The drone program of the US has been under attack from people like me…..I do not think this technique is doing any good….at best it is killing civilians more so than suspected terrorists…..
It looks like some hackers have gotten their hands on documents that make my case for me…..
A number of damaging secret government documents about the United States’ drone program were published online Thursday after being leaked by an anonymous source “within the intelligence community,” CNN reports. The new whistleblower is being called a second Edward Snowden. According to Politico, the anonymous source calls the process for how the White House decides who gets targeted for killing by drone “insane.” “We’re allowing this to happen,” Wired cites the anonymous source as saying. “And by ‘we,’ I mean every American citizen who has access to this information now, but continues to do nothing about it.” The so-called “Drone Papers” were published on The Intercept, the same investigative website that published Snowden’s leak.
Among the reveals in the Drone Papers:
- Up to 90% of drone killings over a five-month period weren’t the intended target.
- The government creates “baseball cards” of potential targets.
- A Pentagon paper from 2013 states drone strikes are often based on shaky intelligence and hurt further intelligence gathering.
- It took President Obama an average of 58 days to sign off on a target.
Read the full Drone Papers here.
Of course very little of this will ever make it into the MSM….and the people should be demanding to know more…..is the program killing more civilians than terrorists?
Speaking of civilian deaths….a question has been asked…..Who is accountable for these deaths?
Source: Who is held accountable for civilian killings? – Al Jazeera English
I realize that the government is trying to lessen any anti-war sentiments and have decided that drones is the way to prevent any blow back from American deaths in conflicts…..but alas….people are dying and in some cases they did not have to die……
Will we continue to kill innocent civilians just to avoid the unpleasantness of an anti-war protest? Will we continue to allow innocent civilians to die just to assure domestic tranquility?
Here is another thought…..drones will NEVER by themselves destroy the terrorist organizations….that will take commitment that the country is just not prepared to give.
How can one tell a civilian from a terrorist, when a terrorist could be living right next door and you’d never know it?
That is true and it is the excuse that is being used to explain the massive civilian deaths…..is it worth it to kill 5 people for every 1 terrorist…if that many?
We are proud to have won WW2, but how many civilians died? War can not be fought but the rules of being politically correct. Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan have proved that; and now we are boots down in Syria, etc….endless!!
The deaths of civilians in WW2 served a purpose (sad to say)….trying to demoralize a population to turn the people against their rulers…..that will not work as it is being fought today…..we have special ops people in 147 countries….and that is the next problem we must face….chuq
I believe you are rationalizing, but everyone has their own opinion.
You may be right…..
I knew I had it marked somewhere…..
Thus, in 1942 under the command of Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, the Royal Air Force shifted its focus toward destroying “the morale of the enemy civil population.”� In the summer of 1942, the United States Air Force joined the strategic bombing campaign of Britain.� While the US had tried to avoid bombing civilian populations, daytime “precision bombing” had become a costly liability because German day fighters were able to detect and destroy many American fighter planes. Together under this new policy of “strategic bombing”, Great Britain and the United States command dropped thousands of firebombs on the cities of Cologne, Hamburg and Dresden incurring huge casualties.
In 1945, the US extended their policy of targeting innocent civilians to the cities of Japan, resulting in even greater destruction than any of the European campaigns.� In fact, one night’s worth of fire raiding on
Tokyo claimed the lives of more than 80,000 civilians, more than the casualties incurred from the atomic bomb detonation in Nagasaki.� The United States would continue to drop incendiary bombs on innocent, Japanese women and children until the equally horrific use of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki forced Japan to surrender.
Britain and America’s shift in policy from respecting the human rights of innocent citizens during war to specifically targeting peaceful, non-strategic populations reflects the monstrosity of war, and the way in which its cruel realities erode the moral principles that govern our world society. World War II polarized the world the way people viewed humanity.� People were either allies or enemies, good or evil.� There was no in between and unfortunately, such inhumane and oversimplified distinctions resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent citizens in the bombing campaigns of the Second World War.
I still do not believe that it is our policy today…I think they throw a drone at a target and if civilians are in the way…we can send them a check….
Face darkens. No one will be held accountable. What is that saying…col…damage…can’t think of the word. Regarding any kind of technology…garbage in garbage out.
Exactly…..if this were happening in say Germany…the world would be outraged but since we are so afraid of terrorists we allow this to continue unabated….