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An Introduction by Tom EngelhardtIt's 10 pm.
Do you know where your drone is?
Oh, the confusion of it all! The U.S. military now insists it was deeply befuddled when it claimed that a super-secret advanced RQ-170 Sentinel drone (aka "
the beast of Kandahar") which fell into Iranian hands on December 4th -- evidently while surveying suspected nuclear sites -- was lost patrolling the Afghan border. The military,
said a spokesman, "did not have a good understanding of what was going on because it was a CIA mission."
Whatever happened, that lost drone story hit the headlines in a way that allowed everyone their Warholian 15 minutes of fame. Dick Cheney went on the air to
insist that President Obama should have sent Air Force planes into Iran to blow the grounded Sentinel to bits. (Who cares about sparking off hostilities or sending global oil prices skyrocketing?) President Obama
formally asked for the plane's return, but somehow didn't have high hopes that the Iranians would comply. (
Check out Gary Powers and the downing of his U-2 spy plane over Russia in 1960 for a precedent.) Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
swore we would never stop our Afghan-based drone surveillance of Iran. Afghan President Hamid Karzai asked that his country be kept out of any "adversarial relations between Iran and the United States." (Fat chance!) The Iranians, who
displayed the plane, insisted proudly that they had
hacked into it, "spoofed" its navigational controls, and brought it in for a relatively soft landing. And Kim Kardashian... oops, wrong story.
Comment: It's certainly not a coincidence that the supposedly "sectarian violence" commenced right when the American troops are supposedly "leaving" Iraq, but not for the reasons mainstream media wants us to believe. A few staged False Flag Operations will keep everyone scared and show that the government of Iraq is weak, in desperate need for the help of their American "friends".