It’s expanded a bit beyond that now. They’re using franchising marketing techniques.
I think the major reason some people support the drone strikes is that theoretically the drone strikes could work, if they were accurate, and the data available to the public is just not sufficient to analyze the issue competently.
Without good data, we large rely on trust. And because of Obama’s other positions, and reputation, it seems to many that we could trust him not to kill indiscriminately. In fact, the attempting labeling of Obama as a Muslim by the far right probably makes him seem even less likely to kill Muslims indiscriminately.
In short, only Nixon could go to China.
(I have been convinced not to support the drone strikes, largely because of the lack of good data itself. Not drone striking should be the default.)
i did link you to it, and directly quoted it twice now.
it is a very common tactic of yours to try to shovel off the actual issue of a debate and get people tangled in your nitpicking of some minor fact, wording, or details.
i linked you, and i quoted, and you clearly are not opening them and reading them or actually looking around for this stuff.
so, i repeat the quote here and i won’t let you make it an issue any longer:
i don’t know how to be any more clear than that direct quotation. i’m sure you’ll find some bullshit thing to nitpick about it, but that’s because of your tactics. now, if you want to start differentiating between “leaders” and “militants,” great! all you have have to do is explain the criteria for distinction. otherwise i think we should keep going as i have and consider the two types of people being killed either “militants” or “civilians.”
and you are deliberately avoiding the Yemen issue. Pakistan is actually very cooperative, and so is Yemen. we have trained antiterrorism groups in these places under our thumb set up and put in place to go in and arrest and deal with these “militants” in ways that avoid blowing up the rest of a neighborhood. you are as well as XT creating this strawman where we “have no other option.”
if you’ll go back through and read, there are cases where we knew where people were in Yemen and had local forces ready to go get them, without incident, but decided to drone strike them anyway and ended up killing civilians.
you are also neglecting the white paper memos, that say drone striking is ok so long as putting any men on the ground in those places posed any sort of danger. it is very ambiguous and vague, and as you might realize, visiting the border of Pakistan and really a lot of the Middle easy is fairly dangerous in general, so by wording it the way they have, drone striking remains outside policy and regulation because “any danger” is too much danger for men to go in.
i really feel it prudent to re-clarify the major issue here:
the CIA is using this drone stuff in a deliberate way to circumvent normal military action and due process. and i do not mean “normal military action like avoiding getting Johnny America killed by an IED by being there.” i mean military action like MILITARY drone strikes. i mean military action with oversight and committees and clear policy and rules. they are using this BECAUSE there are no rules and BECAUSE Holder and Brennan have control to create and cash in kill lists and it all falls outside normal law.
the UN is looking into this stuff as potential war crimes. as i understand it, the reason the CIA is doing it and not the Pentagon is to be sure to skirt normal regulations of war and governance.
as much as i hoped it wouldn’t have to be stated so overtly, you’re right. no one is really upset about drones as a utility device. it’s not like we don’t like the drones in and of themselves. if they worked how they claimed to work and really killed only the bad guys–or hell, mostly bad guys with some low, tolerable level of collateral damage, then word.
actually for a long time i heard about this and blew it off as conspiracy nuttery.
i did what you said: i trusted Obama, because based on his other policies, he seemed like he’d probably make the right decision, here.
but with swinging data showing either 90%-20% civilians being hit in these strikes and a lack of public statement by the administration, it’s rather impossible not to see the whole thing as clandestine means to assassinate people without much regulation or transparency.
if conclusive data comes out that we are hitting more actual targets than not, ok, keep on it. if conclusive data comes out about how the define these militants and they are actual enemies of the state, ok. keep it up. but as it stands, there’s way too much data suggesting it’s a free-for-all.
No, you did not “directly quote it”. You quoted Wikipedia, which misrepresented the numbers. Let’s go directly to the source:
http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2009/07/14-targeted-killings-byman
By some accounts, U.S. drone activity in Pakistan has killed dozens of lower-ranking and at least 10 mid- and high-ranking leaders from al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Do you see the “mid- and high-ranking leaders” there? I even highlighted it for you. So, no, it is not “civilians to militants” ratio that the guy is claiming. It is “civilians to leaders”. And even that is a lie because it ignores non-leader militants killed, counting them as “civilians”.
Do you even understand the difference? Do you think it is required of the drones that EVERY militant killed is a "mid- or high-ranking leader? Or a leader at all? Why is it a problem killing non-“leader” militants with the drones?
yeah Terr–TEN TOTAL. TEN. IN TOTAL. you’re really grabbing the stat that ONLY ten “leaders” in TOTAL have been killed…? because that makes the ratio of civilians-to-leaders way worst than 10 to 1.
then he goes on to say:
from the same article, in the first paragraph:
he seems to be using these terms interchangeably. since he literally says exactly the term “militants,” will you please explain to me the rules for distinction?
no. i do not understand the difference. please explain to me the criteria for defining someone as “mid or high ranking” vs just a militant at all, as per CIA determination of such things.
heck, give me even Brooking’s definition. tell me how you clarify the distinction.
600 reported civilians he is discussing against dozens of over-all militants in sum total makes it the 10-to-1 he discussed.
seizing on only the “leader” stat would actually makes the ratio 60-civilians dead to each 1 “leader” target.
so to repeat: i have been considering the stats to represent “militants” and “civilians,” as he **verbatim **is doing as well to establish such statements.
as pointed out, Obama has defined “militants” as “any male of military age in a combat zone,” so you’re getting the statistic large end of the bargain. and the stats still don’t bode well for the efficacy.
Sigh. You’re insisting in misrepresenting his article. According to him, 10 mid- and high-level leaders. “Dozens” of low-level “leaders”. Thus, together, 60 or so “leaders”. From that he gets his 10-to-1 ratio. Of “leaders” to “civilians”. Now, let’s say a “low-level leader” has 5-6 of his guys with him (hell, in the military even a squad leader has at least that many subordinates). There goes your 10-to-1 silliness.
A platoon or a squad leader vs. a grunt.
Look, your own source, a virulently anti-drone web site, that you quoted, on its front page, shows that the percentage of militants killed is 70% to 80%. Apparently you don’t believe your own sources.
no sir, you picked this rabbit trail of a nitpick because i said “10-to-1 militants to civilian deaths.” you said “show where anyone said that or admit you fibbed.”
i quote directly, again, Terr:
…what’s it say, Terr, in exact english words–the exact verbatim thing i said that you insisted i made up?
no one made it up. they just repeated it word-for-exact-word.
i wonder what the point of his article was?
**
**
…his first sentence says, in bold.
now, Terr–what was my point of the 10-to-1 comment?
…do you think it was to illustrate how ineffectual this drone program seems to be?
yes, terr. that is why.
so me and the author both use the exact same english words to make the exact same english point.
you wanted to go off on this nitpick.
tell me one more time, terr–was it fibbed or was it exactly word for word what the guy said–for the exact same reason, to make the exact same point…?
i just want to be sure you’re satisfied on your nitpick.
and when that is satisfied, tell me about these platoons and squadrons of terrorists.
where are you pulling data that there exists platoons and squadrons of organized terrorist with singular platoon leaders?
you just made that up from movies you saw and pretend that’s what’s going on. cite something backing up this claim.
You quote directly a falsehood. He switches, midstream, from “leaders” to “militants”. Apparently he thinks his readers are too stupid to notice. Well, some are.
Let me type it slowly so you may understand. The moron whose article you quoted tries to pretend that all these leaders just hang out by themselves. There are no non-leaders in their terrorist organizations. Everyone is a “leader”. So if 60 “leaders” are killed by the drones, the other 540 people killed MUST have been civilians. Because, of course, other than “leaders” there are no other militants. Right?
Just how stupid do you have to be to believe that?
no, TERR. the point is the only people considered significant enough for CIA-justified drone-killing are “high level” leader-type targets. CIA justifies it by saying they are going after HIGH VALUE TARGETS.
you have no basis in what you are saying that is founded in reality. you are assuming it. HE is collating data from families of the dead, DIRECTLY.
so no foot soldiers or goons should be targeted. so again, why do you insist on differentiation between “leader” targets or “militants?” by the nature of what we are doing, only high value targets should be killed in this way.
it’s gone from saying civilians and family had to die because these people are in their homes, hiding out, to you pretending in your heard they are in their secret lair surrounded by goons who are the other dead people.
which one is it? and give me any information to support the claim you are making that these other people are their underlings or minions. show me where anyone is claiming to take out a 600-throng horde of bad guys in some major strike. all of these are individual targets or very small groups. read up on it. you act like they have some base and we hit it.
like i said before, it’s just militants or civilians. and like i said before, the quote is exactly 10 to 1. and like my point the whole time: it doesn’t seem very effectual, not by any of the stats, not enough to leverage that kind of collateral damage and make it justified.
so since this is the quagmire way you like to debate, and since i proved the quote was exact and direct, what point do you have for the nitpick?
so to kick the dead horse: he uses the terms interchangeably because they simply mean the same thing.
And they do. What you’re pretending is that those “HIGH VALUE TARGETS” do not have ANY grunt-level militants around them, and EVERYONE that is killed next to them is a “civilian”. Which is absurd, and you know it. But you keep insisting on that stupidity.
what’s so ironic about you is if it’s Benghazi, the CIA and the president is a clusterfuckup of incompetence. if it’s killing brown folk you don’t like, they have pin-point precision, extremely precise intelligence and only kill only the worse people around.
you have extremely selective ideological stances that step all over each other in order to support your political dogmas.
i’m fairly certain what you actual think is dying by a US missile means you deserved it in some way.
but i am very glad to see your faith in our president is restored…apparently.
i’m not pretending anything–i’m simply going off of what is reported.
if you have something specifically contradictory to cite, feel free.
we have cited people’s names and families and stories. there are tons of various outlets reporting on such things.
meanwhile the CIA will not divulge any stats or hard numbers.
so what is happening is people like me hear the actual families of dead people tell their story and i lend it some credence.
people like you ignore their story, pretend they are badguys, and in spite of no data from the government, presume not just that they are running a highly effectual and clean campaign, but have a kind of clear vision and competence you’ll turn right around and swear they lack next time it suits your dogmatic position.
[QUOTE=dontbesojumpy]
it is fairly obvious you have not been reading the posts in this thread. i will still address this all directly again, but FYI everything i’m about to answer here i have already said two or three times already.
as for the stats, i already posted them:
[/QUOTE]
To me, it’s fairly obvious that you are being disingenuous and aren’t debating in good faith, shifting the goal posts constantly. Let’s look at your ‘stats’.
From your link to Huffpo (a site you have to admit is not exactly unbiased on this issue, yet you toss out as if it’s the final word):
So, the thrust of this article doesn’t demonstrate the ridiculous ratio you are claiming…it’s basically saying that we are killing mostly rank and file soldiers, though acknowledged we get high ranking terrorists and militants from time to time:
My own point is that they do less harm, which the author here seems to agree with (thanks for providing this cite btw…very helpful to my side of the argument :p):
Note, also, that here the author of YOUR article is saying that the range of non-combatant deaths is 10-26 percent…which is a bit different than you were claiming, wouldn’t you say?
Quickly looking at your other (obviously biased) site, we see this:
Even assuming these figures are correct, my back of the envelop calculation shows that we are talking about no more than 25% ‘Civilians reported killed’, and my guess is that many of the ‘civilians’ reported here were simply grunt soldiers being misreported for a variety of reasons. Even if we are talking about 100% accuracy here, however, your cite does not demonstrate what you claim it does. You are misrepresenting it and overstating your case by doing so. Looking at the other figures, they are all similar (in fact, in almost all the others the percentage goes down quite a bit).
Sorry, I don’t see a NYT article linked by Kinthalis. I see one from I Made French Toast For You, which would be great right now as I’m starving. However, skimming it I don’t see anything that backs up what you are saying. In fact, it seems to be quite the opposite (mostly it’s a human interest type piece, light on facts and heavy on tears):
So, like the HuffPo article, the authors main beef here is that we are basically targeting mainly low level grunts (probably because we see them a lot more and they are easier to target…see a bunch of guys with AK’s and RPG’s moping about in a truck somewhere they shouldn’t be an it’s pretty easy to figure out they aren’t a boy scout group). They aren’t, however, backing up your own assertions, sadly. Or, if they are, you need to do your own freaking research and start quoting from your own links the things you see that you feel are backing you up, because this is the LAST wild goose chase ‘go look at this link and figure out where it says what I say it says’ exercise.
Is straw on sale this week? I never said we’d be occupying those areas. Have you ever heard of this now thing called an ‘air craft carrier’ or ‘and air plane’? We also have these things, used quite often in the past called ‘cruise missiles’. Ever heard of a SEAL or other special forces spotter team? I know that most people in the public are unaware of them, but they are out there and they have been used quite often before and even after drones happened to come along. You should look them up some time.
Ah…and you can demonstrate this how, exactly? We never took ‘actual military action’ against any country or group before we had drones? I’m sure there would be a lot of surprised people if you could historically demonstrate that. Feel free.
No? Ask the Libyan’s if Reagan ever use more conventional means to attack into a sovereign nation that don’t involve drones. You might be surprised by all of the historical examples of the US doing this if we felt it necessary. You might want to do some of your own research on the various plans to whack ObL BEFORE 9/11, and what we would have done if we had confirmation he was in a specific place, even if there were civilians around.
Horseshit. Do you have a cite demonstrating that it’s the CIA, solely, who is providing these drone strikes, and that they are doing it without oversight and ‘unilaterally’?? Please provide a link AND a quote backing up your claim.
Again, cite, quote, thanks in advance.
:dubious:
Do you understand what a ‘strawman’ argument is? I ask, because you don’t seem too, and instead are going off on a tangent here about anecdotal impressions you are getting from the news you are watching, which really has nothing to do with the point I was making.
I’m sorry, but there is no point even addressing this ridiculous analogy. You build a strawman, then try and create an analogy to go along with it between a guy that went crazy and shot a bunch of kids to an air strike that inadvertently missed it’s target and accidentally killed some kids. There is no comparison between the two things, except that both are tragedies.
It means ‘such is life’. And yes, it is. People die every day. Most of them are tragedies. Can you do anything about it? No. Many more kids die in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Yemen, Somalia do to disease, malnutrition and myriad other things than die in drone strikes. Doesn’t make either more or less tragic. You can claim that we wouldn’t be fighting there if we didn’t have drones, but the reality is that we are, at this point in history, committed to fighting terrorists over in their backyards instead of in our own. You can debate whether this is a good idea or not, but the reality is that we are there, and we are fighting, and I don’t see that as winding down any time soon. And as long as this fact remains, innocents are going to die. It’s a fact of life and it’s reality, no matter how much you try and handwave it away or appeal to emotion.
We are at ‘war’ with terrorists. Have you noticed that no formal declaration of ‘war’ has been given for ANY of the nations we are fighting in? Pakistan, where a large number of people have been killed (more than Somalia and Yemen combined) is actually a quasi-ally. So, your ridiculous attempt to twist my words really just makes you look, again, pretty silly. If we are launching missiles, if we are shooting guns, those are ‘war’ like acts. And we are at ‘war’ with the terrorists and militants in all of those countries, since that’s where a lot of them are hiding out, under the skirts and shields of the local population.
I love the ‘ever brown-people country not near me’ line you keep trotting out here. It has nothing to do with ‘brown-people’, nor does it have anything to do with Islam, per se…it has to do with people who are terrorists and who have demonstrated pretty conclusively that if given the chance they will attack us, our allies or our interests either here or abroad. Those are the people we are at ‘war’ with, and we are fighting them where they are. Again, if you want to debate the wisdom of this, that’s one thing, but you are trying to pull in all sorts of misdirection and horseshit to shift the goal posts and muddy the waters instead of actually addressing the question you ACTUALLY asked in your OP.
Perhaps you should read them instead, and then actually quote the relevant parts. See, I did read them, and they don’t say what you say they say, by and large, and I’m not going to play this game again. If you have something specific you feel backs up one of your statements or assertions, feel free to QUOTE THE FUCKING THING…don’t simply direct me to read an article and try and figure out what supposed data makes your vague and often ridiculous case for you.
Horseshit. Even your own cites don’t demonstrate this. Look at the total number of attacks via drone in your Bureau of Investigative Journal cite (again, clearly not an unbiased site here). In the country with the MOST drone strikes, we are talking a 'Total US strikes: 364 ’ in the 2003-2013 time period. Seriously man, read your own fucking cites and then try and absorb what they are saying before making completely off the wall and ridiculous statements such as this one I’m quoting here. 364 total strikes in 10 years is ‘an overly used method that we just won’t do junk like subdue and process people’??
Lol, you just make up yet another strawman. Straw must be on sale. I never said we were at war with any nation. But, feel free to quote me doing so and win a big prize. I’ve merely pointed out reality…and the reality is we ARE over there and we ARE fighting. You can and have repeatedly tried to handwave this seemingly solid fact away, while spinning your own fantasy that we’d be over there but not doing anything if we didn’t have the evil drones available (since, you know, we’ve had the massive 364 strikes in 10 years!!), but this is your own disconnect from the real world. I’m just the messenger, pointing this out to you…well, probably not to you, since I doubt you will get any of this, but perhaps some lurker will take note. Hope springs eternal after all.
This war:
Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists
September 14, 2001.
Bolding mine.
Indeed. I said it before but I’ll say it again, drone strikes in general aren’t the problem, this “war” and the way it is prosecuted is.
[QUOTE=Condescending Robot]
Basically, we have a low-ideas, touchy-feely president, who encourages personal loyalty to the emotions he inspires rather than moral reasoning, so Obama voters support the drone murder policy because they have no frame of ethical reference outside of “Obama said it, I believe it, that settles it.”
[/QUOTE]
I know a lot of Obama voters and not a single person has supported his human rights abuses in support of this “war”. Dick Cheney just said it was a “good policy” though.
He’s made some good strides re: gay rights and the economy, but in a lot of ways, Obama is just “Bush III”, unfortunately.
I disagree. Al-Qaeda was a worldwide network with cells. Capable of:
USA - Bombing the the World Trade Center; 6 killed, injury 1,000
Kenya - Bombing US Embassy; many killed and injured
Tanzania - Bombing US Embassy; many killed and injured
Yemen - Bombed a US Naval Destroyer; 17 sailors killed, double injured
USA - Commercial planes into both WTC’s, Pentagon, field; thousands killed
UK - subway/bus bombing; 50ish dead; hundreds injured
Afghanistan - suicide bombing; 7 CIA agents killed, and a cousin to the King of Jordan.
That’s major attacks on our biggest city, US Embassies, Dept of Defense HQ, a Navy Destroyer, and a CIA base. That’s sophisticated stuff. There are dozens more and there’s also foiled/screwed up attacks (millennium, another US Naval vessel, ect.) . There’s no denying the attacks and dead bodies happened.
Al Qaeda owned a cargo plane to ferry people/supplies around (pre-USS Cole). Al Qaeda was set up with safe houses, finance groups, scouts, bomb makers, front businesses/charities to funnel money, and suicide grunts to carry out attacks. All able to contact with another.
So then it’s a matter of are the attacks unrelated (as I’m guessing you believe), or coordinated by the Al Qaeda network.
Sources
While there are countless books detailing the Al Qaeda network. The two I’ve found the most unbiased and informative are (1) the 9/11 Commission Report and (2) The Black Banners by Ali Soufan (former FBI Agent with a genius level of knowledge re: Al Qaeda). I can provide cites from those sources if you want them (but not quickly).
But “the Al Qaeda network” is just anyone who reads the Quran before they go blow something up. They then become “Al Qaeda” because both the U.S. and bin Laden benefitted from that narrative. Did any of these people in Mali, etc, have any connection to the rest of the so-called “network” before the incidents? Were they instructed, trained, supplied, or given targets by them, or is “All Qaeda” just a magic word for “anyone who commits violence in the name of Islam” which has now been expanded to “anyone who gets hit by an American bomb”? You list things that happened from 1993 to 2001, most of which were directly organized by Bin Laden and his cave buddies. Suspiciously absent is any verification for the Bush/Obama comic book conception of the world–that “Al Qaeda” is a quasi-military organization that gives orders to chapters in dozens of countries, and that groups “Al Qaeda in Iraq” or “Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula” have anything whatsoever to do with the people who carried out 9/11 beyond realizing that they can get on the news if they use the magic name.
This is easily the most absurd claim made yet in a thread that is always chock-full of them. NO Obama voters support Obama’s foreign policy? What?