Iran Military Shoots Down US Drone

Some "other U.S. officials " need to find a new line of work if they can't keep their mouths shut.

 

i wonder if the retraction had to do with a calculation that nato was less able to take the hit for this than was the us as a function of that unpleasantness in pakistan involving collateral damage from drone attacks where no drone attacks are supposed to be happening. depending on who you talk to, i suppose. anyway, i think the latest collateral damage involved some 25 civilians. oopsie, nato said. we'll start shooting back, pakistan said. somehow these collateral damage problems keep happening. anyway, it was a considerable diplomatic dust-up involving "errant" drones involving nato at exactly the same time. how many errant drones do you people have? might be a logical question. which might lead to other questions, like what exactly is nato for in a post cold-war world? and a problem like that for nato is kinda one for the united states as well, and, remarkably, after the bush administration anyway, somehow the united states's reputation in the region has become slightly less fucked up than that of nato (well, if you don't look too hard anyway. maybe think about the glorious imperial (ist) history of the united states in the region since, o i dunno, world war 2. but i digress)..

..but as we've seen in this thread, and more broadly, there's been a new wave of dick-waving about iran, all starting right around the time mossad is supposed to have blown up one of (if not the) head(s) of the iranian nuclear program. (greeted with a small dose of the usual neo-con swooning about the israelis and their disregard for the rules of normal engagement...) which brings us back to that epic rightwing fucktard netanyahu and his self-engineered diplomatic isolation in significant measure following on his government's appalling policies toward the far-right's hobby-horse of more racist settlements in the west bank (evicting bedouins these days those humanitarians from israel are. but, you know, they're lazy...if it wasnt for awesome white people with their awesome white people work ethics, nothing would ever happen. but i digress again). bibi really needs new bogeypersons if he is to stay in power and dick-waving about iran plays to continuing to kill civilians in gaza (evil hamas) and so and so...

there is something a bit odd about this whole drone thing, isn't there? cheap and expendable and not as precise as the manufacturers selling them to the conservative welfare state claim, so not exactly the mechanical panacea for politically delicate things like violating neutral airspace in the name of the unlimited cowboy "war on terror"....almost enough to make a body curious about how these drones came to play such roles in so many high-profile fuck-ups involving violations of neutral air-space and collateral damage and other such unpleasantness, particularly given that the war on terror is plausibly finished what with aq rendered operationally non-existent and all that according to the pentagon about a month ago. but we see that the needs of the conservative welfare state for an Enemy is a whole like that of a junkie for the next hit and so such nicities as rules of engagement and point of action can be brushed aside.

 

You're way off here. The casualties on the Pakistan side are in most cases not accidental. ISAF and Pakistani military forces very often clash, but both deny it as a confrontation. ISAF does it because it does not want to give official reasons for Russia and China to exploit on the political stage, and Pakistan does it as part of their usual "we see nothing, hear nothing, do nothing, know nothing" mantra.

The latest incident resulting in 24 dead Pakistani soldiers was caused by the Pakistani military itself. They shot at a joint ISAF/Afghan special operation in the area, the spec ops called in airstrikes (with ISAF first confirming the coordinates with the Pakistanis, who lied to them) and the enemy force got destroyed. It was a largely political move in order to give exaggerated reactions such as cutting off ISAF's supply routes in Pakistan and to now have a politically-legitimate reason not to attend the Bonn conference (where the international community would have decimated them for their abysmal performance).

Just like what Pakistan did in Kashmir by sending a battalion of army soldiers there, then cutting their supply and communication lines off in order to brand them as a "rogue unit".

 

as much as i want to believe this, i want to know how you found this out. it seems a bit like a convenient story

 

remixer---i'm not "way off" so far as the chain of reports were concerned from last week about this latest in a string of problems involving drone attacks in pakistan. there are any number of scenarios that could explain the controversies, from fabrications that are floated to express anger about use of drones over pakistan, to the sort of more complex scenario you have from somewhere, to the possibility that the numbers are accurate as is the cause of the deaths. there's little in the way of reason to believe one over the other from here. in this case, the spat was quite high profile. and theres more than one subtextual narrative/set of narratives that fit into place. where does yr version come from?

 

roachboy

Pakistan's tactics, while seemingly unrealistic and akin to the fantasy world of Hollywood movies, are common knowledge in these parts (especially within the military community here).

See some local articles on this issue:

http://tolonews.com/en/component/co...tan-prompted-nato-attack-afghan-officials-say

http://tolonews.com/en/component/co...uses-pakistan-of-hindering-talks-with-taliban

http://tolonews.com/en/component/co...stan-has-no-logistical-implications-isaf-says


EventHorizon

I read a BBC News analysis on the Kashmir event a few months ago, but couldn't find it again. Instead, here's a Wikipedia article on the matter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargil_War

Note this part:

 

FYI, Iran has aired video of the drone. Apparently, it wasn't shot down - they claim that they electronically gained control of it and landed it. The footage in the video seems to uphold that claim.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16098562

 

"we storm embassies, and buy parts for nuke-making. why the fuck are you keeping an eye on us? btw, thanks for the drone brah."

EDIT: Baraka you beat me to the response you sly devil. Also, what are the odds that it was a chinese hacker (team) that brought our stealth paper airplane down? also, does it seem that now is a fitting time to restart the TEOTWAWKI thread or am i just paranoid?

 

The hell is "TEOTWAWKI"?

 

the end of the world as we know it/"post apocalyptic survival" thread. also, thanks for the link to the article

 

Ah, naruhodo. Also, no worries.

 

The Guardian and The BBC are the one making this story bigger than it needs to be. The real story is why this plane didn't self destruct, or had better encryption on their communication, or if they faked a plane to make it look like a drone.

nod nod wink wink, this is how the Iraq and Afghanistan situation should have been dealt with. Covert actions, Taliban having bad luck with food poisoning, terrorist training camps blowing up on accident. All without the military invading and putting our name on everything.

 

interesting question about the self-destruct thing. i think it's because minimizing weight was all important in making a drone as small as possible. the F-22 however, purportedly has thermite blocks on certain parts of it to make damn sure that a pilot doesn't defect with it and that other people don't get ahold of it.