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| An Air Force RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aerial vehicle as reported by ABC News. |
NBC News reportedly obtained and subsequently published a previously confidential Justice Department white paper concerning the use of deadly drone strikes on American citizens. The paper addresses guidelines and circumstances for executing such strikes.
Human rights advocates are concerned the guidelines are poorly defined and leave far too much room for interpretation. This creates a situation, they claim, conducive to ill advised and otherwise unlawful assassinations and executions. Concern is also being voiced that officials are publicly averting from discussion of such loosely defined procedures while implementing their use behind closed doors.
Contrastingly, those who support the policies outlined in the paper argue that such measures are required in order to enable the Justice Department to act in timely and effective manners. Severe circumstances call for severe measures, they suggest.
Meanwhile, John Brennan, nominated by President Obama to direct the Central Intelligence Agency, will soon appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss his nomination. Brennan has acted as Obama's chief counterterrorism consultant while serving as Deputy National Security Advisor and Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. He is credited with designing what have come to be known as US drone assassination programs. The drone projects are reported to be controversial and complex, largely consisting of circumstances unknown to the American public.
There was a short clip not too long ago on one of the mainstream news shows which featured a military man stationed stateside who operated remote controlled drones right there at the base. His targets were in Pakistan.
ReplyDeleteAfter finding his targets and apparently destroying them, he'd go home to his wife and children. This made me think how easy it might be to not consider you may be killing innocent people (collateral damage) when you just put in your days work and then head home to a nice family and relax. He admitted that he didn't think much about it and was following his orders and doing his job. After WW2, Nazis said much the same thing. It's about dehumanizing and following orders.
~ Susan
I first became interested in the drone situation due to its obvious implications to ufology. Simply stated, some drones are likely being reported as UFOs. While checking such things out, I learned some kind of interesting things along the way.
ReplyDeleteFrom the 'we accept PayPal' file, here is a press release from Aeryon, a Canadian company that sells drones. They can be contacted via the 'Net, and will deliver and demo product - even to Libya, where they hooked up rebels during the coup:
http://www.aeryon.com/news/pressreleases/271-libyanrebels.html
And these Americans figured out how to use a drone to carry tools to hack Wi-Fi, re-route a cell phone in order to intercept calls and text messages, etc.:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/07/28/flying-drone-can-crack-wifi-networks-snoop-on-cell-phones/
Wild stuff, largely going on without people giving it much thought.