at any expense ....

US massacres in Somalia
10.01.2007 Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru

Terrorist attacks by US military aircraft against civilians and livestock in Somalia. After the Afghan wedding slaughters and the massacre of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, innocent citizens in Somalia, grazing their sheep, become the latest victims of Washington’s murderous foreign policy.

No doubt winning hearts and minds again through shock and awe tactics, the US of A, true to form, managed to massacre what eye witnesses describe as large numbers of civilians and livestock with its precision weaponry this week in Somalia in a series of attacks which began on Monday. A small boy was reportedly murdered in such attacks, along with three civilians, at Hayi on Monday evening, while a Somali Government official spoke of “a lot of casualties”, which were “mostly” Islamic fighters.

Has America lost the plot?
Guardian News Cameron Duodu Jan09

The US appears to have thrown all caution to the wind in its anti-Islamist campaign, as its attack on a Somali village shows.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that the Americans have launched air strikes on a Somali village in the area of Ras Kamboni, on Badmadow island, in an attempt to kill Islamist fighters alleged to be hiding there.

The question is: did the Ethiopians refuse to do this particular dirty job for the Americans? We need to ask because the Ethiopians have used their air force in Somalia in the past, and it seems strange that after hiding behind the Ethiopians in the early stages of the anti-Islamist campaign, the Americans should suddenly rip off their mask and show themselves at the controls of an AC-130 gunship, blasting away. ...

The newly crowned Democratic leadership in US Congress should act quickly to rein in the lame duck administration in the White House; failing to recognise its lame-duck status, it is acting like a rejuvenated eagle. Otherwise, the rest of the world will get the lasting impression that the US has gone mad. And everyone knows that "those the gods want to destroy, they first make mad".


US massacres in Somalia
10.01.2007 Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru

Terrorist attacks by US military aircraft against civilians and livestock in Somalia. After the Afghan wedding slaughters and the massacre of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, innocent citizens in Somalia, grazing their sheep, become the latest victims of Washington’s murderous foreign policy.

No doubt winning hearts and minds again through shock and awe tactics, the US of A, true to form, managed to massacre what eye witnesses describe as large numbers of civilians and livestock with its precision weaponry this week in Somalia in a series of attacks which began on Monday. A small boy was reportedly murdered in such attacks, along with three civilians, at Hayi on Monday evening, while a Somali Government official spoke of “a lot of casualties”, which were “mostly” Islamic fighters.

These attacks have been confirmed by the Pentagon although subsequent attacks, reported by Somali authorities, have been refuted.

Yet on Tuesday numerous eye witnesses spoke of assaults by helicopter gunships against civilian targets near Afmadow, in which 31 people were killed, including a newly-wed couple. A Somali defence spokesperson was quoted by AP as stating that these helicopters were American, although other eye witnesses said they did not have clear markings.

Ostensibly aiming at Al Qaeda terrorists in the Banka Jiira area of southern Somalia, the US military aircraft, from their safe haven tens of thousands of feet up in the sky, deployed weaponry which may have hit their targets – but also destroyed large swathes of territory on the ground.

Has America lost the plot?
Guardian News Cameron Duodu Jan 09

The US appears to have thrown all caution to the wind in its anti-Islamist campaign, as its attack on a Somali village shows.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that the Americans have launched air strikes on a Somali village in the area of Ras Kamboni, on Badmadow island, in an attempt to kill Islamist fighters alleged to be hiding there.

The question is: did the Ethiopians refuse to do this particular dirty job for the Americans? We need to ask because the Ethiopians have used their air force in Somalia in the past, and it seems strange that after hiding behind the Ethiopians in the early stages of the anti-Islamist campaign, the Americans should suddenly rip off their mask and show themselves at the controls of an AC-130 gunship, blasting away.

By this brazen action, the United States appears to have thrown all caution to the wind in targeting the Islamist militants of the world. Just a week after America's allies in Iraq prevented Saddam Hussein from finishing his Islamic prayers before he was hanged, it is particularly insensitive - if not ghoulish - to see the world's only superpower chasing fleeing Islamists about with warships on the sea and bombers in the air. Surely, the rest of the world is entitled to ask, "Does the US no longer have any self-restraint?"

In an article in the Guardian last week, I pointed out that the greater the force that is unleashed against small groups of secretly organised and determined fighters - such as the Vietcong - the bigger becomes the defeat they can inflict upon the wielders of so-called "overwhelming force". And I repeat: many Somali and non-Somali Muslims, aware of what harm an American war-machine indiscriminately bombing the inhabitants of an African village can inflict on both combatants and non-combatants alike, will vow to find ways of avenging the deaths of the innocent.

That the Americans can stoop to such action is made even more puzzling by the fact that they must know the information on which they base their military actions is often unreliable. They have gone to great lengths to kidnap and possibly torture hundreds of suspected al-Qaida combatants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere after 9/11. But the "evidence" they gathered from these captives has been so defective that they dare not present it to ordinary American courts for them to determine whether it is true or false. And they are landed with a Guantánamo whose name stinks even more with every passing day.

Extraordinary renditions haven't helped them much, either - despite the opprobrium the renditions have attracted to America's name. So how do they know that the Somalis they have just killed on Badmadow island are, in fact, fighters of the Union of Islamic Courts?

The newly crowned Democratic leadership in US Congress should act quickly to rein in the lame duck administration in the White House; failing to recognise its lame-duck status, it is acting like a rejuvenated eagle. Otherwise, the rest of the world will get the lasting impression that the US has gone mad. And everyone knows that "those the gods want to destroy, they first make mad".