Washington secretly authorized military raids on 20 countries since 2004

[OneBlueSky]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/nov2008/oper-n11.shtml

Since 2004, the Bush administration has secretly authorized military raids against up to 20 countries without any declaration of war or even any explicit congressional authorization for armed action, according to a report published Monday in the New York Times.

The report, which cites recent attacks on targets in Pakistan, Syria and Somalia, establishes that under an order issued by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and approved by President George W. Bush in the spring of 2004, the US military’s Special Operations forces were given license to attack alleged al Qaeda targets “anywhere in the world.”

Citing unnamed senior US officials, the Times reported that the authorization provided a “sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States.” It confirmed that the US military has used the authority to “carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks.”

Among the attacks carried out under the order was the October 26 raid on the Syrian village of Sukkiraya, near the Iraqi border, in which four US attack helicopters participated. Two of the helicopters landed Special Forces troops while the other two provided covering fire. The troops shot at civilians working on a farm, killing eight, including four children, and wounding a number of others. The raid sparked demonstrations in Damascus and the Syrian government denounced it as a “war crime” and a “terrorist act of aggression.”

- more . . .

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/nov2008/oper-n11.shtml

[indepat]

1. I hope this country would take great umbrage at any/all foreign attacks upon our soil even if

ostensibly targeting "terrorists" for surely all such attacks would be, in fact, acts of terrorism no different from the attacks on 9-11 except possibly in scope: terrorism is terrorism and begets terrorism. :P