World Can't Wait

Upstate New Yorkers to Hancock Air Base: "Stop Enabling Reaper Drone War Crimes"

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Today, October 5, members of Upstate Drone Action are attempting yet again to deliver their citizens’ indictment for war crimes to the command and personnel of Hancock Air Base.

The Base is on East Molloy Road in the town of De Witt just north of Syracuse, New York. Hancock hosts the 174^th Attack [sic] Wing of the New York Air National Guard -- the area’s MQ9 Reaper drone hub.

The Attack Wing is also the national Reaper maintenance training center.

Reapers are unmanned airborne robotic assassins flying missions over Afghanistan and several other nations. The CIA uses Reapers for its clandestine missions over northwest Pakistan.

According to “LIVING UNDER DRONES: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan,” published recently by Stanford University and New York University,  such missions are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of noncombatants, including women and children, in northwest Pakistan. 

According to Ann Tiffany of Upstate Drone Action, “The Reaper not only kills and destroys homes, it maims, displaces and terrorizes. U.S. taxpayers pay for such terrorism which perpetuates strife and generates enormous ill will against the United States.”

Today’s action at the Hancock’s main gate is in solidarity with an ongoing investigation of drone casualties by several other members of Upstate Drone Action. These Upstate New Yorkers are part of an Oct. 3 – 10 delegation -- organized by the national antiwar group, CodePink -- going to Northwest Pakistan at the invitation of Pakistani human rights groups.

Websites: upstatedroneaction.org
                 www.codepink.org

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