UAVs have it:
The US carried out its second Predator airstrike inside South Waziristan today. Unmanned Predator aircraft killed more than 65 Taliban fighters in a follow-on attack near the headquarters for Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.
The Predator strike aircraft fired three Hellfire missiles as Taliban fighters gathered for a funeral of Khog Wali, a leader in Baitullah’s army in South Waziristan who was among six Taliban fighters killed in the first US airstrike earlier today.
Commander Sangeen, a Taliban commander from Afghanistan, was reported to be among those killed in the strike at the funeral. Predators are said to have fired on Taliban vehicles as they attempted to leave the scene of the attack, Dawn reported.
See you at tomorrow’s funeral, too.
Well . . . there will now be 65 or so more funerals. Heh. Let’s hope we can target them, too. This could get geometric. Me likey.
Sure beats that PC overfly of that couple hundred gathered for a funeral a few years ago where all we did was take their pictures out of fear of disturbing “sacred sites.” Wha’ hoppen? We finally wise-up and chain-up all the JAG/DOJ types in the basement?
No, we dropped them. They made great dumb bombs.
Maybe there is some cooperation between us and Pakistan. Pakistan is telegraphing the next area to be cleaned up of Taliban who then high tail it to Waziristan where predators are just waiting for the kill. Love it when a plan comes together – even if it isn’t intentional.
What happened to that limited use of airpower from two posts back?
ZANE/
LOL. Was thinking EXACTLY the same thing! I think it’s a “water seeks it’s own level” sort of thing. Civilian casualties are now too sensitive in A-stan, so we’ll simply shift the damages to the uncontrolled parts of P-stan. This keeps the A-stan govt happy, as the heat will be off them, and the govt of P-stan doesn’t care about civilian cas in the border areas, as they never controlled those areas in the first place–all the tribes that inhabit those areas hate the central govt anyway–so croc. tears from Karachi and Islamabad Govt officials and business leaders.
Good riddance to a pestilence. Me thinks that they ain’t got enough virgins to welcome all these holy – better make that hole-y – warriors into heaven.
McChrystal didn’t say stop air attacks that kill Taliban — he said stop them if there is a chance of civilian casualties. I think presence at this funeral was prima facie evidence of people that needed killin’.
Remember — this guy headed JSOC. He has no qualms about murdering bad guys. He just is willing to bend over backwards to limit what is euphemistically called “collateral damage”. In an insurgency, there might not be an acceptable level of that.
I read this morning that there were some high value targets at that funeral:
65 down, a few million to go.
Scott
I think some of the readers would take umbrage at the term “murder” vis a vis McChrystal since by definition murder is the unlawful killing of a person. Your point tho, is well taken.
Sorry. I was thinking more about the “malice aforethought” part of the strict definition, rather than the “unlawful” part. If anyone is offended, my apologies. But when you follow “murder” with “bad guys”, then most people come to the correct conclusion.
Consider this a “Letterman apology”.