NYT Endorses Murder By Drones

The Times consistently reaches for and achieves new lows in deplorable reporting, including giving unindicted US war criminals feature op-ed space.

Obama-authorized drone warfare is cold-blooded murder by any standard – nonbelligerent men, women and children the vast majority of casualties, so-called high-profile targets a tiny, insignificant percent of victims killed or injured.

Official US claims about strikes being precise, lawful and effective are bald-faced lies. Murder by drones is indiscriminate, lawless and ineffective, accomplishing no strategic objectives.

They engender enormous public anger in targeted countries, facilitating anti-American recruitment.

Drone warfare has nothing to do with counterterrorism. America’s so-called war on terrorism is a complete hoax – a phony pretext for furthering Washington’s imperial agenda, waging endless wars on humanity, raping countries, slaughtering millions, drones one of its instruments of state terror.

They operate round-the-clock over targeted areas, death and destruction coming with no warning, residential communities and public spaces affected, populations terrorized and traumatized.

High-minded US claims otherwise are Big Lies. Retired General Michael Hayden served as Bush and Obama administration’s CIA director, a rogue agency operating extrajudicially.

Before his assassination, Jack Kennedy said he wanted “to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

Its operatives had final say, murdering him, preventing him from achieving his aim, the agency far more powerful and ruthless now than in his day.

Times editors disgracefully gave Hayden feature op-ed space. He lied, claiming drone warfare helps “keep America safe,” denying indisputable evidence proving the vast majority of victims are nonbelligerent civilians.

Hard facts refute his outrageous assertion about drone warfare “work(ing).”
Saying it “disrupts terrorist plots and reduced” Al Qaeda to a shell of its former self is polar opposite reality.

Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, ISIS and various splinter groups are US creations, their origin going back decades, their names changing along the way.

Washington uses them to further its imperial agenda. Strategies and tactics include intimidation, state terror and permanent wars.

Hayden claiming an “intolerable” terrorist threat to America and its allies is refuted by hard facts.

Its only enemies and threats are ones in invents, fear-mongering to enlist public support for endless imperial wars and harsh crackdowns on fundamental freedoms.

Claiming drone warfare helps keep America safe is one of the biggest of all Big Lies. Hayden’s long op-ed included beginning-to-end misinformation, Times endorsed propaganda – its latest instance of supporting might over right, imperial ruthlessness over fundamental rule of law principles.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected]. His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”. www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html Visit his blog site at www.sjlendman.blogspot.com.