allentown wrote:

pacino wrote:actual scandal:

A review of classified US intelligence records has revealed that the CIA could not confirm the identity of about a quarter of the people killed by drone strikes in Pakistan during a period spanning from 2010 to 2011.

According to a purportedly exclusive report by NBC News that mirrors findings of an April analysis by McClatchy, between September 3, 2010 and October 30, 2011 the agency’s drone program over Pakistan routinely designated those killed as “other militants,” a label used when the CIA could not determine affiliation, if any.

The review by NBC News paints both a confusing and troubling picture of the CIA’s reported drone strike success, which three former Obama administration officials feared could have missed or simply ignored mistakes.

Of the 14 months worth of classified documents reviewed, 26 out of 114 attacks designate fatalities as “other militants,” while in four other attacks those killed are only described as “foreign fighters.”

Even more irregular are the cases when entry records conflict on the number of those killed, with one such example indicating a drone attack had killed seven to 10 combatants, and another estimating 20 to 22 fatalities.

By comparison, McClatchy’s April review of drone strikes revealed that at least 265 of up to 482 people that the CIA killed during a 12-month period ending in September 2011 were not senior al-Qaeda leaders, but were instead “assessed” as Afghan, Pakistani and “unknown extremists.” Corroborating media accounts show that US drones killed only six top al-Qaeda leaders during the same period.

One key term in analyzing drone strike records are what are known as “signature” strikes, when drones kill suspects based on behavior patterns but without positive identification, versus “personality” strike, which is when drone targets are known terrorist affiliates whose identities are verified.

Sorry, this is not a scandal. In WWI, WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam the US could not confirm the identity of a heck of a lot more than a quarter of the people killed in bombing raids and infantry operations. In a war you don't need to know who you are killing, you just need to know they are the enemy. And, even when you scrupulously try to shoot at only the enemy, some civilians will be killed. This is especially so in wars like Aghanistan and Viet Nam where the baddies like to hide out among civilians for safety. Now, you can say if you can't always be 100% sure that the baddies aren't hiding with civilians, then you can't fire. But you can't fight and win a war like this. If that's the choice then you really shouldn't fight the war in the first place. I'm all in for saying we really should not have fought the Viet Nam war and Iraq II and that we should have ended Afghanistan years ago, but we as a nation, or at least the President and Congress, decided to fight these wars. To me, it is inane and hypocritical to expect that a war will be conducted in a wholly antiseptic manner, with 25% not positively identified victims being somehow unacceptable. If this is unacceptable, then the solution is to never fight a war. It is the liberal equivalent of Bush and Lyndon Johnson pretending that the nation wasn't really at war, asking no sacrifice of the general populace, deciding that we could have guns and butter, and just telling people to do their part by shopping.

the above is not a war. you cannot go to war with terrorism. we are at 'war' with pakistan and yemen, but not really. you also cant go to war with the CIA. i dont see how you dont see this distinction. it's also not the 'liberal equivalent' of anything.

It clearly is a war. GWB said War on Terror, but it's a war on Al Qaeda, AQ-spinoffs, the Taliban, and Pakistani fundamentalist militant militias who have sided with AQ/Taliban and conducted raids on our forces in Afghanistan. You can go to war partly with the CIA, its predecessor the OSS played a significant role in WWII, doing much the equivalent with the technology of the time in Nazi occupied France, etc. The military is clearly also involved in this very real war. Just because enemy combatants don't wear uniforms and fight in big organized groups does not make them 'alledged criminals' subject to due process rights, rather than soldiers subject to the law of war. It's like saying if you are a war criminal and don't follow the laws of war, we reward you with extra legal rights. Liberals have pushed this warped view, both in the case of the drones and in Israeli actions against Palestinian militant warriors. I understand that you don't like this war. That is your right. A lot of our recent wars have been unwise and totally unlikeable. Still, the moral judgement that you have to positively ID 100% of the enemy whom you kill is ludicrous and no war in history would come close to meeting this standard. By the way we have conducted past wars, notably even the 'good' wars like WWII and the stopping of the genocide in the former Yugoslavia, the % of unidentified dead and accidentally killed civilians, were much higher. In the 'good war' that was WWII, we deliberately set out to kill civilians, actually to kill lots and lots of civilians. The action is Afghanistan really is lily white antiseptic compared to any other war you might care to mention. It is fine to be totally anti-war. I find most wars to be bloody, wasteful nonsense, which causes far more harm than the good they provide, but that is a question about the wisdom of initiating any war, not the morality of the methods/technology used.

how are they supposed to know "they're the enemy" if they don't know who they are?

i accept your "don't fight the war" terms

Yeah because civilian casualties from errant drone strikes don't matter. Hey random villager and your family, it's your fault you were birn in Pakistan and got in the way of our drone strike. Murica!

You do see how this is a problem right? You will never defeat terrorism, it's absolutely impossible because there will always be groups of irrational people warped by religion who are ready to sacrifice their lives for a cause. So um maybe we should try and mitigate root causes for growing extremist cells in the Middle East. Here's an idea! Don't drone innocent villagers. It's really no wonder we aren't winning the battle for the hearts and minds of these people, but fuck it were America and we don't need to question anything.

You can't argue with someone who buys into the idea that a drone strike in Pakistan is a war. (Nevermind that if it's a war, then it's a fucking war crime.)

That being said, can you at least admit that classifying unknown persons as "other militants" is terrifyingly Orwellian?

Barry Jive wrote:how are they supposed to know "they're the enemy" if they don't know who they are?

i accept your "don't fight the war" terms

Because they watch them carry guns, plant bombs, and/or travel/live with groups of guys we know are enemies. If you see a guy burying an IED or guarding a Taliban/AQ compound, you don't have to know his name to know he's an enemy. Just like you didn't need to know that the guy driving the Panzer was Hans from Stuttgart to know he was a Nazi soldier and you were permitted to kill him. You saw the tank, no idea who was inside it. Could have been some chick from Berlin doing her bit for the fatherland. Some have adopted this 'criminal justice' mentality that we need to know who each enemy is and what crime he has committed, try to capture and try him. Not so. Your typical enemy combatant has committed no crime at all. Just patriotically following orders like our volunteer soldiers do. It is only a crime if you violate the laws of war. The only legal distinction this makes is that if you are captured, you have to be released at the end of hostilities if you are just a normal non-criminal soldier, while if you committed a war crime you can be hung or jailed forever, as many Nazi leaders were. To say 'we don't even know the identities of a quarter of the people our drones have killed' is just an ignorant, inane complaint. Honestly, I'm stunned that we know who 3/4 of these guys are. That shows an astonishing level of control, caution, and avoidance of killing innocents or doubtfuls.

You're assuming that no civilian deaths are included in that blanket classification. Based on this administration's track record, that's an incredibly naive assumption.

Roger Dorn wrote:Yeah because civilian casualties from errant drone strikes don't matter. Hey random villager and your family, it's your fault you were birn in Pakistan and got in the way of our drone strike. Murica!

You do see how this is a problem right? You will never defeat terrorism, it's absolutely impossible because there will always be groups of irrational people warped by religion who are ready to sacrifice their lives for a cause. So um maybe we should try and mitigate root causes for growing extremist cells in the Middle East. Here's an idea! Don't drone innocent villagers. It's really no wonder we aren't winning the battle for the hearts and minds of these people, but #$!&@ it were America and we don't need to question anything.

Of course civilian casualties matter and every effort should be made to avoid them. You tell me an example of any war when there hasn't been a ton of civilian casualties. In many wars the object of a lot of attacks was to kill and terrorize civilians. This seems clearly to not be the case with the drone strikes. I go back to what I said before, if you can't accept the reality of any civilian casualties, then the only solution is to never fight any wars.

Syria Has Used Chemical Arms on Rebels, U.S. and Allies Find

Kelly O'Donnell ‏@KellyO
BREAKING: .@SenJohnMcCain just said WH will announce aid to Syrian rebels and that Asaad has used chemical weapons

Edit: And now that's not true, but it seems like it might be close to being true

Youve been reading too much clash of civilizations. A 'war' of ideas is not a goddamn war. Killing us citizens without going through courts is an illegal action. Assuming someone is a militant because they were killed is orwellian at its finest. I mean, come on.

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:You're assuming that no civilian deaths are included in that blanket classification. Based on this administration's track record, that's an incredibly naive assumption.

look, man, wars result in unfounded civilian deaths all the time. There's no reason to change that

Also, roger dorn is not a liberal from what ive gathered.

pacino wrote:Youve been reading too much clash of civilizations. A 'war' of ideas is not a goddamn war. Killing us citizens without going through courts is an illegal action. Assuming someone is a militant because they were killed is orwellian at its finest. I mean, come on.

No, this simply is not true. An American citizen who is also an enemy combatant most certainly may lawfully be killed without going through the courts. Courts have so ruled in the past and I think they ill in this case. This is not a war of ideas. A war of ideas is Gorbachev yells 'capitalism stinks, communism is great, and explains why he believes that. This is a case of enemies actually killing Americans. This is a war of bullets, bombs, suicide bombers, IEDs, and yes drones. Drones have been reviled, but they allow for much better sorting of combatants from non combatants than the fighter bombers they replaced. It took an awful lot of bombs being dropped from a bomber to take out a target such as a bridge or a rail line or a couple of tanks passing through a town. I assure you that a lot of civilians were inadvertently killed in such attacks. A drone allows a view of what is on the ground as you attack. A fighter bomber is called in to level a building that somebody on the ground said enemy fire was coming from a half hour ago.

You are talking about military actions. The cia is not part of that, despite what you are saying. I am not worried about srones, but their use.

And this isnt a war, at best it's a policing action.

pacino wrote:You are talking about military actions. The cia is not part of that, despite what you are saying. I am not worried about srones, but their use.
u
And this isnt a war, at best it's a policing action.

What makes it not a war? The CIA also fights in our wars. It's also perfectly lawful for the CIA to kill an enemy combatant. Your logic is it's ok for these guys to plant IEDs, which kill our soldiers and Afghan civilians, but it's not ok to kill them without giving them their day in court. That's silly. They're enemy combatants. They haven't committed a crime, other than skirting the laws of war, to which their organization never signed on, anyway. You fight, recruit the fighters, lead the fighter, you are a legit target.

pacino wrote:Youve been reading too much clash of civilizations. A 'war' of ideas is not a goddamn war. Killing us citizens without going through courts is an illegal action. Assuming someone is a militant because they were killed is orwellian at its finest. I mean, come on.

POSSIBLY AFRICAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANS

that's about all I remember about Clash of Civilizations, even though I had to read it for three different classes

allentown wrote:

pacino wrote:You are talking about military actions. The cia is not part of that, despite what you are saying. I am not worried about srones, but their use.
u
And this isnt a war, at best it's a policing action.

What makes it not a war? The CIA also fights in our wars. It's also perfectly lawful for the CIA to kill an enemy combatant. Your logic is it's ok for these guys to plant IEDs, which kill our soldiers and Afghan civilians, but it's not ok to kill them without giving them their day in court. That's silly. They're enemy combatants. They haven't committed a crime, other than skirting the laws of war, to which their organization never signed on, anyway. You fight, recruit the fighters, lead the fighter, you are a legit target.

no, 'they' never signed up for anything, whoever they is. somehow claiming AUMF for every action we take is pretty weaksauce. i guess you are also fine with Guantanamo Bay being open, being beyond any and all civilian law simply because we believe they may commit actions in the future. also, we dont have enemy combatants anymore.

war

what is is good for

government contracts

allentown wrote:What makes it not a war? The CIA also fights in our wars. It's also perfectly lawful for the CIA to kill an enemy combatant. Your logic is it's ok for these guys to plant IEDs, which kill our soldiers and Afghan civilians, but it's not ok to kill them without giving them their day in court. That's silly. They're enemy combatants. They haven't committed a crime, other than skirting the laws of war, to which their organization never signed on, anyway. You fight, recruit the fighters, lead the fighter, you are a legit target.

if you're attempting to make a case for something other than "hey, it's obvious we're at war all the time, with whomever we happen to say in the moment we're at war with, and that's pretty much ok and it's silly to contend otherwise, but there are laws of war everyone and every participant in war knows and ordinarily abides by", you're not doing it. At all