by James Glaser
January 31, 2006

In Iraq, the Insurgents have learned they might have to kill multiple numbers of innocent people in order to kill even one American. When an American combat vehicle drives over their hidden bomb, they are going to push the button that detonates it even if there are women and children present. The same goes for suicide bombers with explosive vests. The insurgents are desperate, and now America is following in their footsteps, willing to kill any number of innocent civilians, in the hope of killing even one insurgent or terrorist. Both groups have decided the ends justifies the means.

Those serving in the American military are lucky, because they are not called on to explode themselves in order to kill. Technology is on our side, and we have the money to develop robot unmanned weapons that can kill much better than a man with an explosive vest.

We, the United States, have now produced small unmanned airplanes (named Predators) that can be released to fly almost anywhere on the planet, and these planes can fire missiles at any target for which we program them. Not only do we have them, but we use them any place we want.

At one time America respected the borders of other countries, as we want other countries to respect ours, but not any more. Now we fly our little "Predators" (27 foot long with a 49-foot wingspan) across any border we want, to kill who ever we want.

In theory this is an excellent tool for the assassination of suspected terrorists, but like any weapon, it is only as good as the intelligence used to target it. America has proven itself to be short on intelligence.

President Bush told the world in his 2003 State of the Union speech, before we attacked Iraq,

"The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax—enough doses to kill several million people. He hasn't accounted for that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

The United Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin—enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He hadn't accounted for that material. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands. He's not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them—despite Iraq's recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them."

Any where from 40,000 to a 140,000 innocent men, women and children in Iraq have been killed, (we keep no count) tens of thousands more have been wounded, due to that bad intelligence President Bush was quoting. None of those weapons were ever found in Iraq, and we continue to kill innocent people all over this globe because of other bad intelligence.

On January 13th, 2006 the CIA tried to assassinate Ayman Zawahiri, the Egyptian national, who is Al Qaeda's second-in-command, using a Predator aircraft. Well we didn't get him, because our intelligence was wrong. We were however successful in killing 18 innocent civilians, including many women and children. We first claimed we did kill Zawahiri, and then said we didn't get him, but did manage to kill four other al Qaeda members. Zawahiri was on Arab television yesterday telling the world we missed, and the local community where we attacked, (Pakistan) says there were no terrorists. The man whose home we destroyed lost his whole family.

Many politicians have said that it is OK to kill those civilians because they were living in a place where known terrorists live. I don't think young children have a choice of where they live and in a Muslim society, women have no choice either. We have no proof that terrorists lived in the house we destroyed, but it sounds so much better if we make that claim.

The women and children we killed were living their lives in their home, much like billions of women and children live theirs the world over, only this home happened to be targeted by the United States for destruction and it was destroyed, along with the children and their mothers.

It wasn't that long ago that when we made a mistake and killed innocent children, we would express our regrets, but now America tells the world that it is the fault of the children and their mothers for living near terrorists. Like American politicians having no idea of what life is like for the average working man in our country, our leaders in Washington and the Pentagon, have no idea of what life is like for women and children in third world countries.

The United States of America has a program called "The Targeted Killing Program."

The Los Angeles Times writes, "Little is known about the targeted-killing program. The Bush administration has refused to discuss how many strikes it has made, how many people have died, or how it chooses targets. No U.S. officials were willing to speak about it on record because the program is classified."

Lee Strickland, a former CIA counsel who retired in 2004 from the agency's Senior Intelligence Service said, "It's clear that the U.S. is prepared to use and deploy these weapons in a fairly wide theater."

I understand we are in a war on terrorism and that we have taken the gloves off, but we are using the same terror tactics as the terrorists use. We are willing to kill five, ten, twenty, who knows how many innocent civilians, for the chance to kill maybe one terrorist. Maybe one terrorist, depending on how good our intelligence is. It is entirely possible that we are killing totally innocent people, for the people we are getting our intelligence from. Revenge killings and tribe conflict are both common in third world nations.

The only difference between Muslin Terrorist attacks and our Targeted Killing Program is that we have the technology needed to save the man or woman pushing the button. They kill innocent women and children, and we do the same. We are just more sophisticated in out terror tactics.

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