The New York Times reveals the awful truth about the secret air war against high value al Qaeda targets in Pakistan -- the drones are being armed by evil government contractors. And while the paper felt comfortable suppressing any news of the capture and confinement of one of its own reporters earlier this year, it shows no compunction in revealing the secret location of the base from which these drones are launched:
The C.I.A. has for several years operated Predator drones out of a remote base in Shamsi, Pakistan, but has secretly added a second site at an air base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, several current and former government and company officials said. The existence of the Predator base in Jalalabad has not previously been reported.
What possible value does this information have to readers of the New York Times that would justify the increased risk to the military personnel and contractors that man that base? Meanwhile, the Times does its best to indict the work of those contractors with little anecdotes about combat mishaps like this:
They said that Blackwater's direct role in these operations had sometimes led to disputes with the C.I.A. Sometimes when a Predator misses a target, agency employees accuse Blackwater of poor bomb assembly, they said. In one instance last year recounted by the employees, a 500-pound bomb dropped off a Predator before it hit the target, leading to a frantic search for the unexploded bomb in the remote Afghan-Pakistani border region. It was eventually found about 100 yards from the original target.
A bomb fell 100 yards from its intended target and we are supposed to infer from this that contractors are not up to the job? Uniform personnel are also capable of dropping bombs far from their intended targets. There was the hydrogen bomb the Air Force accidentally dropped off the coast of Georgia 40 years ago. There was another lost off the coast of Spain around the same time. More recently we had the CIA targeting the Chinese embassy in Belgrade -- of course that might not have been an accident at all -- and the accidental transport of six nuclear missiles across the continental United States just two years ago. Missing your mark by 100 yards in a combat situation hardly seems like a major screw-up.
Why should the American people care who is arming these drones as long as this program remains the most effective element of the Obama administration's war on terror. If the Boy Scouts were doing the job we shouldn't have any concern but to make sure they'd all gotten their merit badges. Now our only concern should be making sure that the Jalalabad base so needlessly identified by the New York Times remains secure enough to continue the important work of the contractors, CIA, and uniformed personnel who are currently stationed there.
