3 Reasons U.S. Drone Policy is Really Freakin' Scary

[Warph]

"...no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation's security goals.
The rapid expansion of the drone program has blurred long-standing boundaries between the CIA and the military. Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of lethal force."
....The Washington Post


Both Republican and Democrat are on board with predator drone strikes even on American citizens.  Don't tell me they cannot or will never happen on American soil.  I know... I have seen one here in AZ.  Where theres one... there are many.

Charlottesville, Virginia has voted to ban drones from the city skies and rightly so.  It is not a far leap from spying on citizens to obliterating them in the streets at will because they are deemed to be a problem by someone somewhere.

What the hell has happened to America?  It is unrecognizable anymore.  The new generations are unbelievable predatory and somewhat evil.  It breaks my heart to see what is happening.

This article below on drone strikes is interesting.  The video is a must see.  Republican/Democrat have become two sides of one worthless political coin.  The republic is being replaced by something very different... very scary.
...Warph


3 Reasons U.S. Drone Policy is Really Freakin' Scary

Oct 31, 2012

President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney may not agree on much, but they're both totally into the use of unmanned aircraft known as drones to hunt down and kill real and imagined threats to the American way of life.

Whenever you've got top Democrats and top Republicans getting along, you know something has gone horribly wrong.

Here are three reasons why drone strikes are really freaking scary.

1. They're not that accurate.
One of the main selling points of drone strikes is their supposedly surgical precision. Rather than carpet-bombing entire city blocks to nail one or two bad guys, now we can just zap them without harming anyone else.

But a new study from researchers at NYU and Stanford concludes that as many 881 civilians - including 176 children - have been killed by US drone strikes in northern Pakistan since 2004. Worse still are reports that targets get blasted repeatedly, to ward off rescuers from helping the wounded.

2. There's no legal framework.

Drone strikes have been carried out in countries with whom we're allies or against whom we've yet to declare war. They are the principal way in which President Obama's infamous "kill list" is made operational and yet nobody knows how such decisions are being made. As The New York Times said earlier this year, "a unilateral campaign of death is untenable."

Not only is such a campaign immoral on its face, it only damages America's standing in the world.

3. It's only going to get worse.

The Federal Aviation Administration estimates that in 20 years, as many as 30,000 drones could be filling the skies over America, doing everything from promoting local restaurants to executing warrantless snooping for local, state, and federal cops. That includes "nano drones," that will the size of a small flying insect. As it stands, the taxpaying public has basically zero information on how many drones are being used by which parts of government.

That's led the ACLU to file a series of Freedom of Information Act requests to find out more about the technical capabilities of drones and what parts of government are already up there in the wild blue yonder.

We need to force the government to be transparent on drones long before the machines start blotting out the sun.

Watch the video... about 2.30 minutes. Produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie, who also narrates.

               

Go to http://reason.com/reasontv/2012/10/31/3-reasons-us-drone-policy-is-really-frea for links to the claims made in the video and for downloadable versions.

[Patriot]

And all the liberals and 'moderates' said, "Nothing to see here.  The powers that be are just trying to keep us safe."

Yeah... Bullspit.

[Teresa]

Agreed!!

[Diane Amberg]

Pat, I dare ya to ask me!

[Warph]

Air Force erases drone strike data amid criticisms
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/03/08/air_force_erases_drone_strike_data_amid_criticism



Quietly and without much notice, the Air Force has reversed its policy of publishing statistics on drone strikes in Afghanistan as the debate about drone warfare hits a fever pitch in Washington. In addition, it has erased previously published drone strike statistics from its website.

Since October, the Air Force had been providing monthly updates on drone strikes -- or in its words "weapons releases from remotely piloted aircraft (RPA)." But today, Air Force Times reporters Brian Everstine and Aaron Mehta discovered something was amiss: The statistics published for February "contained empty space where the box of RPA statistics had previously been." In other words: The drone strike data was gone. But that's not all. The Air Force had also scrubbed drone strike data from earlier monthly reports. In the graphic below, we've provided a before and after of the Air Force reports: