The FAA has authorized the use of hundreds of drones in U.S. (1 Viewer)

[NCCommish]

I understand. And I'm familiar with his case. I made the distinction because I think it's a pretty good bet that our intelligence services are going to have a much stronger case against someone before they target him for death.

Tim that is one of the silliest things I have ever read. They weren't even right about the state of the Soviet Union for over a decade. And we had agents everywhere. If you want to trust the CIA with your life great. But not mine and really no other American citizens or for that matter 16 year old boys that happen to be around when they launch a missile. You know the kids that are all terrorists because the CIA said so.

Just as drones are a much more efficient way of killing than bombing villages during the Vietnam War, I am going to assume that the CIA is much more efficient in terms of their ability to make a determination now than they were then regarding these issues. Technology has advanced considerably. So do I trust their ability far more now than I would have during the Cold War? Absolutely I do. Now, your statement also suggests that you personally go beyond the notion that the CIA might be incompetent- your last sentence suggests that you don't trust them, meaning that they are also crooked and/or corrupt. That's a separate consideration. Most Americans since the Vietnam War have good reason not to trust the government, and this seems especially true of progressives when it comes to military issues. Certainly George W. Bush misled us when it came to the Iraq War. So I find this to be a reasonable objection- but one that can be resolved- it's not a permanent reason not to ever use drone technology- this is something we should be able to fix.

That's an awful lot of trust in an organization, and really a power structure, whose incompetence has been demonstrated many times.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Your fear is getting the better of you.

 

[johnnycakes]

We chose to kill Admiral Yamamoto because, as our own Admiral Nimitz stated, his value to the Japanese military was the equivalent of 3 or more aircraft carriers. I assume this same sort of reasoning was behind our killing of al-Alwaki. In wartime this is perfectly justifiable.

Yamamoto was Japanese. HTH

I don't find American citizenship to be an important distinction in this case. If, for example, NC Commish is correct that the use of these weapons is immoral, then that applies to everyone, not just American citizens.

Then I don't see why you chose to use Yamamoto as an example. We didn't get him with a drone.

Because part of the objection to drones that has been made here is that it is immoral for this nation to assassinate people.

Yamamoto was a naval officer flying in a marked bomber. That's not an assassination.

He was singled out and targeted. Many people, at the time and ever since, regarded his death as an assassination.

That was back in the good ol' days when we officially declared war on our enemy. He was a Japanese officer and we had declared war on Japan. He was a legal target.

 

[Christo]

We chose to kill Admiral Yamamoto because, as our own Admiral Nimitz stated, his value to the Japanese military was the equivalent of 3 or more aircraft carriers. I assume this same sort of reasoning was behind our killing of al-Alwaki. In wartime this is perfectly justifiable.

Yamamoto was Japanese.

HTH

I don't find American citizenship to be an important distinction in this case. If, for example, NC Commish is correct that the use of these weapons is immoral, then that applies to everyone, not just American citizens.

Then I don't see why you chose to use Yamamoto as an example. We didn't get him with a drone.

Because part of the objection to drones that has been made here is that it is immoral for this nation to assassinate people.

Yamamoto was a naval officer flying in a marked bomber. That's not an assassination.

He was singled out and targeted. Many people, at the time and ever since, regarded his death as an assassination.

Sorry, but assassination requires the killing to be murder. He was a uniformed military officer flying in a marked war plane in a war zone in a declared war. He was a legitimate military target. That's not murder. So it wasn't an assassination.

 

[timschochet]

Regardless of your definition of assassination or murder, personally I don't regard the killing of political enemies of the United States, particularly terrorists or heads of state of hostile governments, to be necessarily immoral. That was my main point, and I apologize if we got off track with Yamamoto.

 

[NCCommish]

Regardless of your definition of assassination or murder, personally I don't regard the killing of political enemies of the United States, particularly terrorists or heads of state of hostile governments, to be necessarily immoral. That was my main point, and I apologize if we got off track with Yamamoto.

Wow.

 

[NCCommish]

For Tim:

EXCLUSIVE: CIA didn't always know who it was killing in drone strikes, classified documents showThe CIA did not always know who it was targeting and killing in drone strikes in Pakistan over a 14-month period, an NBC News review of classified intelligence reports shows.

About one of every four of those killed by drones in Pakistan between Sept. 3, 2010, and Oct. 30, 2011, were classified as "other militants,” the documents detail. The “other militants” label was used when the CIA could not determine the affiliation of those killed, prompting questions about how the agency could conclude they were a threat to U.S. national security.

The uncertainty appears to arise from the use of so-called “signature” strikes to eliminate suspected terrorists -- picking targets based in part on their behavior and associates. A former White House official said the U.S. sometimes executes people based on “circumstantial evidence.”

Three former senior Obama administration officials also told NBC News that some White House officials were worried that the CIA had painted too rosy a picture of its success and likely ignored or missed mistakes when tallying death totals.


NBC News has reviewed two sets of classified documents that describe 114 drone strikes over 14 months in Pakistan and Afghanistan, starting in September 2010. The documents list locations, death and injury tolls, alleged terrorist affiliations, and whether the killed and injured were deemed combatants or non-combatants.

Though the Obama administration has previously said it targets al Qaeda leaders and senior Taliban officials plotting attacks against the U.S. and U.S. troops, officials are sometimes unsure of the targets’ affiliations. About half of the targets in the documents are described as al Qaeda. But in 26 of the attacks, accounting for about a quarter of the fatalities, those killed are described only as “other militants.” In four others, the dead are described as “foreign fighters.”

In some cases, U.S. officials also seem unsure how many people died. One entry says that a drone attack killed seven to 10 people, while another says that an attack killed 20 to 22.

Yet officials seem certain that however many people died, and whoever they were, none of them were non-combatants. In fact, of the approximately 600 people listed as killed in the documents, only one is described as a civilian. The individual was identified to NBC News as the wife or girlfriend of an al Qaeda leader.

Micah Zenko, of the Council on Foreign Relations, says that more civilians and non-combatants have likely been killed by U.S. drone strikes than the Obama administration has claimed.
Micah Zenko, a former State Department policy advisor who is now a drone expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said it was “incredible” to state that only one non-combatant was killed. “It’s just not believable,” he said. “Anyone who knows anything about how airpower is used and deployed, civilians die, and individuals who are engaged in the operations know this.”

The CIA declined to comment, and the White House did not immediately respond to calls and emails requesting comment.

A senior White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “In the past, and currently, force protection is a big part of the rationale for taking action in the Afghan theater of operations.”

Separately, on background, the official noted that as President Barack Obama said in an address last month, as the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan declines, so will the number of strikes.

The CIA uses two basic methods to target people for killing, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The first is called a “personality” strike. These strikes target known terrorists, whose identities have been firmly established through intelligence, including visual surveillance and electronic and human intelligence. In other words, the CIA knows who it is killing.

In so-called “signature” strikes, intelligence officers and drone operators kill suspects based on their patterns of behavior -- but without positive identification. With signature strikes, the CIA doesn’t necessarily know who it is killing. One former senior intelligence official said that at the height of the drone program in Pakistan in 2009 and 2010, as many as half of the strikes were classified as signature strikes.

Analysts use a variety of intelligence methods and technologies that they say give them reasonable certainty that the “signature” target is a terrorist. Part of the analysis involves crunching data to make connections between the unidentified suspects and other known terrorists and militants. The agency can watch, for example, as an unknown person frequents places, meets individuals, makes phone calls, and sends emails, and then match those against other people linked to the same calls, emails and meetings.

A half dozen former and current U.S. counter-terrorism officials told NBC News that signature strikes do generally kill combatants, but acknowledge that intelligence officials doesn’t always know who those combatants are. Some of the officials said the moral and legal aspects of the signature strikes were often discussed, but without any significant change in policy.

Ret. Adm. Dennis Blair, who was Director of National Intelligence from Jan. 2009 to May 2010, declined to discuss the specifics of signature strikes, but said “to use lethal force there has to be a high degree of knowledge of an individual tied to activities, tied to connections.”

He also defended the precision of drone strikes in general. “In Afghanistan and Iraq and places where you have troops in combat,” said Blair, “you know better with drones who you’re killing than you do when you’re calling in artillery fire from a spotter [or] calling in an airplane strike.”

Said Blair, “This is no different from decisions that are made on the battlefield all the time by soldiers and Marines who are being shot at, not knowing who fired the shot, having to make judgments on shooting back or not. This is the nature of warfare.”

Once a target has been killed, according to current and former U.S. officials, the CIA does not take someone out of the combatant category and put them in the non-combatant category unless, after the strike, a preponderance of evidence is produced showing the person killed was a civilian.

A 2012 AP investigation reported that in 10 drone attacks from the preceding 18 months, Pakistani villagers said that about 70 percent of those killed were militants, while the rest of the dead were either civilians or tribal police. The AP report notes that Pakistani officials and villagers claimed that 38 non-combatants were killed in a single strike on March 17, 2011.

According to the AP, U.S. officials said the group hit by the strike was heavily armed and behaved in “a manner consistent with al Qaeda-linked militants.” Villagers and Pakistani officials said the gathering was a “jirga,” or community meeting, in which locals were negotiating with a small group of militants over mining rights.

U.S. officials listed 20 to 22 dead in the strike, according to the documents obtained by NBC News, and described them as “other militants.” A former U.S. official told NBC News the drone attack was a “signature” strike, while a U.S. human rights advocate who has interviewed local villagers – and is skeptical of Pakistani claims of widespread civilian casualties from drone strikes -- supported the Pakistani description of the meeting as a jirga and most of the victims as non-combatant

NBC

So as you can see Tim the CIA doesn't always know who it's killing but it claims it never kills any civilians.

 

[pittstownkiller]

We chose to kill Admiral Yamamoto because, as our own Admiral Nimitz stated, his value to the Japanese military was the equivalent of 3 or more aircraft carriers. I assume this same sort of reasoning was behind our killing of al-Alwaki. In wartime this is perfectly justifiable.

Yamamoto was Japanese. HTH

I don't find American citizenship to be an important distinction in this case. If, for example, NC Commish is correct that the use of these weapons is immoral, then that applies to everyone, not just American citizens.

It is never an importance distinction in the face of fear. Ask the Japanese Americans.

You raise a good point. While most of the Nisei (2nd generation) were American citizens, many of the Isei (first generation) were not, mostly because of a 1920s infamous Supreme Court decision which denied them citizenship. Both American citizens and non-citizens were stripped of their property and sent to concentration camps, and it was just as immoral in both cases.

oof.

 

[timschochet]

We chose to kill Admiral Yamamoto because, as our own Admiral Nimitz stated, his value to the Japanese military was the equivalent of 3 or more aircraft carriers. I assume this same sort of reasoning was behind our killing of al-Alwaki. In wartime this is perfectly justifiable.

Yamamoto was Japanese. HTH

I don't find American citizenship to be an important distinction in this case. If, for example, NC Commish is correct that the use of these weapons is immoral, then that applies to everyone, not just American citizens.

It is never an importance distinction in the face of fear. Ask the Japanese Americans.

You raise a good point. While most of the Nisei (2nd generation) were American citizens, many of the Isei (first generation) were not, mostly because of a 1920s infamous Supreme Court decision which denied them citizenship. Both American citizens and non-citizens were stripped of their property and sent to concentration camps, and it was just as immoral in both cases.

oof.

Are you denying this took place?

 

[Ilov80s]

The US just looks pathetic right now. Beyond spying on allies, we are blowing off family members of people we have killed. The family of a 67 year old woman killed by a US drone was invited to the US to speak before Congress about the human impact of drone strikes. 5 Congress members showed up.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/29/pakistan-family-drone-victim-testimony-congress

 

[BigSteelThrill]

The US just looks pathetic right now. Beyond spying on allies, we are blowing off family members of people we have killed. The family of a 67 year old woman killed by a US drone was invited to the US to speak before Congress about the human impact of drone strikes. 5 Congress members showed up.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/29/pakistan-family-drone-victim-testimony-congress

Then the Paki government needs to get control of their populace.

 

[Sarnoff]

The US just looks pathetic right now. Beyond spying on allies, we are blowing off family members of people we have killed. The family of a 67 year old woman killed by a US drone was invited to the US to speak before Congress about the human impact of drone strikes. 5 Congress members showed up.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/29/pakistan-family-drone-victim-testimony-congress

Pic related

 

[St. Louis Bob]

As posted in the GMTAN, there was a drone spotted hovering above my office two weeks ago.

 

[BigSteelThrill]

As posted in the GMTAN, there was a drone spotted hovering above my office two weeks ago.

As opposed to a helicopter?

 

[Guest]

I keep reading the title as the "FFA". Who would we choose to strike?

 

[St. Louis Bob]

As posted in the GMTAN, there was a drone spotted hovering above my office two weeks ago.

As opposed to a helicopter?

Fairly certain my AR gal can tell the difference between a helicopter and an unmanned aerial vehicle that hovered for several minutes before taking off.

 

[St. Louis Bob]

The Constitution doesn't mean dick.

 

[Sarnoff]

The Constitution doesn't mean dick.

Yep. (non-FOX News link)

66% of the US population lives within the "Constitution-Free Zone", which is with 100-miles of all borders, including water. Within this area, your 4th Amendment rights do not exist. Any gov't official, cop, or, well, just about anyone, can seize your cell phone, laptop, briefcase, gym bag, etc., without probable cause, at any time.

The entire contents of your hard drive can be permanently copied and held by the gov't. They can clone your phone and xerox all your papers.

And if any files are encrypted, the gov't can retain possession of your laptop until they crack it.

 

[Ilov80s]

We have become the exact country we fought to escape from 200 years ago.

 

[Christo]

We have become the exact country we fought to escape from 200 years ago.

Taxation without representation?

 

[Ilov80s]

We have become the exact country we fought to escape from 200 years ago.

Taxation without representation?

If you live in DC, yes. Puerto Ricans pay most US taxes. The people living in Britan had representation. It was the land occupied outside of Britain that was unhappy about taxation without representation.

 

[Christo]

We have become the exact country we fought to escape from 200 years ago.

Taxation without representation?

If you live in DC, yes. Puerto Ricans pay most US taxes.The people living in Britan had representation. It was the land occupied outside of Britain that was unhappy about taxation without representation.

Thanks for the history lesson.

 

[Rayderr]

Politifact disagrees.

 

[cstu]

The Constitution doesn't mean dick.

Yep. (non-FOX News link)

66% of the US population lives within the "Constitution-Free Zone", which is with 100-miles of all borders, including water. Within this area, your 4th Amendment rights do not exist. Any gov't official, cop, or, well, just about anyone, can seize your cell phone, laptop, briefcase, gym bag, etc., without probable cause, at any time.

The entire contents of your hard drive can be permanently copied and held by the gov't. They can clone your phone and xerox all your papers.

And if any files are encrypted, the gov't can retain possession of your laptop until they crack it.

These are mind-boggling.

 

[SacramentoBob]

Politifact disagrees.

I'll take the ACLU over Politifact.

 

[Sarnoff]

Politifact disagrees.

I'll take the ACLU over Politifact.

Politifact rates it as "false", but only because it's true but rare.

Politifact is one of the worst sham jobs going right now.

 

[NCCommish]

The US just looks pathetic right now. Beyond spying on allies, we are blowing off family members of people we have killed. The family of a 67 year old woman killed by a US drone was invited to the US to speak before Congress about the human impact of drone strikes. 5 Congress members showed up.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/29/pakistan-family-drone-victim-testimony-congress

Then the Paki government needs to get control of their populace.

Might want a new nickname for them. That one is used in Europe as a racial slur kind of like is here.

 

[NCCommish]

We have become the exact country we fought to escape from 200 years ago.

Actually we have become the exact country we were supposedly locked in a titanic struggle to the death with, the USSR. Your papers please.

 

[roadkill1292]

Politifact disagrees.

I'll take the ACLU over Politifact.

Politifact rates it as "false", but only because it's true but rare.

Politifact is one of the worst sham jobs going right now.

Is anybody else concerned about the decline of Rayderr's mental acuities since he moved to Ohio? I've met the guy IRL and I swear he was a normal guy at the time.

 

[Rayderr]

Politifact disagrees.

I'll take the ACLU over Politifact.

Politifact rates it as "false", but only because it's true but rare.

Politifact is one of the worst sham jobs going right now.

Is anybody else concerned about the decline of Rayderr's mental acuities since he moved to Ohio? I've met the guy IRL and I swear he was a normal guy at the time.

I've noticed that you tend to resort more to personal insults. Is there a reason for that? This isn't the first time you've done it with me. Are you pissed that I dropped out of the fantasy league years ago when I moved to Ohio or something? You used to be better than this Roadkill.

 

[roadkill1292]

Politifact disagrees.

I'll take the ACLU over Politifact.

Politifact rates it as "false", but only because it's true but rare.

Politifact is one of the worst sham jobs going right now.

Is anybody else concerned about the decline of Rayderr's mental acuities since he moved to Ohio? I've met the guy IRL and I swear he was a normal guy at the time.

I've noticed that you tend to resort more to personal insults. Is there a reason for that? This isn't the first time you've done it with me. Are you pissed that I dropped out of the fantasy league years ago when I moved to Ohio or something? You used to be better than this Roadkill.

I could very well be a lesser person than I was before. I'll work on that.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

Device found on White House grounds identified as drone

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/device-found-on-white-house-grounds-but-officials-say-it-posed-no-threat/2015/01/26/7accc156-a547-11e4-a2b2-776095f393b2_story.html

Well, what could possibly go wrong...

 

[grateful zed]

Politifact disagrees.

I'll take the ACLU over Politifact.

Politifact rates it as "false", but only because it's true but rare.

Politifact is one of the worst sham jobs going right now.

Is anybody else concerned about the decline of Rayderr's mental acuities since he moved to Ohio? I've met the guy IRL and I swear he was a normal guy at the time.

I've noticed that you tend to resort more to personal insults. Is there a reason for that? This isn't the first time you've done it with me. Are you pissed that I dropped out of the fantasy league years ago when I moved to Ohio or something? You used to be better than this Roadkill.

I could very well be a lesser person than I was before. I'll work on that.

prolly the other way around.

 

[grateful zed]

Device found on White House grounds identified as drone

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/device-found-on-white-house-grounds-but-officials-say-it-posed-no-threat/2015/01/26/7accc156-a547-11e4-a2b2-776095f393b2_story.html

Well, what could possibly go wrong...

obama should hire some look alikes to live in the white house in place of his family, just to be sure.