a pilotless drone into Pakistan, near the Afghan border. The plane fired two missiles into the town of Makeen, killing thirty. According to the report, this number included al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, but there was no immediate information how many of the thirty dead were these fighters. Clearly, there were civilian deaths -- so-called "collateral damage."The target, although the CIA won't confirm it, was Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. Mehsud is widely believed to have been responsible for the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. When the smoke cleared, Mehsud wasn't among the dead. If he was the target of the strike, his survival seems to have been a matter of luck.
This isn't anything new. Last Friday, CBS News reported that the CIA has flown more than 50 of these missions into Pakistan in the last year alone. According to the report, these missions have been very successful, "killing half of al Qaeda's top leaders and hundreds of its fighters" in that country. Given those numbers, it's hard to believe that these "top leaders" weren't targeted. It's pretty clear that the CIA is flying drones into Pakistan for the purpose of killing specific people.
Other than people -- like myself -- who aren't happy with the indiscriminate killing involved in these missile strikes, there hasn't been a lot of outrage over them. In the grand scheme of things, we can safely say that these aren't controversial... [CLICK TO READ FULL POST]
