Two updates to the BAE thermal imaging sniper scopes being sold to Pakistan story.

The first update below is a more detailed story than what I wrote about yesterday, comes from Wired.com concerning a lawsuit that former Marine Sgt. and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer filed against his previous employer, BAE Systems. After Sgt. Meyer complained about BAE Systems, selling, with approval from Obama's Defense Dept., state-of-the-art thermal imaging sniper scopes to the government of Pakistan while our troops were being issued outdated equipment, his former employer blacklisted his employment record. The second story is from CNSNews.com detailing the increased number of U.S. troops killed along the Afghan-Pakistan border during the three years Barack Hussein Obama has been in the White House. This makes for a very interesting coincidence or maybe it isn't.

Hero Marine Sues Defense Giant After Sniper Scope Fight 
By Spencer Ackerman, November 29, 2011

Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer is perhaps this country’s best-recognized war hero, a man who risked his life over and over again to save his buddies from a Taliban ambush. That’s why he’s the only living Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor — the nation’s highest award for valor — for his actions in Afghanistan or Iraq. It’s undoubtedly one reason why the defense giant BAE Systems hired Meyer after he left the Corps.

Then, BAE considered selling high-tech sniper rifle scopes to the Pakistani military. Meyer objected, given Islamabad’s um, unambiguous relationship with the terrorists and militants based in Pakistan. Then he quit. Suddenly, Meyer’s former bosses at BAE started calling the war hero “mentally unstable” and a drunk.

That’s according to a lawsuit Meyer filed against BAE, which alleges that the defense behemoth blocked the retired Marine from getting a job with a competitor by slandering his character.

Things started to unravel earlier this year, BAE sought to sell advanced thermal optic scopes to the Pakistanis for their sniper rifles. That’s 100 percent legal, thanks to the U.S. government’s decade-long decision to sell the Pakistanis billions of dollars’ worth of military gear, in the hope of cementing Islamabad’s commitment to fighting terrorism. But BAE employee Meyer questioned whether the sale was responsible.

“We are taking the best gear, the best technology on the market to date and giving it to guys known to stab us in the back,” Meyer wrote to his supervisor, according to the Wall Street Journal‘s Julian Barnes, who obtained Meyer’s lawsuit.

Read the rest here: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/11/bae-dakota-meyer/

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1,089 Americans--71% of All U.S. Combat Deaths in Afghanistan--Have Been Killed Along Pakistan Border 
December 1, 2011

(CNSNews.com) – Over more than ten years of fighting in Afghanistan, 71 percent of U.S. military combat deaths in that country have taken place in provinces bordering Pakistan.

CNSNews.com’s detailed database of U.S. casulaties in the Afghan war indicates that as of Nov. 30, a total of 1,527 U.S. troops have died while engaged in combat in Afghanistan--1,089 of them in 10 Afghan provinces that border Pakistan. The other 438 U.S. combat deaths happened elsewhere in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has a total of 34 provinces.

Including non-combat deaths, the total U.S. casualty count in Afghanistan’s border provinces was 1,168 as of Nov. 30. (That number may be larger, since the locations of 68 fatalities were not reported by the U.S. government, which is the primary source for CNSNews.com’s casualty count.)

Since President Obama took office on January 20, 2009, there have been at least 1,172 U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan. That means that about 67 percent of the total of 1,741 U.S. casualties in the ten-year-long Afghan war have occurred on Obama’s watch.

U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan have more than tripled under the current administration, climbing to the current total of 1,741 from a total of 569 when President George W. Bush left office on Jan. 20, 2009.

Read the rest here:  http://cnsnews.com/news/article/1089-americans-71-all-us-combat-deaths-afghanistan-have-been-killed-along-pakistan