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Post by RocDoc on Sept 15, 2009 15:24:09 GMT -5
geez jac, calm down.
dude, you were fucking BORN annoyed...and infinite times too , if you so wish.
ta-da.
and excuse me, it was 'a goofy thing to say'?
...yeah, right jac.
joke.
tongues, snake-charmin evangelicals, see?
you're the one who posted random chinese script...what then should've been said, in your estimation?
or to this hebrew shit now, for that matter?
oh.
'slough off annoyances'...like flies, eh?
buzzing this pedestal of yours.
yes, in fact we ARE like flies drawn to shit.
shit, look.
now i'm annoyed too.
y'know, you suck.
and in hebrew, the question mark goes at the other end...right to left-wise, y'see.
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JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
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Post by JACkory on Sept 15, 2009 16:55:30 GMT -5
Ach. Just got off the phone and my boyz assure me it's only a glitch in their system. They apologized profusely and expressed a sincere desire to thank you for pointing out this regrettable technical snafu.
اللغة العربية هي القراءة من اليمين إلى اليسار ، أيضا. كما هو والصينية ، واليونانية ، والذي يعرف كيف العديد من اللغات الأخرى. لكن اليمين أو اليسار ، إلى اليمين أو اليسار ، فمن السهل دائما القول الوثيقة ، وكنت الأحمق الحقيقي
Bet dok, tai bus mūsų paslaptis kalba, tik tarp mūsų dviejų, todėl galime kalbėti apie tuos, šūdas baisus Sedakans. Gerai? Ar jus cool with that?
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JACkory
Struggling Artist
Posts: 167
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Post by JACkory on Sept 17, 2009 8:23:39 GMT -5
Bad Lithuanian? What, did you think I was fluent in it?
Failed c&p? Well that's a possibility. I don't really do it enough to get it right all the time. I apologize, but at least you got the jizz. Oh, yes you do.
Oh, sure...I'm pretty good with traditional chinese, hebrew and arabic...but NOT Lithuanian. One of the biggest regrets in my life was that I did not thoroughly master Lituanian...but it takes a LOT of time and energy to learn 35 languages, and I simply didn't think it was worth the trouble of making it an even 36. Most of 'em understand my Russian, though I still have inflection problems with it and cannot for the life of me seem to get the accent down. Eh, comrade?
Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you but I was using a translator program I found on the internet. Nifty little son-of-a-bitch, but apparently their are a few bugs...I appreciate you pointing them out to me.
But now you've spoiled the whole thing. See, my plan was for us to post comments bashing those Sedaka bastards but we'd do it in Lithuanian so they wouldn't understand what we were saying. It would have been great fun. I picked Lithuania because I figure you know it pretty well already and don't have the time to fuck with a translator if we were to use another one.
Oh, sure, you could say "Uhhh, bobbity boo, don't you think they would just use a translator themselves to...uhhh, bobbity boo, figure it out on their own, which would, duh, bippity boppity bat, screw up the whole thing?"
To which I reply, aw come on, sawbones. You know them fellers ain't as smart as you are. They don't nuthin' about no translator programs. And hell, there ain't none of 'em here anymore to read our insults anyway, right? Jez good clean fun between adults.
"bet dok" was to be the codename for our experiment in microcosmic social criticism (or MSC, as I like to call it). Looks like you messed that one up, too. I knew I should have just sent you a PM fer to let you in on the scheme.
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Post by RocDoc on Mar 1, 2010 13:57:25 GMT -5
...and then there are the man-made variety. => this is a very interesting article that made me feel like i was really being helped to understand what's going on over there, as unfollowably byzantine as it all is. Taking It To the Taliban on Marjah in AfghanistanBy Bobby Ghosh –
Mon Mar 1, 7:45 am ET
Two days before launching the most ambitious military campaign of the Obama Administration, General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, convened a meeting in Kabul of 450 tribal elders and scholars from Helmand province. The general's objective: to build support for Operation Moshtarak, a massive offensive on the Taliban stronghold of Marjah. McChrystal ran through the military phase of the plan, which would involve 6,000 U.S. Marines and British soldiers and 4,500 Afghan troops and police. Then he described how these troops would protect the town while a "government in a box"--a corps of Afghan officials who had been training for this moment for months--would start administering the town. The elders all signed off on the plan, but not before one of them warned the American general, "You have to understand that if you don't do what you say, we'll all be killed."
McChrystal repeated the chieftain's words Feb. 18 in a secure video teleconference with President Barack Obama and his top advisers on Afghanistan and Pakistan. By then, the operation, by all accounts, was going well. NATO troops had encountered only sporadic resistance; much of the town was under the control of the U.S. Marines. British-led forces, meanwhile, had taken the nearby community of Showal. Some government in a box was already being unpacked.
There was good news from other fronts too. In Pakistan, a joint operation in Karachi by the CIA and Pakistan's own spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had netted a very big fish: Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Afghan Taliban's military chief. In quick succession, the ISI had also rolled up two of the Taliban's "shadow" governors of Afghanistan's provinces and another senior figure. And in North Waziristan, near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, a missile launched from a CIA drone had struck at the heart of the Haqqani network, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group responsible for countless attacks on NATO troops. The network's current leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani, survived, but his younger brother Mohammed had been killed.
After a year of mostly grim tidings from Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama could have been allowed a moment of satisfaction. But McChrystal's recounting of the Helmand chieftain's warning ensured that the mood in the White House's Situation Room during the conference call was somber. According to National Security Adviser Jim Jones, who was there, Obama added an exhortation of his own, using the idioms of counterinsurgency warfare. "Do not clear and hold what you are not willing to build and transfer," he told McChrystal, a maxim he had repeated often over the previous months. "You've heard me say it many times, but it bears repeating," Obama said as he signed off.
That sense of restraint is at the heart of Obama's "AfPak" strategy, which requires McChrystal's troops to help Afghans build and take increasing responsibility for their country, rather than depending solely on Western forces to thump the Taliban. Marjah is the first real test of that plan, and the Administration is determined to keep everyone's expectations to the bare minimum. That is wise, as much could still go wrong. The Taliban could return to areas from which it has been ousted; the Afghan army could turn out to be too slim a reed on which to hang the Administration's ambitions. And so, in contrast to the Bush Administration, which was often accused of overstating small successes, the Obama White House has projected a studied solemnity over encouraging dispatches from the war the President has made his own. Every sign of progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been greeted with circumspection. Yes, say Administration officials in Washington and commanders in the field, things are going well--but let's not beat our chests. Far too much hangs in the balance now: Afghan lives, American lives and, just possibly, the fate of Obama's war.
Making Marjah Count
A town of 60,000 souls, Marjah is ringed by poppy fields that are watered by irrigation canals built in the 1950s and '60s by U.S. engineers. McChrystal chose this location to launch the reconquest of Afghanistan because it is the western end of a population belt that extends from central Helmand province through Kandahar province--both infested with the Taliban. McChrystal has set out to secure that belt, starting in Marjah, then moving to Lashkar Gah, Kandahar city and finally Spin Boldak. "It's where we hadn't been, it's where the enemy still was, and it's where the population is," says a senior Administration official.
Since it's an opening salvo in what promises to be a long, hard-fought year, McChrystal knew Operation Moshtarak would influence perceptions, among allies and enemies alike, about how the war would be fought--and how the peace would be waged. Managing those perceptions would be key to victory. "This is not a physical war, in terms of how many people we kill or how much ground you capture, how many bridges you blow up," he told reporters in Istanbul on Feb. 4. "This is all in the minds of the participants. The Afghan people are the most important, but the insurgents are [too]. And of course, part of what we've had to do is convince ourselves and our Afghan partners that we can do this."
The offensive was months in the planning, and little effort was made to keep it secret. If the Taliban chose to melt away rather than resist, McChrystal reasoned, it would give him more time to set up a robust administration--a good advertisement for those in other towns where NATO troops would soon have to fight. U.S. commanders even ordered an opinion poll of Marjah residents: they wanted to know how they felt about the U.S. and the Taliban and to gauge what they might want from his government in a box.
When the operation got under way, it quickly became clear that only about 400 Taliban had dug in to fight. As in other such encounters between an overwhelming Western military and a local insurgency--in Iraq's Diyala province, for instance--the greatest threat to the troops came from roadside bombs and sniper fire. By Feb. 23, 13 NATO troops had been killed, as the U.S. total in the Afghan war pushed past 1,000. Estimates of Taliban casualties were around 120. Civilian casualties were low for such an intense offensive: 28 were killed in the fighting, though as the operation progressed, there was some bad news when a pair of air strikes, one near Marjah, killed 39 civilians.
As pockets of resistance continued, commanders downplayed expectations of a speedy campaign. "I guess it will take us another 25 to 30 days to be entirely sure that we have secured that which needs to be secured," British Major General Nick Carter, the top NATO commander in southern Afghanistan, told reporters on Feb. 18. "And we probably won't know for about 120 days whether or not the population is entirely convinced by the degree of commitment that their government is showing to them." If McChrystal's forces prevail, Operation Moshtarak will serve as the template for the far more challenging battle this summer, the battle for Kandahar. With nearly 500,000 people, it is the Taliban's spiritual capital. The city is nominally under NATO control, but there are reportedly thousands of Taliban in and around it--and every expectation that many will make a bloody stand.
The Pakistani Play
Under normal circumstances, in planning his offensive McChrystal would have had to keep a close watch on Afghanistan's difficult neighbor. Pakistan's support for the Taliban and the Haqqani network has frequently bedeviled U.S. military plans, as Afghan fighters have too easily slipped across the border and found sanctuary. But a year's worth of diplomatic pressure on Islamabad began to pay off before Operation Moshtarak: Pakistan launched a major military offensive of its own in South Waziristan, not against the Afghan Taliban but against its Pakistani cousins known as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan or TTP.
The Pakistani change of heart had been a long time coming. It was influenced by the TTP's bloody campaign of suicide attacks in Pakistani cities, often targeting military and ISI compounds. "I can remember anecdotally where we had questions for our team in Pakistan at one point and they couldn't get a hold of their ISI counterparts because they were too busy attending funerals of their key leadership," says a U.S. counterterrorism official. This, along with the militants' brazen capture of a town some 40 miles (65 km) from the Pakistani capital last spring, did more than any American finger-wagging to convince Islamabad that the TTP needed to be taken down. The U.S. helped by mounting drone strikes on TTP leaders, killing its founder, Baitullah Mehsud, last summer and possibly his successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, in January.
Even so, Pakistani cooperation in the arrest of Baradar, on the eve of the Marjah assault, was an unexpected bonus for McChrystal. Why did Pakistan roll up Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar's deputy? Islamabad has previously arrested senior figures in the Afghan Taliban, but they've typically been released quickly, without U.S. officials being given access to them. But the Pakistanis made an exception with Baradar, who may have a treasure trove of information on the Taliban. Possibly the Pakistanis were under pressure to reciprocate for the U.S. strikes on the Mehsuds. Or perhaps Baradar had fallen out with Omar and was trying to open a direct channel for peace talks to the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, bypassing his hosts. By taking Baradar out of circulation, Pakistan may be making a case to be given a seat in eventual peace negotiations.
Whatever the reason, his arrest doesn't represent a sea change in Pakistan's attitude toward its longtime clients in the Afghan Taliban, say White House officials with responsibility for Pakistan and Afghanistan. While Washington views the TTP, the Haqqani network, al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban as all part of the same terrorist syndicate, Islamabad is concerned mainly about the TTP's legions of suicide bombers. Nor is the effect of Baradar's arrest on the top Taliban leadership yet clear. If he had indeed broken with Omar, then the group has most likely replaced him already. The Taliban was able to shake off the 2007 killing of its top commander, Mullah Dadullah, by NATO forces. "The Taliban are used to this," says Waheed Muzhda, a former Taliban official. "When Mullah Dadullah was killed, some people thought that the Taliban would give up. But it didn't happen, because the Taliban are waging an ideological war, and in an ideological war, this kind of thing doesn't have a big impact."
Another bonus for McChrystal: in Operation Moshtarak, he has not had to contend with al-Qaeda. For many months now, Osama bin Laden's once feared legions have been consigned to the margins of the fighting in Afghanistan. Their numbers have dwindled from 500 to 100, says National Security Adviser Jones. In Pakistan they continue to enjoy the protection of the TTP and the Haqqani network but have effectively been pinned down by the CIA's drones. "Neither in Afghanistan nor in Pakistan is al-Qaeda at the tactical front edge," says a senior Administration official. Al-Qaeda remains the strategic reason for the current fighting; one of Obama's grounds for staying the course in Afghanistan is to prevent bin Laden from re-establishing safe havens there. But the only area of real military activity against al-Qaeda at the moment is in North Waziristan, where the Pakistani military is not active. The U.S. is doing the attacking, primarily with drones.
To some effect. There have been 17 strikes by unmanned aircraft in Pakistani territory thus far this year, according to the Long War Journal, a nonprofit online publication that tracks such attacks. The spike was triggered in part by a Dec. 30 suicide attack that killed seven CIA officials at an Afghan outpost. The Haqqani network and Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud apparently aided the suicide bomber; some reports say Mehsud was wounded, possibly killed, in a Jan. 14 strike. Meanwhile, the remote-control pilots operating Predators and Reapers continue to peer at their video screens, hoping to catch sight of a very tall, thin, bearded man emerging from a hideout.
Skepticism Makes Sense
Well-informed analysts know to keep the champagne on ice. At a conference at Tufts University last week attended by experts on Afghanistan, not a single optimistic take on that nation's long-standing problems could be heard. One comment became a refrain: "I have no doubt that peace will one day come to Afghanistan, but I can't say if it will be in 50 or 200 years," a speaker said. "What I can say is that at the rate we are going now, it's unlikely to be any sooner than that."
There was skepticism in Marjah too. Abdul Hadi, a student, fled the fighting along with his family on Feb. 18; now living in Lashkar Gah, he is in no hurry to return. He worries that many Taliban are just waiting for the NATO forces to move on to their next target. "I know the Taliban will come back," he says. Mohammad Hosain, a teacher from Marjah, wonders if they even left. "The Taliban does not have a uniform, so if they leave their weapons at home, they can easily move around," he says. "There is no [sign] on their face that says, 'I am a Talib.'"
People like Hadi and Hosain came by their skepticism the hard way: they have seen foreign forces defeat the Taliban in Helmand, then pull out, then repeat the cycle. The town of Musa Qala, north of Marjah, has twice been taken by NATO arms: by British and Danish forces in 2006 and by the U.S. in 2007. On both occasions, a new local government was created, and each time, the Taliban returned to murder those it deemed collaborators.
To prevent that from happening in Marjah, McChrystal is counting on his government in a box--a lineup of administrators who have prepped for months--to enforce law and order, provide basic facilities, build schools, create jobs and persuade local farmers to give up the poppy crop. But that's asking a lot from officials who have shown scant aptitude for doing a decent job elsewhere. McChrystal's plan calls for 80 prepacked governments to take root across Taliban-ruled territory over two years, but Afghanistan simply doesn't have that many clean, qualified and experienced bureaucrats, policemen, doctors and teachers. Besides, parachuting officials into former Taliban strongholds may be self-defeating; Pashtuns rarely trust anybody outside their own tribe and clan. It can hardly be reassuring to the residents of Marjah that their newly appointed mayor, Haji Zahir, has only recently returned from 15 years of living in Germany.
Even if McChrystal's officials are a huge success, two other crucial planks in Obama's plan to start pulling U.S. forces from Afghanistan in mid-2011 already look worm-eaten. One is the creation of a legitimate, reliable government in Kabul: since Karzai's contentious election late last year, Afghanistan's President has shown little inclination to ditch his corrupt cronies. Nor is there yet an Afghan security force capable of taking over from the Americans. Although U.S. commanders carefully talk up the contributions of the 4,500 Afghan National Army soldiers (two had been killed) and police in the Marjah operation, it's no secret that the U.S. Marines and British troops are doing the heavy lifting. McChrystal's target of a 134,000-man Afghan National Army by late fall--up from 104,000 now--seems hopelessly optimistic. Training is slow, and there's a scarcity in the ranks of southern Pashtuns, who are needed the most in the Taliban's strongholds.
Across the border, Pakistan's continuing support for American efforts is far from assured. Right now, Islamabad's immediate interests may coincide with Washington's, but they can just as quickly diverge, especially on the question of what to do about the Taliban's core leadership. The U.S. is adamant that it will not negotiate with Omar unless he parts ways with bin Laden. "There's a clear red line," says Richard Holbrooke, special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. "They must renounce al-Qaeda." American officials are also determined to root out the Haqqani network, which they regard as the greatest danger to NATO troops. Pakistani officials, on the other hand, view the Taliban and the Haqqanis as strategic assets and believe both should have a role in Afghanistan after the NATO withdrawal. They point out that many Afghans still regard Omar as a legitimate figure--more so, in fact, than Karzai, who is seen as an American puppet. Without Omar's endorsement, they think, any peace negotiations will be fatally flawed.
Islamabad's long-standing nightmare remains: that when the Americans go, its neighbors--especially India, Pakistan's hated rival--will be influential in Kabul. The Taliban and the Haqqanis are insurance against such an eventuality. Baradar's detention has not yet changed Pakistan's assessment of how its own interests may best be defended. Remember, too, that no matter how well Operation Moshtarak seems to be going, many Taliban commanders think they are winning. Whatever happens in Marjah, they can point to a widening influence across Afghanistan. They also have been heartened by last week's announcement that the 2,000-strong Dutch contingent will be departing this year because Holland's coalition government was unable to agree on an extension of its deployment--another indication of how unpopular the Afghan war is in the nations whose troops are fighting it.
Mullah Omar and his colleagues, taking Obama on his word that he wants to begin a U.S. pullout by July 2011, have said they intend to outlast the occupiers. If that means ceding strongholds like Marjah only to pop up elsewhere, then that's what they will do. They have been doing it for years. Call it insurgency in a box.
news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100301/wl_time/08599196786700
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Post by RocDoc on Apr 22, 2010 9:20:52 GMT -5
this is a veryVERY perceptive and fair way of looking at this relationship...
Russia and EU Seeking Inspiration in the Past
21 April 2010
By Fyodor Lukyanov
After the tragic death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski on April 10 and the circumstances surrounding the 70th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers at Katyn, we are forced to once again look at the role that history plays in politics.
Russia’s reaction to the Polish presidential airplane crash demonstrated that simple human relations are capable of smoothing over even the thorniest historical tensions. Of course, political will is needed as well. In fact, the gradual warming of relations between Russia and Poland did not begin in recent weeks but soon after Donald Tusk became the Polish prime minister in 2007.
Generally speaking, Russia’s foreign policy is reactive by nature, and it responds to both positive and negative stimuli. Tusk’s willingness to be flexible toward Russia — in contrast to his predecessor, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who made no special efforts to establish a dialogue — has elicited a corresponding response fr om Moscow. The result has been that the Polish meat problem was resolved in 2008, and the two countries have started a constructive dialogue on different issues, including ones as sensitive as Katyn.
Of course, internal factors in Russia have also played a role. Two months ago, I wrote in this column that the time when Russian authorities could use the country’s Soviet past as a political tool was coming to an end. Events of this spring confirm this, and the reason is simple: It has become clear that attempts to rally the people around the legacy of former Soviet leader Josef Stalin have not only failed but have provoked futile and pointless controversy. Individual members of the ruling elite, such as Mayor Yury Luzhkov, continue to use the Stalinist theme to further their personal interests, but most authorities recognize that playing the “Stalin card” has exhausted its potential and has even become politically risky.
One example of just such an overblown and pointless conflict is found in the objections that leftist nationalist groups have raised over the Kremlin’s decision to invite representatives of the Allied countries to the May 9 Victory Day parade. The hysteria over this desire to give the occasion international significance only demonstrates that with Russian society confused and unsure of itself, there is more to be lost than gained fr om using World War II to win political points.
Taking a pragmatic approach can reduce the intensity of domestic and international disagreements, but it will not eliminate them. This is because Russia views World War II very differently than the rest of Europe does.
Russia focuses on the war itself and on its victory over the fascist enemy that threatened the very existence of the country. Any discussion of the price paid for that victory or of secondary motives that the Soviet authorities might have had is considered blasphemy. What’s more, the victory over Adolf Hitler stands out as the most important source of patriotic pride in Russia’s 20th-century history. This explains the fervor over attempts to rewrite the Soviet Union’s role in World War II. Attempts to diminish Russia’s role in the victory are perceived as attempts to undermine the very foundation of the state.
For today’s Europe, the war itself is of less importance than what followed it. In the post-war period, Europe managed to finally overcome the disastrous policies that had led to its collapse in the first half of the 20th century. Two events were of utmost importance. The program for European integration, begun in the 1950s, marked the end of the French-German confrontation that had spawned both world wars. Also, the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the communist empire enabled the West to wash its hands of the “sin” of having cut deals with Stalin at Yalta and Potsdam.
In other words, while Russia takes pride in having fended off an existential threat and views that achievement as a geopolitical moment of triumph, Europe experiences shame at having unleashed such a monstrous war and accepted dirty trade-offs after that in the first place. These are two very divergent views of the same historical event. History is important to every nation and serves as a source of political inspiration, especially when the future appears increasingly vague and confusing.
Because Russia and the rest of Europe do not yet have a clear idea of what place they will occupy in 21st century, they cling desperately to the past. In one sense, everything is clear regarding Russia’s position: The country suffered a serious trauma in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, and it is still trying to define its geopolitical identity. It would seem that the European Union has no such problems. Although the integration of its constituent states has by and large proven successful, it is increasingly clear that Europe is losing its global significance and is turning into a secondary player, mired down by its own internal problems.
When Europeans say that their administrative model is in crisis, they implicitly refer to past crises such as the “Eurosclerosis” of the 1960s and 1970s, which they ultimately overcame. In general, the political character of the EU is based on a feeling of phenomenal progress, which Western Europe achieved in the second half of the 20th century. There have been very few examples in history wh ere eternal enemies have been reconciled and wh ere economic expediency has been placed above parochial national ambitions.
At the same time, Europe’s successes mask the fact that these previous results were achieved under unique conditions — a common threat, U.S. patronage and a degree of homogeneity among member states. But since the global architecture has changed so dramatically, it is unclear whether Europe will be able to repeat its successes in the future.
In this sense, Russia and Europe are in a similar backward-looking situation. But considering their vastly different understandings of the past, this similarity may separate them more than it will unite them.
Fyodor Lukyanov is editor of Russia in Global Affairs.
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Post by maarts on May 18, 2010 6:35:20 GMT -5
Gigi pointed thios one out...wtf???
Reality TV show filmed police raid that ended in shooting of girl
US police who carried out a raid on a family home that left a seven-year-old girl dead were accompanied by a camera crew for a reality television show, and an attorney says video of the siege contradicts the police account of what happened.
Geoffrey Fieger, an attorney for the family of the dead girl, Aiyana Jones, said he has seen three or four minutes of video of the raid, although he declined to say whether it was shot by the crew for the A&E series "The First 48," which has been shadowing Detroit homicide detectives for months.
Police have said officers threw a flash grenade through the first-floor window of the two-family home, and that an officer's gun discharged, killing the girl, during a struggle or after colliding with the girl's grandmother inside the home.
Dominika Stanley and Charles Jones, mother and father of Aiyana Jones gather for a candle light vigil for their seven-year-old daughter. But Fieger said the video shows an officer lobbing the grenade and then shooting into the home from the porch.
"There is no question about what happened because it's in the videotape," Fieger said. "It's not an accident. It's not a mistake. There was no altercation."
"Aiyana Jones was shot from outside on the porch. The videotape shows clearly the officer throwing through the window a stun grenade-type explosive and then within milliseconds of throwing that, firing a shot from outside the home," he said.
A&E spokesman Dan Silberman said neither he nor anyone else from the network would comment about the case, and he denied a request by The Associated Press for the footage.
Detroit police were trying to obtain the film crew's footage, Assistant Chief Ralph Godbee said on Monday.
Fieger said the investigation into what happened during the raid "needed to go no further than the videotape."
"The videotape shows clearly that the assistant police chief and the officers on the scene are engaging in an intentional cover up of the events," Fieger said. He said more than one camera was recording at the scene, and that the footage includes sound.
Police arrested the target of the raid, a 34-year-old man suspected of killing a 17-year-old boy, in the upstairs unit in the two-family home.
Police had warrants to search both properties, and family members of the slain girl were seen going in and out of both on Monday.
The suspect has not been charged, and it was not immediately clear what relationship he had to the dead girl.
The case has been handed over to the Michigan State Police to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said.
Some, including the girl's family and others, have questioned what effect the cameras may have had on the tactics used during raid on the home, which had toys strewn about the front lawn on Monday.
The police department is understaffed, and officers have said they feel vulnerable — especially after one patrolman was killed and four others were wounded during a gunfight with a suspect in a vacant home earlier this month.
Two prominent criminal defence attorneys said they were unaware of past instances when Detroit police used flash grenades in raids when children were possibly present.
"That's a new one," said Detroit lawyer Corbett Edge O'Meara. "That does seem to be a pretty extreme measure. It doesn't surprise me that the police had no concern whether they were endangering the lives of children when they made this raid."
Attorney Marvin Barnett was more blunt: "I've never heard that before in my entire career, that you've thrown a flash bomb in a house unless you've got an armed suspect and you know there is nobody else in the house."
"I'd like to know who gave the order to do that," Barnett said.
Godbee said the department was confident the film crew's presence had no effect on how the raid was conducted. He said the police department's use of flash grenades is decided on a "case by case" basis.
"It primarily goes to the severity of the crime and the potential of violence from the offender we're trying to get in custody," Godbee said.
He declined to comment on whether the officers involved in the raid were aware children were in the home.
"Our tactics absolutely will be addressed and assessed at the appropriate time," Godbee said.
The family was left searching for answers. They retained Fieger, a high-powered attorney who also represented assisted suicide advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian, but the girl's father said he wants to know what led to his daughter's death.
"They killed my baby, and I want someone to tell the truth," he said Sunday.
Police have not identified the officer whose gun fired the shot that killed Aiyana. Godbee said he is a 14-year veteran with six to seven years on the Special Response Team, and that he has been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
The officer was cleared following a nonfatal shooting last summer. Police were fired upon by someone barricaded in a house and returned fire, Godbee said.
The Detroit police department has been under two court-ordered consent decrees since 2003 aimed at, among other things, correcting how and when its officers use force on suspects.
The department declined to say whether it was being paid by the television show.
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