Reps. Walter Jones (R – NC) and Adam Schiff (D – CA) have co-sponsored a new bill, the Targeted Lethal Force Transparency Act, which aims to require the Obama Administration to issue annual reports on the use of drone strikes, including a figure of how many civilians they killed in those attacks.
Though President Obama has repeatedly promised “overhauls” and transparency measures on the drone programs, Congress remains more or less in the dark about who is being killed and why, with Rep. Jones saying this move would be the first step toward serious oversight of the drone program.
Ignorance may well be bliss, however, and the two face an uphill battle, with Council on Foreign Relations official Micah Zenko saying he doesn’t say any way the bill passes, adding “these are CIA operations that are covert by definition.”
Rep. Schiff noted the drone strikes are only “classified” because the president makes them so, and insisted the reports from the bill wouldn’t require any identification of who is doing the drone strikes or any specifics on individual incidents, but rather just seeks raw counts of who was killed every year.
The bill also explicitly rules out drone strikes used in ongoing wars, so the administration wouldn’t need to include drone strikes in Afghanistan itself, just those in nations the US isn’t currently engaged in official military operations against.
Finding it hard to imagine what's secret that aint criminal –at least i.t.o. who's actually killed. Fact is, their preferred mode of influence on the narrative is just not lending the facts the weight of official confession. Believe them, not your lying eyes.
Remember that e.g. "returning to the fight" or GTMO "recidivism" sometimes meant talking about the US. ( http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/12/05/proces… "Tipton Three… …When we finally asked for clarification they said …'by making statements that were adverse to the United States' …that's a form of asymmetric warfare so therefore they had been deemed to have returned to the battlefield." ) …and whatever other criteria inflated "recidivism" to the point of making GTMO appear credible if only to people not paying attention. Propaganda is everything to these people.
Finding it hard to imagine what's secret that aint criminal –at least i.t.o. who's actually killed. Fact is, their preferred mode of influence on the narrative is just not lending the facts the weight of official confession. Believe them, not your lying eyes.
Remember that e.g. "returning to the fight" or GTMO "recidivism" sometimes meant talking about the US. ( http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/12/05/proces… "Tipton Three… …When we finally asked for clarification they said …'by making statements that were adverse to the United States' …that's a form of asymmetric warfare so therefore they had been deemed to have returned to the battlefield." ) …and whatever other criteria inflated "recidivism" to the point of making GTMO appear credible if only to people not paying attention. Propaganda is everything to these people.
Grainy images display a young Afghan shepherd boy carrying a staff as he tends sheep. To some who monitor the imagery…he appears to be carrying a rifle as they are approximately the same length. Verdict? Shoot at him via Drone. The answer as to who drones are killing should be obvious…mostly civilians. Drones have eroded relations between Pakistan and the US. Relations between Afghanistan will never be a fruitful partner for the U.S. so long as we continue to kill the common-folk with drones. Pakistan as well as Afghanistan has complained of heavy casualties via drone.
This is the same argument that President Bush used about torture. We need more transparency. It is clear that presidency/CIA cannot be trusted to make good decisions without it.
This is the same argument that President Bush used about torture. We need more transparency. It is clear that presidency/CIA cannot be trusted to make good decisions without it.
'The bill also explicitly rules out drone strikes used in ongoing wars, so the administration wouldn’t need to include drone strikes in Afghanistan itself, just those in nations the US isn’t currently engaged in official military operations against.'
In other words, the bill has no teeth, as the president will simply say we are at war everywhere we are dropping drone missiles.
And remember, the Authorization to use force in Afghanistan was a very broad document that's been used to justify every war Dubya-bama has wanted to launch around the world., as well as domestic police actions, surveillance and detentions. And of course, we've heard an awful lot of the "whole world's a battlefield" rhetoric justifying all sorts of actions for over a decade of the Dubya-bama Terror Wars.
So yeah, I suspect you are right.
Drones are killing dirt-poor, brown-skinned people in parts of the world most Americans will never visit, cannot find on a map and probably cannot pronounce correctly without some talking head telling them how it's done. Nor can they adequately fight back or get revenge for what was done to them. (You would never see the US droning "suspected terrorists" in China or Russia)
I don't believe for one second the phony concern and hand-wringing coming from the halls of power.
Is Obama using drones to further the goals of the CFR?
That we need to BEG to stop the killing and murder of innocent people is so far from any moral code in a civilised world. How can these arrogant warmongers continually justify, and even sleep at night, killing or maiming a child? A mother? An uncle? A friend? We just have to gasp at the personal fortunes acquired by the Bushes, the Obongos, the Pelosis, the Feinsteins, the Pearls, the Wolfowitz, the Cheneys, the Blairs to understand that warmongering is a very profitable business if you can cloak it in sheeps clothing. I am very sad that Americans still accept this decades long script by the masters of the helm, zio-neocons, who are close to destroying the entire planet.