President Drone, war criminal

What is it cost effective at, killing guys in Pakistan or Yemen who fit some secret protocol that is , or has been, classified.   Cost effective sounds just a bit like body count-style bureaucracy from Vietnam, another program which was entered into with much real thought.

Call it what you will - simply speaking, the way drones have been used is drastically cheaper than the means of waging this "war" we used immediately prior - the full scale land invasion - by pretty much any metric you want to use.

It bothers me that they aren't all self-reported, someone needs to explain to me why they shouldn't  tell us who they hit and why, asnd not more of that "sources and methods " dodge.  Empty words   

Ok, I hope you know I'm not that person, lol. 

I know my language wasn't as clear as it could have been, but are you deliberately misreading my question?  Of course, I don't expect you to be privy to the reasoning, I'm just asking you to explain why you think this information shouldn't be public. 

I believe that's what we call a "strawman," seeing I never said I thought the info shouldn't be public.  Quite the opposite - I've said numerous times that not only would more clarification and transparency on the decision making process be welcome, but so would having every strike reported in full.

To be clear, my main problem with drones is when they are used as weapons for targeted killings.

I have no problem with that aspect of drone usage.  I prefer targeted killings to the indiscriminate variety any day.  Perhaps that's not what you meant.

Second, I don't "know" anything, but in the absence of an acceptable official explanation, I am entitiled to have my own opinions.

Ok... I never said you weren't.  How do you view this as an applicable response to you asking me a question to which you know I don't know the answer, and me pointing that out to you?

I guess you just accept that these people are dangerous to U.S. security .  Personally I would like someone who is defending the program to give me an reasonalble explanation for why the Executive Branch believez we A) need to kill these people 

For the most part, yes, I do accept that.  Perhaps I shouldn't.  But like I've said possibly a dozen times now, yes, more clarity would be appreciated.  But a lack of it isn't going to cause me to be against any and all drone strikes.

Should I say yet again no clue as to why you think I expected you to? I just want you to explain to me why you accept this.cdk  no, we don't kill Mafiosi or cartels without due process.

Was that you purposefully missing my point about cartels and mafias?  I'll assume yes.

No, but  I am pretty smart, and I've been around for a long time and have seen Administrations do a whole lot of stupid, ineffective and basically illegal things, but no one has given me a rational explanation for these programs, I can read legal briefs and the leaked rationale memo was a joke, so I think the whole thing smells like runaway bureaucacy.  You, however, apparently accept the program without need for such explanation.

Or I could just disagree with you on the rationale of the justification.

Yeah, I'm bad with typos.  I think that both sides of the fences have tribal leaders, and from what I have observed, the administration has publicized the death of more Taliban leaders, than Al Qaeda, as well s Pakstani citizens in Pakistan. 

The only citizens in Pakistan that are getting hit are those living with the "Taliban" fighters in the largely lawless region in the mountainous north - at least as far as I'm aware.  But sure, it is the "Taliban" that we are fighting in that area, and they have been hit more than anyone.  Al Qaeda has little presence in and around Afghanistan anymore, or at least that's my understanding.  And really, the groups calling themselves the Taliban at the moment are hardly representative of what it used to be.  They basically only use the term when it suits them.  Doesn't mean they are any less at war with us, however.

Hell, I have a buddy who got back from Afghanistan not too long ago, who was stationed in that Northern region, and their primary target was neither al Qaeda or Taliban - it was Haqqani.

 I also wonder how much better they are at picking targets,all 240-1200 of them,than they were at picking appropriate prisoners to send to Guantanamo.

Well, I'll guess you voted for the guy doing the picking this time around.

I find it hard to belive that the people we are killing, who are currently under constant threat, notwithsatnding the missles, and with such a great turnover have the time or energy to target the United States. 

Maybe, maybe not.  Some of them, assuredly not, I'll give you that.

Well, first I was trying to distinguish the CIA who have or should have, an intelligence miision form the military.  CIA and miltary are different animals, but we have folloishly made the CIA into a paramilitary since 9/11.

I have far less problem with this than you do.

Well, we do have scruples, or do you want to start beheading hostages.

Not sure how this is applicable to drone usage.  Mostly because it's not.

So , you agree with me? or are you just dismissing my comment. 

I agree, for the most part.

Relax people! It's not like Dear Leader is going to order the killing of a 16 year old US Citizen or anything.

Oh wait, he did! My bad.  

Fail.  Again. 

Actually he did, so fail of your attempted fail. Again.

Sorry, sport, OBama ordered the killing of Ibrahim al-Banna.

White Paper, Dark Deeds
Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights

What timing. Just as President Obama's nominee for CIA director, John Brennan, was poised to go before the Senate Intelligence Committee for confirmation, someone leaked a white paper that shows he may be just a tad too trigger-happy for the job.
Currently the president's chief counterterrorism advisor, Brennan has been the lead architect of Obama's controversial targeted killing program, in which he has claimed authority to kill people far from any battlefield and without capture, charge, or trial--indeed, without any judicial oversight whatsoever. The paper... argues that the United States may kill in "self-defense" when the person targeted poses "an imminent threat of violent attack."...

The assertion of national self-defense as a basis for these killings is legally problematic for different reasons, including that "imminence" according to the white paper doesn't mean what the law says it means. Nor, apparently, does it mean what the dictionary says it means. The memo explicitly says that the US can kill its own citizens even if it has no clear evidence that an attack will take place "in the immediate future" in other words, "imminence" doesn't mean imminence.  

[http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02
/08/white-paper-dark-deeds/]

 

Call it what you will - simply speaking, the way drones have been used is drastically cheaper than the means of waging this "war" we used immediately prior - the full scale land invasion - by pretty much any metric you want to use.


I don't believe in waging that war, and I think grounding the drones would be even more cost effective than flying them.  I am all but positve (an yes I think the risk is worth it)  that all of the "senior operational leaders of Al Qaeda and associated organizations" are surveilled and harrassed well enough that they are unable to mount any offensive terrorist attacks that could harm the United States as it is, and the only other metric that concerns me is our reputaion in the world. 


 Ok, I hope you know I'm not that person, lol. 


I just find it odd that you are so incurious about it 


I believe that's what we call a "strawman," seeing I never said I thought the info shouldn't be public.  Quite the opposite - I've said numerous times that not only would more clarification and transparency on the decision making process be welcome, but so would having every strike reported in full.


it's much less a strawman than a rhetorical device intended to  change your "welcoming" attitude into an insisting one.  
  
I have no problem with that aspect of drone usage.  I prefer targeted killings to the indiscriminate variety any day.  Perhaps that's not what you meant.

That drones will be used for targeted killings I take as a given. It is the Bizantine and unceasing design of this program that I find objectionable.    

   Ok... I never said you weren't.  How do you view this as an applicable response to you asking me a question to which you know I don't know the answer, and me pointing that out to you?


Again, another rhetorical device to prod you to defend this program with a little more verve.

For the most part, yes, I do accept that.  Perhaps I shouldn't.  But like I've said possibly a dozen times now, yes, more clarity would be appreciated.  But a lack of it isn't going to cause me to be against any and all drone strikes.


Sorry, but I have a hard time accepting the fact that Taliban and Pakistani tribesmen, and people fighting in the Yemeni desert have the wherewithall to launch a serious attack on this country. lacking that, I see no reason for this program.   


Was that you purposefully missing my point about cartels and mafias?  I'll assume yes

Would you have rather I laughed in print.  I think there are few organizations that don't have heirarchical structures, more or less loose, and it is simply not how we attacked mafiosi.  We prosecuted (not assasinated) every person who presented himself to be prosecuted, be he high or low.  We didn't solely target "senior operational leaders". 



Or I could just disagree with you on the rationale of the justification.


SInce I have read the entire classified "leaked" white paper, and since I am very familiar with legal briefs I can tell you that, as Misterfamous already wrote, the brief is trash.  The legal reasoning is laughable, the precedent non-existent, the terms definitions vague enough to drive a truck through.  But you can always quote some profound point and I will argue it with you.
  
The only citizens in Pakistan that are getting hit are those living with the "Taliban" fighters in the largely lawless region in the mountainous north - at least as far as I'm aware.  But sure, it is the "Taliban" that we are fighting in that area, and they have been hit more than anyone.  Al Qaeda has little presence in and around Afghanistan anymore, or at least that's my understanding.  And really, the groups calling themselves the Taliban at the moment are hardly representative of what it used to be.  They basically only use the term when it suits them.  Doesn't mean they are any less at war with us, however.

Hell, I have a buddy who got back from Afghanistan not too long ago, who was stationed in that Northern region, and their primary target was neither al Qaeda or Taliban - it was Haqqani.


  Exactly, and none of them is a threat to the United States.  What we are doing reminds me of nothing so much as a young boy at Christmas, plahying incessantly with a new toy, I certainly don't for one minute believe that any of the 330 or so (according to these, realtively consciencious people, at least those in Pakistan:


[http://www.longwarjournal.org/pakis
tan-strikes.php]
    

were any serious threat to the United States, especially as they have been surveillled and harrassed enough now.  

Well, I'll guess you voted for the guy doing the picking this time around.


Is that supposed to mean I can't criticize his policies.  Romney would have been more active in this endeavor.   and Barack Obama, when he makes the decision, is presented with information provided by others, who are often the same people who chose who to send to Guantanamo. Same spys, same informants.

Well, I'll guess you voted for the guy doing the picking this time around.


330 operational leaders, Hell that's more operational leaders than we'd target if we were taking on the Chinese People's Army.  

   
I have far less problem with this than you do

Is that because the CIA's paramiltary endeavors have been so successful heretofore--Bay of Pigs , Phoenix Program in Vietnam, Nicaragua, etc. or because you believe in George Orwell's NewSpeak  (it ain't called the Central Paramilitary Organization) or because you believe in duplication of effort and increasing the size of government, or because the CIA is permitted to be highly secretive by law?   

Bureaucratic infighting is a nasty thing.  

Of course, the CIA Director nominee wants to hand the whole program back to the military, anyway.   

Not sure how this is applicable to drone usage.  Mostly because it's not.

Or maybe because you're not able to figure out that vaporizing hundreds of people who really can't be llinked to actual terror attacks on the United States  ( I mean real terrorists) is just a little unethical.  Mostly we are just doing the dirty work for the Pakistani Government you despise so much, while they publically carp about it. and for the Yemenis who are not the most upstanding democracy in the world.    


    I agree, for the most part.      


These programs take on a life of their own and I don't believe you are seeing the very deep dangers involved.  

See, nathan, you could argue that we are in imminent danger of violent attack from these schlubs we're executing.

Last night on Bill Moyers' there was an interview with Nick Turse, author of "Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam." Turse documents how the infamous My Lai massacre was not an isolated incident, and that it was, in fact, a topdown policy of the US government that led to day-to-day atrocities, which occurred with the full knowledge of the US military but were covered up. 

Although in some ways Turse's book and the Moyers' interview can be considered old news, or perhaps merely a confirmation of what has been posted here on this thread that "war is hell," it is the details of what that hell is that makes the difference. Book and interview show that the US government has continually tried to keep the horrific details of the Vietnam war from the American public. It's my opinion this is so because the government fears that if the public learned, even today, the true story of how America waged war in Vietnam, Americans would be less likely to allow their sons and daughters to participate in current US interventions around the world.

Nick Turse's closing comments connect US military interventions past and present :

Nick Turse: I hoping that [the book] will have some bearing on the present. You know, the US is, of course, involved has been involved in constant warfare in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia. There's you know military interventions taking place all over the world, over the last decade plus.

But I don't think that Americans really have a clear picture of those wars. And what they've meant for people overseas, what they've meant to civilians around the world. So I hope that my book might be able to, you know, to add to that conversation, to open America's eyes to what war means for people overseas. And if we're asked to send our brothers and sisters and sons and daughters to war, I think we should have some idea of what it means for the sons and daughters of people overseas. 



http://billmoyers.com/segment/nick-
turse-describes-the-real-vietnam-wa
r/