# Whistleblower releases documents on America's drone campaign **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 15, 2015, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731 "2015-10-15T16:37:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/41 "2015-10-18T01:03:54Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Curiously a NOVA documentary mentioned that those young kids are better for the job, the air force surprisingly found that experienced pilots had more trouble adapting to flying drones. They’re probably less hesitant to pull the trigger, too! ---
**Author:** ![smithsb](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smithsb/32/12107_2.png) [@smithsb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smithsb)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/42 "2015-10-18T05:17:48Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > The people being targeted by drones _aren’t combatants_. When the Doctors Without Borders hospital was hit recently, that was collateral damage in an attack on enemy combatants. Bombing a cafe or a house because you think an enemy of your country is there is not. Incident was not a drone attack. C-130 gunship. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/43 "2015-10-18T10:40:12Z")
> [@smithsb](#): > > Incident was not a drone attack. C-130 gunship. I didn’t say it was. I was talking about targets - enemy combatants vs. non-combatants - not the weapons platforms themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Duality](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.duality/32/4098_2.png) [@Mr.Duality](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Duality)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/44 "2015-10-18T14:42:35Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > I didn’t say it was. I was talking about targets - enemy combatants vs. non-combatants - not the weapons platforms themselves. Dude. You were talking about drones. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/45 "2015-10-18T15:33:58Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > And it’s exactly why whistleblowers are important, and why we should be protecting them. There’s a difference between whistleblowing and espionage. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/46 "2015-10-18T16:40:38Z")
> [@Mr.Duality](#): > > Dude. You were talking about drones. I explicitly stated that one thing (the MSF incident) was an attack against enemy combatants, and the other (drone strikes) was not an attack against enemy combatants. Any idiot should be capable of recognising that I was talking about two different things when I was explicitly defining them by mutually exclusive attributes. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/47 "2015-10-18T18:32:53Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Curiously a NOVA documentary mentioned that those young kids are better for the job, the air force surprisingly found that experienced pilots had more trouble adapting to flying drones. Also counter-intuitive : PTSD rates are quite a bit higher among drone jockeys than regular pilots or even infantry. The tentative psych explanation is that “real” combatants can steel their minds while they’re in active theatres and everything about their daily lives will remind them that they’re at war. Plus they’re trained/indoctrinated to deal with this shit, of course. Drone operators OTOH have to shift braingears from “Walmart” to “Warzone” every day and can’t adjust durably to the notion of killing people, because every day they go back to live in the place where killing people is Wrong. Cognitive dissonance is a cast-iron bitch. [QUOTE=Martin Hyde] You can’t speak so broadly. A lot of drone strikes that make the news are targeted on terrorist leaders and often you end up hitting terrorists even if the high value target is not there. [/QUOTE] You’re defending the drone strike approval system on the basis that the broken clock ends up telling the right time once in a while ? 😉 [QUOTE=] If you follow for example the news on the various bombings in which we’ve “nearly killed Baghdadi” all of them apparently killed several ISIS fighters, at least of the 3-4 incidents I can remember in recent news account [/QUOTE] How would they know who the hell got hit with any kind certainty ? Besides, shouldn’t we be more interested in the hundreds of incidents that did \*not \*make the news (i.e. weren’t released by the army). Yanno, the ones where the missile struck a random farmer’s house because it had a 20% chance of being where mortars had been fired from recently or somesuch. [QUOTE=Smapti] There’s a difference between whistleblowing and espionage. [/QUOTE] Indeed. Spies discreetly tell what they find to \*other \*nations, as opposed to their own people. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/48 "2015-10-18T19:00:01Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Indeed. Spies discreetly tell what they find to \*other \*nations, as opposed to their own people. Is it your belief that there exists some sort of magical filter on this “leak” that prevents other nations from viewing it? ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Duality](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mr.duality/32/4098_2.png) [@Mr.Duality](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Duality)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/49 "2015-10-18T19:39:54Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > I explicitly stated that one thing (the MSF incident) was an attack against enemy combatants, and the other (drone strikes) was not an attack against enemy combatants. Any idiot should be capable of recognising that I was talking about two different things when I was explicitly defining them by mutually exclusive attributes. Then you should have made that first sentence a separate paragraph. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/50 "2015-10-18T20:00:41Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Is it your belief that there exists some sort of magical filter on this “leak” that prevents other nations from viewing it? Nope. But they derive no advantage whatsoever from it (because y’alls know that they know that you know that etc…). ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/51 "2015-10-18T20:26:00Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > You’re defending the drone strike approval system on the basis that the broken clock ends up telling the right time once in a while ? 😉 No–I’m just saying it’s not like drone strikes never kill high value targets. In fact aside from Osama bin Laden being killed in a traditional special forces raid most high value terrorist targets killed since 2012 or so have been victims of drone strikes. Personally, I’ve always questioned the importance of high value targets. Terrorist movements don’t tend to collapse when a leader dies, so I think too much emphasis both in the military and in the news media is put on whether or not this or that leader has been killed. Does anyone seriously expect ISIS will disappear if al-Baghdadi is killed in an airstrike tomorrow? My point was just that _sans evidence_ I don’t see a reason to assume that if we have say a 5% kill rate of high value targets we have a 95% civilian kill rate. I don’t believe we have access to enough classified information to know what the collateral damage is, how common it is, and etc. Maybe some of the stuff that’s been leaked will give us a clearer picture of that. As to how much oversight their should be, I’d say it needs to be similar to the oversight for traditional bombing campaigns. If it already is, then that’s enough oversight. > [@](#): > > How would they know who the hell got hit with any kind certainty ? Intelligence resources. The answer is sometimes they won’t know what they hit, like when they hit a Doctor’s Without Borders hospital. They apparently listened to an ANA request to bomb it and did so without realizing it was a hospital, or maybe they did know, but I think it’s likely they didn’t and it was just a fuck up. In other scenarios they’ve been performing long-term surveillance on a target, either aerial, satellite, or with HUMINT resources. With those, they have a higher understanding of what they’re bombing. We often have people on the ground, paid informants and such, as well. Sometimes we actually send teams in after the bombings, too. We know for example that in at least a few instances that we’ve heard about U.S. Special Forces have gone in after a bombing in Syria and investigated the site for intelligence or to capture any survivors. That is obviously rare since it exposes the U.S. to risk (fairly high political risk for the President, in addition to the military risk to the individual soldiers), but it does happen. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/52 "2015-10-19T01:39:35Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > I explicitly stated that one thing (the MSF incident) was an attack against enemy combatants, and the other (drone strikes) was not an attack against enemy combatants. Any idiot should be capable of recognising that I was talking about two different things when I was explicitly defining them by mutually exclusive attributes. This is a Warning that you may not resort to name-calling in Great Debates. "Any idiot should. . . " in the context of your post is clearly a method of name-calling. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/53 "2015-10-19T01:53:17Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > My point was just that _sans evidence_ I don’t see a reason to assume that if we have say a 5% kill rate of high value targets we have a 95% civilian kill rate. I don’t believe we have access to enough classified information to know what the collateral damage is, how common it is, and etc. Maybe some of the stuff that’s been leaked will give us a clearer picture of that. The government has forfeited any right to the benefit of the doubt. We know they are hitting civilian targets, and we know they are padding their good kill rate by pretending that if you’re 15-60 and male and they kill you by accident, you’re a terrorist by default. > [@The Assassination Complex](#): > > The documents show that the military designated people it killed in targeted strikes as EKIA — “enemy killed in action” — even if they were not the intended targets of the strike. **Unless evidence posthumously emerged to prove the males killed were not terrorists or “unlawful enemy combatants,” EKIA remained their designation, according to the source.** That process, he said, “is insane. But we’ve made ourselves comfortable with that. The intelligence community, JSOC, the CIA, and everybody that helps support and prop up these programs, they’re comfortable with that idea.” > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > As to how much oversight their should be, I’d say it needs to be similar to the oversight for traditional bombing campaigns. If it already is, then that’s enough oversight. The level of oversight that _should_ be required for any bombing campaign is such that there would be no doubt whether or not Obama is compliant. If it’s not worth making sure it’s all above board, it’s not worth bombing someone. ---
**Author:** ![davida03801](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@davida03801](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davida03801)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/54 "2015-10-19T12:40:48Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Strange as it may seem, there was a time when a lot of people cared about the American government’s drone warfare in the Middle East. That was back when a Republican was the President. Since it is currently a Democrat that issue gets a pass. Good Lord, is that obvious ??? ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/55 "2015-10-19T12:59:56Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > The government has forfeited any right to the benefit of the doubt. We know they are hitting civilian targets, and we know they are padding their good kill rate by pretending that if you’re 15-60 and male and they kill you by accident, you’re a terrorist by default. I never said anything about benefit of the doubt. I’m talking about basics of logic and rational thought. I think it’s fundamentally flawed data analysis to assume anyone killed by a drone who isn’t a high value target is a civilian. Without further evidence we simply can’t assume that. It has nothing do with benefit of the doubt, but rather basic common sense in data analysis. We lack enough data to appropriately speculate about the collateral damage of drone strikes in aggregate. > [@](#): > > The level of oversight that _should_ be required for any bombing campaign is such that there would be no doubt whether or not Obama is compliant. If it’s not worth making sure it’s all above board, it’s not worth bombing someone. That Obama is compliant with what? ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/56 "2015-10-19T13:35:28Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I never said anything about benefit of the doubt. I’m talking about basics of logic and rational thought. I think it’s fundamentally flawed data analysis to assume anyone killed by a drone who isn’t a high value target is a civilian. Without further evidence we simply can’t assume that. It has nothing do with benefit of the doubt, but rather basic common sense in data analysis. We lack enough data to appropriately speculate about the collateral damage of drone strikes in aggregate. You should assume that anyone killed by a drone is a civilian until proven otherwise because 99.995% of the time, a Saudi or Yemeni person picked at random is not a member of Al-Qaeda. _That_ is basic common sense - that the vast majority of people in a civilian area are, in fact, civilians. > [@](#): > > That Obama is compliant with what? Compliant with the requirements for oversight. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/57 "2015-10-19T13:41:31Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > You should assume that anyone killed by a drone is a civilian until proven otherwise because 99.995% of the time, a Saudi or Yemeni person picked at random is not a member of Al-Qaeda. Why do you suppose that the United States is deliberately aiming to kill as many civilians as possible with drones, but such massacres are much rarer with regular airplanes, and apparently very rare with ground troops? It seems to me that you think that th US simply enjoys killing innocent people with drones for no comprehensible reason. So why aren’t soldiers and Marines walking into these same civilian areas and executing large numbers of civilians on an equally frequent basis, if it is such a fun thing to do? ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/58 "2015-10-19T16:47:32Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > You should assume that anyone killed by a drone is a civilian until proven otherwise because 99.995% of the time, a Saudi or Yemeni person picked at random is not a member of Al-Qaeda. _That_ is basic common sense - that the vast majority of people in a civilian area are, in fact, civilians. But there is no evidence we are just indiscriminately bombing civilian areas. If you want to do that you wouldn’t even use drones, you’d just launch a bunch of cruise missiles. You largely use drones to replace precision bombings by bombers or even raids by special forces. If we just wanted to carpet bomb cities we’d not use drones to do so, they don’t carry a lot of bang for their size for strategic bombing (which we don’t engage in as a matter of policy in any case.) Also, the two states aren’t “member of al-Qaeda” and “non-terrorist civilian.” Like I said, we lack information sufficient to make a determination on drone collateral damage. But it violates the basic principles of logic and common sense to just assume anyone who isn’t an al-Qaeda leader who is killed by a drone is a non-terrorist civilian. My default position is to not making sweeping assumptions unsupported by evidence. > [@](#): > > Compliant with the requirements for oversight. Like I said–drones should have the same oversight that bombers do. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2015, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731/59 "2015-10-20T10:45:20Z")
Remember the genesis of the drone strike program? Around the time of the Tora Bora escape of bin Laden, an unarmed drone spotted a “tall man” in a group of people. Because the drone was unarmed, its operators (CIA? I don’t recall) could not kill the man. Osama bin Laden is tall, we were breathlssly warned. There was much lamentation among unnamed sources and military analysts over the inability to have killed someone for being tall, and it was suggested that the drones be armed – so that we could in the future kill any tall foreign people who might be Osama, or just tall. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whistleblower-releases-documents-on-americas-drone-campaign/734731.md?page=2)