If you're having trouble viewing this email, you may see it online<http://e2ma.net/map/view=CampaignPublic/id=25612.6711482180/rid=c558d92e0ac3e8fbc9015547d3effd4e> . Share This: <http://social.e2ma.net/next/e/25612/c3a75446d23aa7fb5ab4e01fe07c646b/6711482180/?mrid=c558d92e0ac3e8fbc9015547d3effd4e> [image: TomDispatch.com: A Regular Antidote to the Mainstream Media]<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191925/25612/goto:http://www.tomdispatch.com> June 24, 2010 Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Perfect American Weapon<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191926/25612/goto:http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175265/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_the_perfect_american_weapon/>
*Readers: The above title for today's piece in our newsletter, sent out earlier, was incorrect. It's been corrected here. We apologize for the extra email today.* [*Note for TomDispatch Readers:* *Check out Inter Press Service reporter Daniel Luban’s review<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191927/25612/goto:http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51909>of my new book, *The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s*, which can be ordered by clicking here<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191928/25612/goto:http://www.amazon.com/dp/1608460711/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20>. And while you’re at it, don't miss Timothy MacBain’s first TomCast video interview with me about the book by clicking here<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191929/25612/goto:http://www.youtube.com/user/videonation%23p/a/u/0/GLHgTnxXyns>. I was also on Laura Flanders GRITtv show yesterday, while the McChrystal resignation was happening and you can check that out here<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191930/25612/goto:http://www.grittv.org/2010/06/23/tom-engelhardt-mcchrystal-afghanistan-obama-biden-petraeus/>. As you may remember, about a week ago I offered a signed copy of the book to anyone who gave TomDispatch a contribution<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191931/25612/goto:https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=27654>of $75 or more. The response was little short of overwhelming, and a real boon for the future of this website. For those of you now waiting patiently for your book, I’m heading into the Nation Institute soon to sign all of them. If you want an autographed book in this batch of send-outs be sure to get your contribution in quickly! Tom*] *America Detached from War* *Bush’s Pilotless Dream, Smoking Drones, and Other Strange Tales from the Crypt* By Tom Engelhardt<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191932/25612/goto:http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/tom> Admittedly, before George W. Bush had his fever dream, the U.S. had already put its first unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drone surveillance planes in the skies over Kosovo<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191933/25612/goto:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/business/17uav.html>in the late 1990s. By November 2001, it had armed them with missiles and was flying them over Afghanistan. In November 2002, a Predator drone would loose a Hellfire missile<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191934/25612/goto:http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-11-04-yemen-explosion_x.htm>on a car in Yemen, a country with which we weren’t at war. Six suspected al-Qaeda members, including a suspect in the bombing of the destroyer the USS *Cole*<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191935/25612/goto:http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/cia-chief-drones-only-game-in-town-for-stopping-al-qaeda/>would be turned into twisted metal and ash -- the first “targeted killings” of the American robotic era. Just two months earlier, in September 2002, as the Bush administration was “introducing”<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191936/25612/goto:http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/12/schneider.iraq/>its campaign to sell an invasion of Iraq to Congress and the American people, CIA Director George Tenet and Vice President Dick Cheney “trooped up<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191937/25612/goto:http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001848577_powell01.html>to Capitol Hill” to brief four top Senate and House leaders on a hair-raising threat to the country. A “smoking gun” had been uncovered. According to “new intelligence,” Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had in his possession unmanned aerial vehicles advanced enough to be armed with biological and chemical weaponry. Worse yet, these were capable -- so the CIA director and vice president claimed -- of spraying those weapons of mass destruction over cities on the east coast of the United States. It was just the sort of evil plan you might have expected from a man regularly compared to Adolf Hitler in our media, and the news evidently made an impression in Congress. Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, for example, said that he voted for the administration's resolution authorizing force in Iraq because "I was told not only that [Saddam had weapons of mass destruction] and that he had the means to deliver them through unmanned aerial vehicles, but that he had the capability of transporting those UAVs outside of Iraq and threatening the homeland here in America, specifically by putting them on ships off the eastern seaboard." In a speech in October 2002, President Bush then offered a version of this apocalyptic nightmare to the American public. Of course, like Saddam’s supposed ability to produce “mushroom clouds”<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191938/25612/goto:http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/9301/jim_lobe_on_timing_the_cheney_nuclear_drumbeat>over American cities, the Iraqi autocrat’s advanced UAVs (along with the ships needed to position them off the U.S. coast) were a feverish fantasy of the Bush era and would soon enough be forgotten. Instead, in the years to come, it would be American pilotless drones that would repeatedly attack<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191939/25612/goto:http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/10/video-killer-dr/>Iraqi urban areas with Hellfire missiles and bombs. In those years, our drones would also strike repeatedly in Afghanistan, and especially in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan, where in an escalating “secret” or “covert” war<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191940/25612/goto:http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175040/tom_engelhardt_the_imperial_unconscious>, which has been no secret to anyone, multiple drone attacks often occur weekly. They are now considered so much the norm that, with humdrum headlines<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191941/25612/goto:http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SGE65I00R.htm>slapped on (“U.S. missile strike kills 12 in NW Pakistan”), they barely make it out of summary articles about war developments in the American press. Click here to read more of this dispatch.<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191942/25612/goto:http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175265/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_the_perfect_american_weapon/> *Visit our sister sites:* [image: The Nation Institute]<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191943/25612/goto:http://www.nationinstitute.org> [image: Nation Books]<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191944/25612/goto:http://www.nationbooks.org> [image: The Investigative Fund]<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191945/25612/goto:http://www.nationinstitute.org/ifunds> Recent Posts 2 days ago... *Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Coming Era of Energy Disasters*<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191946/25612/goto:http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175264/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_the_coming_era_of_energy_disasters/> 4 days ago... *Tomgram: Robert Lipsyte, Fathers Playing Tough with Sons*<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191947/25612/goto:http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175263/tomgram%3A_robert_lipsyte%2C_fathers_playing_tough_with_sons_/> 1 week ago... *Tomgram: Nick Turse, BP and the Pentagon's Dirty Little Secret*<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191948/25612/goto:http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175262/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_bp_and_the_pentagon%27s_dirty_little_secret__/> 1 week ago... *Tomgram: Engelhardt, Washington Drunk on War*<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191949/25612/goto:http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175261/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_washington_drunk_on_war/> Recent Highlights 1 month ago... *Tomgram: Subhankar Banerjee, Oil Follies in the Arctic*<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191950/25612/goto:http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175253/tomgram%3A_subhankar_banerjee%2C_oil_follies_in_the_arctic/> 6 weeks ago... *Tomgram: Stephan Salisbury, Being Muslim Is No Crime*<http://e2ma.net/go/6711482180/208234143/214191951/25612/goto:http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175251/tomgram%3A_stephan_salisbury%2C_being_muslim_is_no_crime__/> Consider supporting TomDispatch by making a donation. 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