What US Aid Supports In Israel
Obama calls these murders self-defense
What ever the Israelis do is God's Will and therefore Holy and Just.
BBC - Israeli soldiers shot children while eating chocolate and chips
2009 Cast Lead
More injustice and war crimes in Israel
all supported by American Taxpayers
RT Israel Trophy Kill Palestinians - Public Committee Against Torture Israel - Louis Frankenthaler 2010.
Following in the footsteps of George W. Bush and other War presidents Obama is looking for an excuse to bombard Syria and thereby killing or murdering thousands of civilians as Obama used NATO to do in his unwarranted attack on that nation and now its Syria 's turn. Meanwhile Obama and his gang ignore the violent crackdown on protesters in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar . So as long as a supposedly sovereign nation "kow tows" to Washington their sovereignty will be respected otherwise expect to have money and CIA operatives and foreign mercenaries and Taliban and Al Qaeda Mujaheddin and truck loads of money fed into your nation to destabilize and then be bombed and possibly invaded by the USA and its European and even Middle East puppets to destroy the civil society and turn the country into another Iraq, Afghanistan, or El Salvador or Chile and so forth. Obama's pretty speeches about democracy and freedom are just a Public Relations stunt while what he wants is to have complete dominance in the Middle East and North Africa and so forth.
Taking out Assad is just another step towards the real goal of bombing and possibly invading Iran. The Iranians have tried to get Pres. Obama to engage in some rigorous diplomacy to prevent such a war but it appears that Obama and the Pentagon are biting at the bit for another unnecessary war of Aggression which would be frowned upon by the UN and would contravene International Law and contravene the "doctrine of Just War". But this sort of argument has never stopped any president from doing what they wanted to turn the Middle East into an all out battleground in order to appease Israel or to appease the Christians in the West who want to destroy all Islamic controlled nations or even ones with a majority of Muslims.
US tightens military noose around Syria
By Bill van Auken OPEDNews, Dec. 7, 2012
...US officials have reiterated threats made by President Barack Obama and others in the administration about the government of President Bashar al-Assad crossing a "red line" and facing military action if it uses chemical weapons.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta Thursday described the US administration as "very concerned that as the opposition advances, in particular on Damascus, that the regime might very well consider the use of chemical weapons."
Panetta referred to unspecified intelligence as the cause of these supposed concerns. Media outlets like the New York Times, CNN and NBC News have trumpeted this "intelligence," citing unnamed US officials as the sources for vague and often contradictory accounts of developments that have allegedly pointed toward a potential use of chemical weapons in Syria.
Syria's deputy foreign minister, Faisal Maqdad, charged Thursday that the allegation made by the US and other NATO countries about Syria's chemical weapons were designed to create a "pretext for any subsequent interventions."
"Syria stresses again, for the tenth, the hundredth time, that if we had such weapons, they would not be used against its people," said Maqdad in an interview with Lebanon's Al Manar television.
Speaking at the NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Washington and its allies of manufacturing the alleged chemical weapons threat.
"As soon as we get these rumors [about chemical weapons] we engage in constructive demarche; when we get confirmation that nothing of that type is happening we share this information with our American colleagues," Lavrov told the media.
(and it appears some of the groups Washington and Obama are supporting with arms and money are radical Islamists or connected to Al Qaeda )
...Citing unnamed US officials, CNN reported on Wednesday that the US State Department is preparing to add Jabhat al-Nusra, a Syrian Islamist militia that is playing the leading role in the military campaign against the Assad government, to its list of "Foreign Terrorist Organizations."
According to recent reports, the Al Qaeda-connected al-Nusra militia has fielded as many as 10,000 fighters, many of them foreign Islamists who have been funneled into Syria. The group is said to be the best-armed element waging the war for regime change and is credited with recently overrunning two Syrian military bases.
Much of the weaponry going to the group has reportedly been sent in by the US-backed monarchy in Qatar. The CIA set up a command-and-control headquarters in southern Turkey earlier this year to coordinate the distribution of these arms and other aid going to the "rebels."
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The designation of the al-Nusra militia as a terrorist organization would no doubt be meant to publicly distance Washington from the Al Qaeda elements upon which it has relied to wage the sectarian civil war to oust Assad. It would amount to a damning self-indictment, however, with the US government effectively making a formal admission that it has been supporting a terrorist war in Syria, replete with suicide bombings and sectarian massacres.
and:
...However, an examination of the trajectory of US policy in the Middle East points to a definite relationship between Washington's attempts to assert its hegemony by military means and Al Qaeda that is sharply at odds with the official narrative of the "war on terrorism."
Over the past decade, every regime targeted by US imperialism for military overthrow in the Middle East, from Iraq to Libya to Syria, has been hostile to Al Qaeda and the Islamist agenda. In each of these countries, Islamist and Al Qaeda-linked forces had no real power until the US intervened. The principal target for US militarism, Iran, is a nation whose population is composed predominantly of Shiite Muslims, who have been targeted for attack by Al Qaeda elements in Iraq and elsewhere.
The motivation for military action against these countries has not been to further a "war on terror," much less to promote democracy or humanitarianism, but rather to assert US hegemony over an oil-rich and strategically vital region of the world.
To the extent that there is a genuine issue regarding chemical weapons in Syria, it is because the Obama administration has backed a "rebel" force that is dominated by Al Qaeda-linked militias into whose hands these weapons may fall, posing the threat that they may be used in terrorist attacks elsewhere.
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President Obama once again proving as Commander in Chief he is tough minded and cold hearted and has little use for International Laws governing the behavior of nations and peoples during an armed conflict. Obama insists on America's right to targeted killings and the killing of innocent civilians and claiming any male 16 or over killed in an attack by US forces is to be designated not a civilian casualty by as an enemy combatant. And then Obama and other Americans wonder why America is hated by so many countries and peoples.
If a terrorists or insurgent blows up a number of soldiers and also kills civilians the terrorist is evil but when American forces blow up a wedding party , family reunion, funerals in which several known terrorists are taking part the dozens or hundreds of innocent civilians are discounted as being merely "collateral damage' except for any male over 16 or now maybe younger are designated as being armed combatants even if not armed or having never knowingly assisting terrorists .
What the US government and military demand is that if the member of a village or clan or family is a known insurgent or terrorists they should not be permitted to stay in that village or take part in weddings or other celebrations or even funerals and should be reported to the authorities. Yes then what if thy do that the next thing would be some sort of reprisal against those civilians by the alleged terrorists or insurgents .
Compare this situation to that of organized crime such as the Mafia in the USA would Americans stand idly by as the FBI and other federal law enforcers were to bomb an Italian wedding in New York or New Jersey and by doing so managed to kill a couple of Mafia bosses and a few of their foot soldiers while killing dozens of men , women and children who happen to be related to these members of the Mafia. So in the film Godfather which begins at a wedding Obama's rule of thumb as applied in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen etc. is to bomb the event and to consider all males age 7 and up as being part of the Mafia and an imminent threat to Americans and as for the daughters, wives, mothers and grandmothers they either got what they deserved or are just a matter of "Collateral Damage". There are probably some people who have such disdain for the lives of others that they would see nothing wrong with this.
Obama afraid to tackle head-on the Republican obstructionism in the US government but is not afraid to order the targeted killing of those who are alleged to be terrorists or in some way aid terrorists and now showing off his bravado over the last few years has shown his hardness of heart in his role of Commander In Chief to even target children who may or may not be aiding the so called enemy. This is of course contravenes International Law in several ways by allowing the killing of civilians merely suspected as in being in the vicinity of terrorists of giving aid to the insurgents or terrorists . But now besides arbitrarily and unilaterally claiming that any male 16 or over if killed in a drone strike or by other means by US troops or its allies is to be counted among the terrorists killed . Now Obama and the Pentagon believe they have the moral and legal right to target children under 16 if there is some suspicion they may be giving help to the alleged terrorists. This brutal and draconian attitude towards children as being enemy combatants goes against International Law and even International Law on the treatment of designated "child soldiers". Child soldiers are given a different designation than adult soldiers by which they are supposed to be treated as victims of those who used them as soldiers. So once captured they are to be rehabilitated and not abused and tortured as the Bush and Obama administrations have done as in the case of the Canadian Omar Khadr.
So Obama's way now of dealing with designated child soldiers in order to not have to worry about how child soldiers or young children are to be treated when captured the military under his authority has the right to target and kill children suspected of giving aid to "enemy Combatants".
So given Obama and the Pentagon's logic the US troops at Mi Li could justify killing children or especially boys who may be helping insurgents and the lives of all other innocent people are to be disregarded and dehumanized under the label "Collateral Damage" . But of course most Americans and Canadians don't give a fig about people who are not like them who have different customs and traditions and a different religion since only Christianity and just maybe Judaism count as real religions and those born in foreign lands are considered barely if at all human. It is easier for everyone from the least intelligent to the leaders of our countries to simply dehumanize and even demonize those we are fighting since otherwise we would have to deal with the more difficult and boring strategy of diplomacy and being forced to see those in other nations as having the same rights as we have and that each nation is to be considered a sovereign nation and their views to be treated with respect unless they have done something to lose that respect.
We cannot expect to receive respect from people who's homes and towns and cities we have unnecessarily bombed or who were treated badly by our surrogate rebels or governments. Why should anyone in the Middle East trust Westerners after the fiasco of the American led unnecessary Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. Saddam was not at that point an imminent threat to anyone and the population had been reduced to being half-starved sick desperate people due not to Saddam but to the American draconian inhumane barbaric "Sanctions" and blockade of Iraq. And every time another drone kills innocent people in Afghanistan or elsewhere the hate towards the West grows even deeper
So we can better understand now why Pres. Obama in order to avoid accusations of hypocrisy and double standards is unwilling to take Israel to task for killing civilians and even children especially in Gaza since those civilians refuse to leave an area supposedly inundated with "terrorists" and /or "enemy combatants". So a six or seven year old who does what he is told by a family member to act as alook out or to help plant a roadside bomb or bring food or water to such a person who is alleged to be a terrorists then killing him would be justifiable. The problem as is easily seen by rational people is where do you draw the line. We can only assume that it is difficult for the citizens of the United States to be able to think rationally about such issues since daily they are under attack by their government's unrelenting pro-war Propaganda Machine.
US military facing fresh questions over targeting of children in Afghanistan: Outrage grows after senior officer claimed troops in Afghanistan were on the lookout for 'children with potential hostile intent' by Karen McVeigh The Guardian Dec. 7, 2012
Pardiss Kebriaei, senior attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a specialist in targeted killings, said she was concerned over what seemed to be an attempt to justify the killing of children.
Kebriaei said: "This is one official quoted. I don't know if that standard is what they are using but the standard itself is troubling."
The US is already facing criticism for using the term term "military-aged male" to justify targeted killings where the identities of individuals are not known. Under the US definition, all fighting-age males killed in drone strikes are regarded as combatants and not civilians, unless there is explicit evidence to the contrary. This has the effect of significantly reducing the official tally of civilian deaths.
Kebriael said the definition was reportedly being used in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. "Under the rules of law you can only target civilians if they are directly participating in hostilities. So, here, this standard of presuming any military aged males in the vicinity of a war zone are militants, already goes beyond what the law allows.
"When you get to the suggestion that children with potentially hostile intent may be perceived to be legitimate targets is deeply troubling and unlawful."
Children in conflict zones have additional protections under the law.
Kebriael, who is counsel for CCR in a lawsuit which seeks accountability for the killing of three American citizens – including a 16 year old boy – in US drone strikes in Yemen last year, said that the piece also raised questions over how those killed in that incident were counted. "Were they counted as military-aged males or were they counted as children with potentially hostile intent or were they counted as the innocent bystanders they were?"
And the Obama administration is still in a frenzy to enforce the laws against drugs especially Marijuana which most Americans believe as do most Canadians should at least be decriminalized if not made legal. Is Obama that out of touch or are the Democrats fearful of offending the GOP and uberconservatives . Is it about the whole anti-drug industry which feeds on the fear of those demonic drugs . For instance each police department acoss the USA and Canada depend on money given to them just for anti-drug enforcement and in the USA they have a privatized prison system whereby the more people put in jail the more profit they make so they don't want to change these laws which is also why the Prison Industry favors laws like the three strikes rule .
Is Everyone In Washington High? By Charles P. Pierce Esquire, Dec. 7, 2012
Of all the unfathomable quirks — and I am being very kind, it being the holiday season and all — of the Obama Administration, its unfathomable rigidity on the topic of marijuana makes less sense than any of the others. The squishiness elsewhere on civil liberties is understandable in the context that America simply will not elect a president who campaigns on a platform of appearing to weaken the office.
...If nothing else, the results in Colorado and in Washington state — and, to a lesser extent, in Massachusetts — indicate that the political salience of the "war on drugs," as applied to marijuana, at least, almost has completely evaporated. It can be argued that there is no more political risk to the president of changing his policy on marijuana now than there was in his "evolving" on gay marriage last year. In both cases, the people out in the states are out ahead of the national politics of the issue.
But, as we learn in today's New York Times, in a story by national-treasure Charlie Savage, rather than avail itself of the freedom to maneuver it was granted by the results of statewide referenda last month, the administration instead is reacting to those results by getting even tougher.
Even as marijuana legalization supporters are celebrating their victories in the two states, the Obama administration has been holding high-level meetings since the election to debate the response of federal law enforcement agencies to the decriminalization efforts. Marijuana use in both states continues to be illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act. One option is to sue the states on the grounds that any effort to regulate marijuana is pre-empted by federal law. Should the Justice Department prevail, it would raise the possibility of striking down the entire initiatives on the theory that voters would not have approved legalizing the drug without tight regulations and licensing similar to controls on hard alcohol. Some law enforcement officials, alarmed at the prospect that marijuana users in both states could get used to flouting federal law openly, are said to be pushing for a stern response. But such a response would raise political complications for President Obama because marijuana legalization is popular among liberal Democrats who just turned out to re-elect him.
A little further down in the story, we get a glimpse of at least a piece of what is really going on, a real-life response to the warning of Governor William J. LePetomaine from Blazing Saddles: "Gentlemen, we could lose our phony-baloney jobs over this."
In reviewing how to respond to the new gap, the interagency task force — which includes Justice Department headquarters, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the State Department and the offices of the White House Counsel and the director of National Drug Control Policy — is considering several strategies, officials said. One option is for federal prosecutors to bring some cases against low-level marijuana users of the sort they until now have rarely bothered with, waiting for a defendant to make a motion to dismiss the case because the drug is now legal in that state. The department could then obtain a court ruling that federal law trumps the state one. A more aggressive option is for the Justice Department to file lawsuits against the states to prevent them from setting up systems to regulate and tax marijuana, as the initiatives contemplated. If a court agrees that such regulations are pre-empted by federal ones, it will open the door to a broader ruling about whether the regulatory provisions can be "severed" from those eliminating state prohibitions — or whether the entire initiatives must be struck down.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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