A Predator Unmanned Drone - Death From The Sky!

Kandahar, Afghanistan. As it left the ground, I barely heard it. In fact, I barely saw it at all except for the fact that I was looking toward the Kandahar Airfield. It caught my attention as it reached into to the sky, a Predator unmanned drone. The Predator, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, carries Hellfire missiles that reign down death upon those unlucky enough to be caught in its sites.

The Hellfire missile was originally designed the be a tank killer. It has become a person killer. You see, here in Afghanistan, it is being used more and more frequently against people. And there is real fear. Because the Predator can stay in the air for hours and hour at about 5,000 feet, too high to hear, it can strike when it sees fit. Unfortunately, it has seen fit to hit innocent men, women and children in this country.

While these Predators have the benefit of being unmanned which means no risk of life of those pilots, the risk to civilians, is terribly real. In fact, it has been one of the biggest problems that the Americans face. While it has undoubtedly been effective at taking out some of the baddies, the real question is whether the cost has been far too high. Just ask the surviving family members who must bury their children, their parents, their friends. And yet, President Obama is using these weapons more and more in this country. In fact, President Obama is using them more and more in neighboring Pakistan as well.

And people here and in Pakistan have been begging the Secretary of State and President Obama to stop. However, based upon what I saw in the last couple of hours at the Kandahar Airbase, those calls remain unheeded. And death from the skies continues.

Former generals: The surge completely failed

Former Rep. Tom Andrews, D-Maine; retired Lt. Gen. William Odom; and retired Lt. Gen. Robert Gard hosted a conference call to act as a pre-buttal to testimony from Gen. David Petraeus, who will testify in the House and the Senate next week.

The three men, representing the organization "Win without War," said that the surge was a complete failure and that they seek to combat the conservative message that the surge has worked to create stability in Iraq.

Gen. Odom spoke about Petraeus' testimony from last year where the commander in Iraq said that there could be no military solution to a political problem and the coalition would only be able to create conditions that might allow for some political development. Odom said that while it is true that the violence dropped in al Anbar province but he did not credit the surge there. He said that Sunnis in that area allied with and were paid to work for the U.S. military in the "Sons of Iraq" program and that they are not loyal to the Iraq government. He spoke about the division between Shiites surrounding the violence created in last week's fighting in Basra and said that Sadr is the real winner in this situation. "There is no way you can look at this and say that you are better off this year than you were last year," Odom said.



"The insurgents seem to be able to fight without any U.S. trainers," Odom said, what is needed is more political development. He said that withdrawal is essential to overcoming the stalemate in Iraq and that either way, Iraq can not be "put back together" without violence.

Gen. Gard said that he is not criticizing Gen. Petraeus and recognizes that he was given a new directive of protecting the population and that he has done a good job in that directive. Gard said that we have not moved to achieve the end of political stability, as outlined by President Bush before the surge. He cited Odierno who said that without political progress the violence cannot be decreased.

Former representative Andrews of Maine said that that the Bush administration is only good at stagecraft as it tries to persuade American tax payers to continue to fund the war. They said that Congress should be investing in Iraq but not in the failed strategy of the surge.

When asked about Afghanistan the generals highlighted a statement made by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when he said "in Afghanistan we do what we can and in Iraq we do what we must," and Gard called Iraq, "a diversion of our resources to the detriment of our security." Odom said that it is disturbing that "we have bet the future of NATO" on success in creating a centralized government in Afghanistan.

Another question about a proposed "pause" in examining the conditions on the ground before continuing to withdraw troops, Odom said that whether or not the U.S. stays or goes is not relevant because sectarian tensions have existed and will continue to exist regardless of U.S. presence and that the recent violence surrounding Shiite violence is just an emergence of tensions that will always exist. The generals concluded that the only thing the U.S. has control over is the number of U.S. troops who die in combat in Iraq and that Congress should therefore invest in a plan to withdraw those troops.

Pentagon PM Report

The Pentagon has announced a one-time, seven-month deployment for 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan starting in March. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell stressed that this was a “one time…extraordinary…finite” deployment and discouraged labeling it as a surge. “A surge, I think, at least in the Iraq definition of things, was a plussing up of forces for an indefinite period of time,” Morrell said. “This is a plussing up of forces, and a significant one.”

Morrell said that this decision reflected a new ability to fulfill a long-standing desire of commanders on the ground with an addition of forces for the Afghanistan spring and summer or “fighting season.”

“Finding these forces has been difficult,” he said. “The Marines, I believe, have made a decision that they can, at least temporarily, continue this heightened operational tempo for a little longer to meet the needs expressed by the commanders in Afghanistan.”

 The forces will be divided between combat operations and the ongoing training mission of Afghan national police and the Afghan army. Morrell said this deployment would be finite regardless of conditions on the ground next December when the seven months are up. He said that NATO member countries might be called on to “back-fill” positions vacated by the Marines when they redeploy by the end of the year.

The Secretary of Defense Robert Gates met with a delegation from Poland, including the Defense Minister, Bogdan Klich. The main focus of private talks between the two officials was strategic missile defense and the possibility of placing missile defense technology in Poland. Poland is one of the top recipients of military aid in Europe.

Finally, Morrell addressed an incident last Sunday when five Iranian fast boats threatened US warships in the Persian Gulf. He said that the combined threats of the five boats, their interference with the US ships’ travel path, releasing "white boxes" in their wake, and troubling radio transmissions were enough to make the threat significant to the Pentagon. He also said that any notion of the Pentagon's media response being timed or hyped up to coincide with Bush's trip to the Middle East was “absurd.”