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Bin Laden Killed …

… Sa’ad Bin Laden, that is, Osama’s son. Intelligence Officials are reported to be “80 to 85 percent” certain that this mini-Bin was obliterated in a drone-attack earlier this year. A triumph for USA, then: justification for the seemingly crazy policy of pulverizing mud huts in the wilds of Waziristan with Hellfire missiles, launched from […]

… Sa’ad Bin Laden, that is, Osama’s son. Intelligence Officials are reported to be “80 to 85 percent” certain that this mini-Bin was obliterated in a drone-attack earlier this year.

A triumph for USA, then: justification for the seemingly crazy policy of pulverizing mud huts in the wilds of Waziristan with Hellfire missiles, launched from air-borne robots, controlled by computer joystick in Nevada.

Hardly. Sa’ad was a well-known terrorist, yet he was not, apparently, deemed important enough to be targeted. He just happened to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” according to sources.

I thought these drones were meant to show the surgical precision of our high-tech military machine. But the “wrong place, wrong time” seems a bit haphazard, doesn’t it?

One wonders: if Sa’ad — a man whom CIA officials believe organized al-Qaeda attacks from inside Iran — was the wrong target, who exactly would qualify as the right target.

And let’s not stop to consider how many of the estimated 470 people killed by drone attacks this year also just happened to be shock and awed to smithereens by mistake — innocent women and children, say.

Perhaps, one day, one of these Hellfire things will take out Osama himself, along with maybe a couple more of the 25 children he has sired. Then we can pretend that our swishy go-go gadget war on terror is not in reality a bumbling mess.

(For more on the perils of drone warfare, read William Lind in the latest issue of TAC. Subscribers only.)

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