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Ron Paul See other Ron Paul Articles Title: Obama Killed a 16-Year-Old American in Yemen. Trump Just Killed His 8-Year-Old Sister . In 2010, President Obama directed the CIA to assassinate an American citizen in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, despite the fact that he had never been charged with (let alone convicted of) any crime, and the agency successfully carried out that order a year later with a September, 2011 drone strike. While that assassination created widespread debate – the once-again-beloved ACLU sued Obama to restrain him from the assassination on the ground of due process and then, when that suit was dismissed, sued Obama again after the killing was carried out – another drone-killing carried out shortly thereafter was perhaps even more significant yet generated relatively little attention. Two weeks after the killing of Awlaki, a separate CIA drone strike in Yemen killed his 16-year-old American-born son, Abdulrahman, along with the boy’s 17-year-old cousin and several other innocent Yemenis. The U.S. eventually claimed that the boy was not their target but merely “collateral damage.” Abdulrahman’s grief-stricken grandfather, Nasser al-Awlaki, urged the Washington Post “to visit a Facebook memorial page for Abdulrahman,” which explained: “Look at his pictures, his friends, and his hobbies His Facebook page shows a typical kid.” Few events pulled the mask off Obama officials like this one. It highlighted how the Obama administration was ravaging Yemen, one of the world’s poorest countries: just weeks after he won the Nobel Prize, Obama used cluster bombs that killed 35 Yemeni women and children. Even Obama-supporting liberal comedians mocked the Obama DOJ’s arguments for why it had the right to execute Americans with no charges: “Due Process Just Means There’s A Process That You Do,” snarked Stephen Colbert. And a firestorm erupted when former Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs offered a sociopathic justification for killing the Colorado-born teenager, apparently blaming him for his own killing by saying he should have “had a more responsible father.” The U.S. assault on Yemeni civilians not only continued but radically escalated over the next five years through the end of the Obama presidency, as the U.S. and the UK armed, supported and provide crucial assistance to their close ally Saudi Arabia as it devastated Yemen through a criminally reckless bombing campaign. Yemen now faces mass starvation, seemingly exacerbated, deliberately, by the US/UK-supported air attacks. Because of the west’s direct responsibility for these atrocities, they have received vanishingly little attention in the responsible countries. In a hideous symbol of the bipartisan continuity of U.S. barbarism, Nasser al-Awlaki just lost another one of his young grandchildren to U.S. violence. On Sunday, the Navy’s SEAL Team 6, using armed Reaper drones for cover, carried out a commando raid on what it said was a compound harboring officials of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. A statement issued by President Trump lamented the death of an American service member and several others who were wounded, but made no mention of any civilian deaths. U.S. military officials initially denied any civilian deaths, and (therefore) the CNN report on the raid said nothing about any civilians being killed. But reports from Yemen quickly surfaced that 30 people were killed, including 10 women and children. Among the dead: the 8-year-old granddaughter of Nasser al-Awlaki, Nawar, who was also the daughter of Anwar Awlaki. As noted by my colleague Jeremy Scahill – who extensively interviewed the grandparents in Yemen for his book and film on Obama’s “Dirty Wars” – the girl was “was shot in the neck and killed,” bleeding to death over the course of two hours. “Why kill children?,” the grandfather asked. “This is the new (U.S.) administration – it’s very sad, a big crime.” The New York Times yesterday reported that military officials had been planning and debating the raid for months under the Obama administration, but Obama officials decided to leave the choice to Trump. The new President personally authorized the attack last week. They claim that the “main target” of the raid “was computer materials inside the house that could contain clues about future terrorist plots.” The paper cited a Yemeni official saying that “at least eight women and seven children, ages 3 to 13, had been killed in the raid,” and that the attack also “severely damaged a school, a health facility and a mosque.” As my colleague Matthew Cole reported in great detail just weeks ago, Navy Seal Team 6, for all its public glory, has a long history of “‘revenge ops,’ unjustified killings, mutilations, and other atrocities.” And Trump notoriously vowed during the campaign to target not only terrorists but also their families. All of that demands aggressive, independent inquiries into this operation. Perhaps most tragic of all is that – just as was true in Iraq – Al Qaeda had very little presence in Yemen before the Obama administration began bombing and droning it and killing civilians, thus driving people into the arms of the militant group. As the late, young Yemeni writer Ibrahim Mothana told Congress in 2013: Drone strikes are causing more and more Yemenis to hate America and join radical militants . . . Unfortunately, liberal voices in the United States are largely ignoring, if not condoning, civilian deaths and extrajudicial killings in Yemen. During George W. Bush’s presidency, the rage would have been tremendous. But today there is little outcry, even though what is happening is in many ways an escalation of Mr. Bush’s policies. . . . Defenders of human rights must speak out. America’s counterterrorism policy here is not only making Yemen less safe by strengthening support for A.Q.A.P. [al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula] but it could also ultimately endanger the United States and the entire world. This is why it is crucial that – as urgent and valid protests erupt against Trump’s abuses – we not permit recent history to be whitewashed, or long-standing U.S. savagery to be deceitfully depicted as new Trumpian aberrations, or the War on Terror framework engendering these new assaults to be forgotten. Some current abuses are unique to Trump, but – as I detailed on Saturday – some are the decades-old by-product of a mindset and system of war and executive powers that all need uprooting. Obscuring these facts, or allowing those responsible to posture as opponents of all this, is not just misleading but counter-productive: much of this resides on an odious continuum and did not just appear out of nowhere. It’s genuinely inspiring to see pervasive rage over the banning of visa-holders and refugees from countries like Yemen. But it’s also infuriating that the U.S. continues to massacre Yemeni civilians, both directly and through its tyrannical Saudi partners. That does not become less infuriating – Yemeni civilians are not less dead – because these policies and the war theories in which they are rooted began before the inauguration of Donald Trump. It’s not just Trump but this mentality and framework that needs vehement opposition. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 15.
#1. To: Ada (#0)
Here we are once again,with leftist loons in the media distorting reality and blaming the wrong people for those children being used as shields to try to protect their elders from getting their just rewards. This has been going on since at least the VN war,when the VC would go into a village,seize the villagers,and then use them as shields while firing at South Vietnamese or America troops. Inevitably,the innocent human shield they were hiding behind would be killed by people shooting back to defend themselves,and the communists that set them up to die would disappear into the mountains leaving their allies in the press to write headlines or announce on tv stuff like (insert Walter Cronkite voice) Today,in South Viet Nam,South Vietnames/American troops fired without mercy on unarmed innocent villagers in a tiny village in Water Buffalo Hump,South Vietnam,killing 17 unarmed innocent wimmin and chil-runs.",with not ONE word being written about them being used as shields for our enemies to hide behind while firing on us. Ask yourselves this,"WHO is responsible for those allegedly innocent "children" being there in the first place?" When you face the brutal truth that is the answer to that question,you will know who is truly responsible for their deaths,and realize that to THOSE RESPONSIBLE,the propaganda value of having their children or grandchildren blown apart by bombs is more valuable to them than the lives and health of their children and grandchildren.
"allegedly innocent children"? Is that how you describe an 8-year old girl. And what right to we have to send an assassination team into Yemen?
Yes,that is EXACTLY how I describe children whose parents are using them as shields so the parents can continue to go about their daily lives of plotting the murders of thousands of innocents. ESPECIALLY the brainwashed children of brainwashed religious loons who think they are on a mission from Gawd. And what right to we have to send an assassination team into Yemen? It's called "self-defense". We either kill the people planning to kill us,or they WILL kill us. It's really not very complicated.
They are in Yemen, not NYC, and not planning to kill us. We are killing them in support of the Saudis.
You need to go back on your meds. Who the hell told you that crap,and why do you believe them? You DO know there are things called airplanes and ships,and nobody has to remain in Yemen,right? We are killing them in support of the Saudis. Cool! Once we get through killing them,we need to start killing Saudi's. You DO know that Islam declared war on us,right?
Of course they have not. Where did you get that idea? Check the background on the Saudi war on Yemen--any side you want. Saudi installed a US puppet as head of the country and the people objected. US puppets are rarely popular. The rebels are currently being starved to death by the Saudis with out help and connivance
Of course they have not. Where did you get that idea? You might want to look up the word "Jihad",although I am beginning to suspect you won't,or maybe even can't,understand it.
#17. To: sneakypete (#15)
Jihad has nothing to do with the United States except that we got our ally, Pakistan, to encourage the Afghanis to oppose the Russians under the banner of Jihad.
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