[Telegraph] The reaction to the murder of Lee Rigby was as predictable as the story of the suspects
No British soldier has ever been killed like this -- not even in battle, let alone in the London suburbs during the Wednesday lunch hour. But the reactions to the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby followed a much more familiar pattern.
Journalists and analysts rushed to explain the attack as the work of "lone wolves", "self-radicalised" online. Politicians demanded crackdowns on jihadi websites and the revival of the so-called "snoopers' charter", a Bill allowing the authorities to monitor the internet use of every person in the country, in the belief that the plot could somehow then have been detected.
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[Dawn] PRESIDENT Obama's speech at the American National Defence University last Thursday attracted a great deal of attention and analysis.
It is particularly important for us in Pakistain to understand exactly what was said and what it means for the continuation of drone attacks in the Af-Pak region and for the possible release of Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo. (The latter will be analysed in a subsequent article.)
We must do so bearing in mind what US officials had said earlier and the new classified policy guidelines that Obama approved the day before his speech.
The first thing to note is that while limits have been placed on the use of drones these do not apply to areas of "active hostilities".
President B.O. said: "In the Afghan war theatre, we must -- and will -- continue to support our troops until the transition is complete at the end of 2014. And that means we will continue to take strikes against high-value Al Qaeda targets, but also against forces that are massing to support attacks on coalition forces. But by the end of 2014, we will no longer have the same need for force protection, and the progress we've made against core Al Qaeda will reduce the need for unmanned strikes."
Does the Afghan theatre include Pakistain's tribal areas? Does the phrase "forces that are massing to support attacks on coalition forces" include Taliban Death Eaters assembling in Pakistain's tribal agencies? I believe that as in the past Af-Pak is the theatre and will continue to be treated as such.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/30/2013 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
