60 dead as helos & drones strike pakistan (but don't call it a war)

from danger room: U.S. officials don’t like calling what’s going on in Pakistan a war. But the US-led conflict, whatever name you give it, has never been this violent. The drone component of the campaign hit a new high over the weekend — 20 attacks in September alone, killing as many as 101 people. Today, NATO confirmed that a pair of its helicopters, based in Afghanistan, chased militant suspects across the border. 53 more are now reported dead.

In the Beltway, it’s considered bad form to refer to the Pakistan “war.” The term is too loaded with geopolitical baggage, and raises too many questions about who should be overseeing the conflict at home. But when NATO helicopters kill more than four dozen in Pakistan in a single day; when the CIA-led drone campaign hits 20 targets in 23 days; when thousands of U.S.-trained Afghans cross the border to fight insurgents on Pakistani soil; when American troops ferry aid to Pakistan’s flood victims; when the U.S. Air Force flies surveillance sorties over Pakistan; when American security contractors operate on Pakistani turf; and when U.S. Special Operations forces school Islamabad’s army in counterinsurgency (and sometimes lose troops to firefights in the process), what else should we name this multi-pronged military campaign? What other term would possibly apply?

warwhores updates:
pentagon to funnel US arms to yemen to fight al-qaeda*
9 nato troops killed in afghan helicopter crash*
woodward: cia has 3,000 man covert army in afghanistan*
army reveals afghan biometric id plan; millions scanned, carded by may*
mexican city aims to be first to use widespread eye-scanning technology*
white house 'dissapointed' with vote on 'don't ask, don't tell'*
fmr marine corps sniper & security contractor shane schmidt dies at 33*
obama: 'we need to make clear to people that the cancer is in pakistan'*
despite clinton pledge, state dept. to pay out billions more to mercs*
gates (delicately) criticizes the all-volunteer military*
army's largest base, ft hood, reeling from 4 apparent suicides in 1 weekend*
charlie wilson's warrior becomes top pentagon spook*

'deep throat' mark felt dies at 95

from washington post: W. Mark Felt Sr., the associate director of the FBI during the Watergate scandal who, better known as "Deep Throat," became the most famous anonymous source in American history, died yesterday. He was 95.

Felt died at 12:45 p.m. at a hospice near his home in Santa Rosa, Calif., where he had been living since August. Felt "was fine this morning" and was "joking with his caregiver," according to his daughter, Joan Felt. She said in a phone interview that her father ate a big breakfast before remarking that he was tired and going to sleep. "He slipped away," she said.

As the second-highest official in the FBI under longtime director J. Edgar Hoover and interim director L. Patrick Gray, Felt detested the Nixon administration's attempt to subvert the bureau's investigation into the complex of crimes and coverups known as the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon.

He secretly guided Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward as he and his colleague Carl Bernstein pursued the story of the 1972 break-in of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters at the Watergate office buildings and later revelations of the Nixon administration's campaign of spying and sabotage against its perceived political enemies.

Felt insisted on remaining completely anonymous, or on "deep background." A Post editor dubbed him "Deep Throat," a bit of wordplay based on the title of a pornographic movie of the time. The source's existence, but not his identity, became known in Woodward and Bernstein's 1974 book, "All the President's Men," and in the subsequent movie version, in which actor Hal Holbrook played the charismatic but shadowy source.

woodward: secret weapons, osamaganda & october surprises

woodward on cbs: secret weapon comparable to advent of planes
from youtube: Journalist Bob Woodward hinted at his knowledge of a secret weapon being used against insurgents and al Qaeda leaders in Iraq that was as revolutionary in war as was the advent of planes and tanks. Woodward has also compared this military secret to the Manhattan Project.


secret killing program is key in iraq, woodward says
from cnn: (COMMENT: Bob Woodward, a Yalie secret society member (Book and Snake, 1965) who worked in naval intelligence and now is associate editor of the CIA’s favorite newspaper, the Washington Post, has revealed the existence of a “secret” program to kill troublesome Iraqis who want their country back. On August 31, we reported the existence of a similar program run by the SAS (see Iraq’s Operation Phoenix). Bob Woodward either works for the CIA or was tapped as a “journalist” to release information the spook agency wants made public.)

The dramatic drop in violence in Iraq is due in large part to a secret program the U.S. military has used to kill terrorists, according to a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward. The program - which Woodward compares to the World War II era Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb - must remain secret for now or it would “get people killed,” Woodward said Monday on CNN’s Larry King Live.


woodward: osama capture could be ‘september/october surprise’
from thinkprogress: In his new book “The War Within,” Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward disclosed “the existence of secret operational capabilities developed by the military to locate, target and kill leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent leaders.” Asked by a caller on Larry King Live last night if the capabilities could be used “to catch bin Laden,” Woodward replied that “maybe they can use it on bin Laden.” He then mused that it’s possible that “the September or the October surprise is going to be the apprehension or the death of bin Laden.”