2013
JF-Expert Member
- Aug 2, 2011
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It is generally accepted, however, that the United States, the world's leading democracy, should try to make truth-telling a common practice when it goes to war.
Yet, in Yemen where the U.S. has been fighting a small, undeclared war for the past four years, we have now arrived at the ironic point where America's main enemy there, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is doing a better job of truth telling than the U.S.In a video message (released on Sunday, a leader of al Qaeda in Yemen apologized for an attack on a hospital in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa earlier this month in which civilians were killed.
link video: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/as...-yemen-hospital-attack-00001703-story-top.jpg
While al Qaeda has publicly -- and, no doubt, self-servingly -- apologized for killing civilians at the Yemeni hospital during the attack in Sanaa on December 5, at the same time American officials have said nothing publicly about a U.S. drone strike that took place a week later on a suspected convoy of militants in western Yemen on December 12.
This gets to a key problem of the secretive American drone program. Its clandestine and unaccountable nature means that when the U.S. does make a mistake, as it inevitably will, instead of apologizing and making some kind of compensation to the civilian victims of a botched strike -- a common practice when the U.S. military inadvertently kills civilians in wartime -- American officials instead say ... nothing.
Or worse, they make claims that the program is somehow perfect and never kills civilians.
Opinion: Is al Qaeda outdoing the U.S. on truth telling? - CNN.com
[h=1]
its interesting.. :becky:Is al Qaeda outdoing the U.S. on truth telling?[/h][h=1][/h]
Yet, in Yemen where the U.S. has been fighting a small, undeclared war for the past four years, we have now arrived at the ironic point where America's main enemy there, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, is doing a better job of truth telling than the U.S.In a video message (released on Sunday, a leader of al Qaeda in Yemen apologized for an attack on a hospital in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa earlier this month in which civilians were killed.
link video: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/as...-yemen-hospital-attack-00001703-story-top.jpg
While al Qaeda has publicly -- and, no doubt, self-servingly -- apologized for killing civilians at the Yemeni hospital during the attack in Sanaa on December 5, at the same time American officials have said nothing publicly about a U.S. drone strike that took place a week later on a suspected convoy of militants in western Yemen on December 12.
This gets to a key problem of the secretive American drone program. Its clandestine and unaccountable nature means that when the U.S. does make a mistake, as it inevitably will, instead of apologizing and making some kind of compensation to the civilian victims of a botched strike -- a common practice when the U.S. military inadvertently kills civilians in wartime -- American officials instead say ... nothing.
Or worse, they make claims that the program is somehow perfect and never kills civilians.
Opinion: Is al Qaeda outdoing the U.S. on truth telling? - CNN.com
[h=1]
its interesting.. :becky:Is al Qaeda outdoing the U.S. on truth telling?[/h][h=1][/h]