Billy the Great Khan
Uwaa OmO
With any luck.
ALL Americans should be FORCED to watch this video, especially democrats
- Thread starter blackascoal
- Start date
With any luck.
Billy the Great Khan
Uwaa OmO
He's pretty correct. People no longer want freedom. They want a king. Just not 'the other guys' king.
I know very few people in the US that want a king, except for Jesus.
obama has killed more kids than adam lanza.
Billy the Great Khan
Uwaa OmO
If Bill Clinton could stand for a 3rd term you'd vote for him. And for the right it'd be Reagan.
Billy the Great Khan
Uwaa OmO
And wants to kill even more.
I would have at one time, I am not that person, anymore. I agree with Linton on one issues but strongly disagree with him on others. I think and have alwys thought him to be Slick Willie.
cancel2 2022
Canceled
Be careful what you wish for, the Taliban have been waiting for something like this to happen.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
Will The Press Hold Obama Accountable For Drone Strikes?
NEW YORK -– As President Barack Obama begins his second term next week, the administration's drone war is having a media moment, with an uptick in reported strikes, increased calls for accountability on cable news and op-ed pages, and renewed questions from lawmakers about the program's legal rationale in light of counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan's nomination to the post of CIA director.
The debate over drones, which was largely absent from the 2012 campaign, has picked up again in the new year. On Jan. 2, a federal judge ruled against The New York Times in its suit seeking the legal memorandum justifying the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen and al Qaeda-linked cleric. But in her decision, Judge Colleen McMahon expressed frustration with the “thicket of laws and precedents” that allow the executive branch “to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping reasons for their conclusion a secret.”
The following day, Wired senior reporter Spencer Ackerman wrote that Obama’s “New Year’s resolution” appears to be increased drone strikes, following reported strikes aimed at militants in Pakistan and Yemen. The Associated Press reported Friday that there have been seven strikes over a 10-day period, “one of the most intense series of attacks in the past two years," while ProPublica compiled a piece called "Everything We Know So Far About Drone Strikes."
Several columnists and commentators have raised moral and legal questions over the past week, including Bloomberg View’s Michael Kinsley and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow.
On Thursday night’s show, Maddow spent 18 minutes on the topic, calling out the administration’s “wholesale embrace of the secretive, pseudo-legal deniable, Orwellian means of raining death from the sky all over the world, even in places where we're not technically at war and never admitting to it.” During a Sunday discussion, host Chris Hayes expressed frustration in having a debate on drones given "all this secret information we don’t have access to."
Yet despite the focus on drones in the first weeks of 2013, some doubt whether the coverage will last. In an interview with The Huffington Post, Ackerman said the closed-off nature of the CIA and problems gathering information quickly on strikes are reasons it's difficult to sustain coverage. And the media, he said, has "a poor attention span on national security issues.”
The war in Afghanistan has largely fallen off the media radar, despite the fact that 66,000 U.S. troops remain in that nation. So perhaps it's not surprising that a secret program involving unmanned drones, controlled by Americans out of harm's way, doesn't receive significant media coverage in the U.S. on a regular basis. (The situation, of course, is different in Pakistan, where civilian casualties have stoked public anger.)
“Once the idea of an unmanned aircraft was kind of shocking and weird,” The New York Times' Scott Shane told The Huffington Post. “Now we’re used to it.”
“It’s more the unusual or extraordinary cases that get attention now,” said Shane, a top national security reporter who was also a plaintiff in the Times' FOIA suit. “I think we ought to keep covering it. I guess the trick is to find new angles, important angles to cover, rather than just, ‘A hellfire missile was fired by a drone in such and such village in Pakistan.’ That’s important and we’ll have a full brief about that. But it’s a new kind of warfare. We’re setting an example for other countries, setting precedent legal and otherwise.”
Peter Bergen, director of the National Security Studies Program at the left-leaning New America Foundation, pointed out that the use of drones -- while accelerated greatly under Obama -- began in Pakistan in 2004, under President George W. Bush. “By definition, something that’s gone on for nine years is not going to have sustained media coverage,” Bergen told The Huffington Post. “It’s not a one-time event.”
Still, Bergen said that every “drone strike is a public event” and thereby covered in some capacity. The New America Foundation, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Long War Journal all track drone strikes and casualties, both militant and civilian.
Chris Woods, who oversees TBIJ’s drone research, said he and a small team of journalists pull together local reporting on strikes, use sources on the ground and do independent reporting in Pakistan. Woods said the organization's database is ever-changing, with new information regularly being added to reports to provide the most accurate, up-to-the-minute picture. “We never see a strike as being closed,” Woods said. “Information can come weeks later.”
Yet by the time details surrounding strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia become clear, the news cycle may have already moved on. U.S. officials leak successes -- such as the precision killing of a high-profile terrorist -- but have been less forthcoming when it comes to civilian casualties. Indeed, studies have shown that far more civilians have been killed in drone strikes than the government has acknowledged.
While it's been tough to sustain coverage after nearly a decade, the nomination of the oft-dubbed drone architect has the potential to drive the drone debate in the media beyond the latest dispatch from Waziristan or academic study.
Brennan's key role in the drone program, in which he helps facilitate the process by which Obama chooses combatants to target, along with public comments he has made, will surely come up again before his confirmation hearings.
Last week, Woods scrutinized Brennan's 2011 claim that there had not been a "single collateral death" in U.S. drone strikes the previous year -- a statement he'd later walk back, saying he simply had “no information” to the contrary.
Woods wrote that a drone strike had killed 42 Pakistanis just months before Brennan made that statement, with dozens believed to have been civilian deaths. TBIJ now estimates that 76 civilians were killed in the year-long period during which Brennan said no collateral damage had occurred.
Brennan also argued in April 2012 that the U.S. government’s use of “lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles” to target al Qaeda complies with the law, whether in Afghanistan -- where the U.S. is officially at war -- or elsewhere. That rationale hasn't satisfied some lawmakers, who have voiced concerns publicly this week over the secrecy of the drone program.
On Monday, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) argued in The Washington Post for more congressional oversight and “an independent judicial review of any executive-branch ‘kill list’” -- a detail of the drone program The New York Times revealed in May.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), meanwhile, wrote a letter to Brennan asking several questions about the legal basis for using lethal force against U.S. citizens. Wyden wrote that he believes "every American has a right to know when their government believes it is allowed to kill them."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/drone-media-coverage_n_2474250.html
NEW YORK -– As President Barack Obama begins his second term next week, the administration's drone war is having a media moment, with an uptick in reported strikes, increased calls for accountability on cable news and op-ed pages, and renewed questions from lawmakers about the program's legal rationale in light of counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan's nomination to the post of CIA director.
The debate over drones, which was largely absent from the 2012 campaign, has picked up again in the new year. On Jan. 2, a federal judge ruled against The New York Times in its suit seeking the legal memorandum justifying the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen and al Qaeda-linked cleric. But in her decision, Judge Colleen McMahon expressed frustration with the “thicket of laws and precedents” that allow the executive branch “to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping reasons for their conclusion a secret.”
The following day, Wired senior reporter Spencer Ackerman wrote that Obama’s “New Year’s resolution” appears to be increased drone strikes, following reported strikes aimed at militants in Pakistan and Yemen. The Associated Press reported Friday that there have been seven strikes over a 10-day period, “one of the most intense series of attacks in the past two years," while ProPublica compiled a piece called "Everything We Know So Far About Drone Strikes."
Several columnists and commentators have raised moral and legal questions over the past week, including Bloomberg View’s Michael Kinsley and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow.
On Thursday night’s show, Maddow spent 18 minutes on the topic, calling out the administration’s “wholesale embrace of the secretive, pseudo-legal deniable, Orwellian means of raining death from the sky all over the world, even in places where we're not technically at war and never admitting to it.” During a Sunday discussion, host Chris Hayes expressed frustration in having a debate on drones given "all this secret information we don’t have access to."
Yet despite the focus on drones in the first weeks of 2013, some doubt whether the coverage will last. In an interview with The Huffington Post, Ackerman said the closed-off nature of the CIA and problems gathering information quickly on strikes are reasons it's difficult to sustain coverage. And the media, he said, has "a poor attention span on national security issues.”
The war in Afghanistan has largely fallen off the media radar, despite the fact that 66,000 U.S. troops remain in that nation. So perhaps it's not surprising that a secret program involving unmanned drones, controlled by Americans out of harm's way, doesn't receive significant media coverage in the U.S. on a regular basis. (The situation, of course, is different in Pakistan, where civilian casualties have stoked public anger.)
“Once the idea of an unmanned aircraft was kind of shocking and weird,” The New York Times' Scott Shane told The Huffington Post. “Now we’re used to it.”
“It’s more the unusual or extraordinary cases that get attention now,” said Shane, a top national security reporter who was also a plaintiff in the Times' FOIA suit. “I think we ought to keep covering it. I guess the trick is to find new angles, important angles to cover, rather than just, ‘A hellfire missile was fired by a drone in such and such village in Pakistan.’ That’s important and we’ll have a full brief about that. But it’s a new kind of warfare. We’re setting an example for other countries, setting precedent legal and otherwise.”
Peter Bergen, director of the National Security Studies Program at the left-leaning New America Foundation, pointed out that the use of drones -- while accelerated greatly under Obama -- began in Pakistan in 2004, under President George W. Bush. “By definition, something that’s gone on for nine years is not going to have sustained media coverage,” Bergen told The Huffington Post. “It’s not a one-time event.”
Still, Bergen said that every “drone strike is a public event” and thereby covered in some capacity. The New America Foundation, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Long War Journal all track drone strikes and casualties, both militant and civilian.
Chris Woods, who oversees TBIJ’s drone research, said he and a small team of journalists pull together local reporting on strikes, use sources on the ground and do independent reporting in Pakistan. Woods said the organization's database is ever-changing, with new information regularly being added to reports to provide the most accurate, up-to-the-minute picture. “We never see a strike as being closed,” Woods said. “Information can come weeks later.”
Yet by the time details surrounding strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia become clear, the news cycle may have already moved on. U.S. officials leak successes -- such as the precision killing of a high-profile terrorist -- but have been less forthcoming when it comes to civilian casualties. Indeed, studies have shown that far more civilians have been killed in drone strikes than the government has acknowledged.
While it's been tough to sustain coverage after nearly a decade, the nomination of the oft-dubbed drone architect has the potential to drive the drone debate in the media beyond the latest dispatch from Waziristan or academic study.
Brennan's key role in the drone program, in which he helps facilitate the process by which Obama chooses combatants to target, along with public comments he has made, will surely come up again before his confirmation hearings.
Last week, Woods scrutinized Brennan's 2011 claim that there had not been a "single collateral death" in U.S. drone strikes the previous year -- a statement he'd later walk back, saying he simply had “no information” to the contrary.
Woods wrote that a drone strike had killed 42 Pakistanis just months before Brennan made that statement, with dozens believed to have been civilian deaths. TBIJ now estimates that 76 civilians were killed in the year-long period during which Brennan said no collateral damage had occurred.
Brennan also argued in April 2012 that the U.S. government’s use of “lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles” to target al Qaeda complies with the law, whether in Afghanistan -- where the U.S. is officially at war -- or elsewhere. That rationale hasn't satisfied some lawmakers, who have voiced concerns publicly this week over the secrecy of the drone program.
On Monday, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) argued in The Washington Post for more congressional oversight and “an independent judicial review of any executive-branch ‘kill list’” -- a detail of the drone program The New York Times revealed in May.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), meanwhile, wrote a letter to Brennan asking several questions about the legal basis for using lethal force against U.S. citizens. Wyden wrote that he believes "every American has a right to know when their government believes it is allowed to kill them."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/drone-media-coverage_n_2474250.html
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
Former Obama Adviser: Drones Are Much More Destructive Than Officials Admit
The United States' use of drones is counter-productive, less effective than the White House claims, and is "encouraging a new arms race that will empower current and future rivals and lay the foundations for an international system that is increasingly violent", according to a study by one of President Obama's former security advisers.
Michael Boyle, who was on Obama's counter-terrorism group in the run-up to his election in 2008, said the US administration's growing reliance on drone technology was having "adverse strategic effects that have not been properly weighed against the tactical gains associated with killing terrorists".
Civilian casualties were likely to be far higher than had been acknowledged, he said. In an article for the Chatham House journal International Affairs, Boyle said the conventional wisdom over the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) needed to be challenged.
He said there was an urgent need for greater transparency because most Americans remained "unaware of the scale of the drone programme ... and the destruction it has caused in their name".
US use of drones has soared during Obama's time in office, with the White House authorising attacks in at least four countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It is estimated that the CIA and the US military have undertaken more than 300 drone strikes and killed about 2,500 people.
Administration officials have argued their use is lawful, though the Pentagon's most senior lawyer, Jeh Johnson, recently admitted that the US was heading for a "tipping point", beyond which it should no longer pursue terrorists by military means because the organisation that Congress authorised the military to pursue in 2001 had in effect been destroyed.
In his study, Boyle said Obama pledged to end the "war on terror" and to restore respect for the rule of law in US counter-terrorism policies.
"Instead, he has been just as ruthless and indifferent to the rule of law as his predecessor ... while President Bush issued a call to arms to defend 'civilisation' against the threat of terrorism, President Obama has waged his war on terror in the shadows, using drone strikes, special operations and sophisticated surveillance to fight a brutal covert war against al-Qaida and other Islamist networks."
Boyle, who teaches at La Salle University, Philadelphia, said the government claim that drones were an effective tool that minimised civilian casualties was "based on a highly selective and partial reading of the evidence".
He argues one of the reasons why the US has been "so successful in spinning the number of civilian casualties" is that it has reportedly adopted a controversial method for counting them: all military-age men in a strike zone are classed as militants unless clear evidence emerges to the contrary.
"The result of the 'guilt by association' approach has been a gradual loosening of the standards by which the US selects targets for drone strikes," his study says.
"The consequences can be seen in the targeting of mosques or funeral processions that kill non-combatants and tear at the social fabric of the regions where they occur. No one really knows the number of deaths caused by drones in these distant, sometimes ungoverned, lands."
Boyle questions the claim that drone strikes have been effective in killing so-called high-value targets, saying records suggested lower-ranked foot soldiers were the ones who had been hit in greatest numbers.
And he also said the strikes had a debilitating effect on local populations and their governments.
"Despite the fact that drone strikes are often employed against local enemies of the governments in Pakistan and Yemen, they serve as powerful signals of the regimes' helplessness and subservience to the United States and undermine the claim that these governments can be credible competitors for the loyalties of the population," he writes.
"The vast increase in the number of deaths of low-ranking operatives has deepened political resistance to the US programme in Pakistan, Yemen and other countries."
Last week, a judge in New York rejected an attempt by the New York Times to force the US government to disclose more information about its targeted killing of people that it believes have ties to terrorism, including American citizens.
Colleen McMahon, a district judge in Manhattan, said the Obama administration did not violate the law by refusing the newspaper's request for the legal justifications for targeted killings.
She said the government was not obliged to turn over materials the Times had sought under the federal Freedom of Information Act, even though it had such materials in its possession.
http://www.businessinsider.com/form...r-slams-us-drone-attacks-2013-1#ixzz2I8hwFmtR
Transparency .. yet another Obama broken pledge that he has never had to answer to.
The United States' use of drones is counter-productive, less effective than the White House claims, and is "encouraging a new arms race that will empower current and future rivals and lay the foundations for an international system that is increasingly violent", according to a study by one of President Obama's former security advisers.
Michael Boyle, who was on Obama's counter-terrorism group in the run-up to his election in 2008, said the US administration's growing reliance on drone technology was having "adverse strategic effects that have not been properly weighed against the tactical gains associated with killing terrorists".
Civilian casualties were likely to be far higher than had been acknowledged, he said. In an article for the Chatham House journal International Affairs, Boyle said the conventional wisdom over the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) needed to be challenged.
He said there was an urgent need for greater transparency because most Americans remained "unaware of the scale of the drone programme ... and the destruction it has caused in their name".
US use of drones has soared during Obama's time in office, with the White House authorising attacks in at least four countries: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It is estimated that the CIA and the US military have undertaken more than 300 drone strikes and killed about 2,500 people.
Administration officials have argued their use is lawful, though the Pentagon's most senior lawyer, Jeh Johnson, recently admitted that the US was heading for a "tipping point", beyond which it should no longer pursue terrorists by military means because the organisation that Congress authorised the military to pursue in 2001 had in effect been destroyed.
In his study, Boyle said Obama pledged to end the "war on terror" and to restore respect for the rule of law in US counter-terrorism policies.
"Instead, he has been just as ruthless and indifferent to the rule of law as his predecessor ... while President Bush issued a call to arms to defend 'civilisation' against the threat of terrorism, President Obama has waged his war on terror in the shadows, using drone strikes, special operations and sophisticated surveillance to fight a brutal covert war against al-Qaida and other Islamist networks."
Boyle, who teaches at La Salle University, Philadelphia, said the government claim that drones were an effective tool that minimised civilian casualties was "based on a highly selective and partial reading of the evidence".
He argues one of the reasons why the US has been "so successful in spinning the number of civilian casualties" is that it has reportedly adopted a controversial method for counting them: all military-age men in a strike zone are classed as militants unless clear evidence emerges to the contrary.
"The result of the 'guilt by association' approach has been a gradual loosening of the standards by which the US selects targets for drone strikes," his study says.
"The consequences can be seen in the targeting of mosques or funeral processions that kill non-combatants and tear at the social fabric of the regions where they occur. No one really knows the number of deaths caused by drones in these distant, sometimes ungoverned, lands."
Boyle questions the claim that drone strikes have been effective in killing so-called high-value targets, saying records suggested lower-ranked foot soldiers were the ones who had been hit in greatest numbers.
And he also said the strikes had a debilitating effect on local populations and their governments.
"Despite the fact that drone strikes are often employed against local enemies of the governments in Pakistan and Yemen, they serve as powerful signals of the regimes' helplessness and subservience to the United States and undermine the claim that these governments can be credible competitors for the loyalties of the population," he writes.
"The vast increase in the number of deaths of low-ranking operatives has deepened political resistance to the US programme in Pakistan, Yemen and other countries."
Last week, a judge in New York rejected an attempt by the New York Times to force the US government to disclose more information about its targeted killing of people that it believes have ties to terrorism, including American citizens.
Colleen McMahon, a district judge in Manhattan, said the Obama administration did not violate the law by refusing the newspaper's request for the legal justifications for targeted killings.
She said the government was not obliged to turn over materials the Times had sought under the federal Freedom of Information Act, even though it had such materials in its possession.
http://www.businessinsider.com/form...r-slams-us-drone-attacks-2013-1#ixzz2I8hwFmtR
Transparency .. yet another Obama broken pledge that he has never had to answer to.
I'm Watermark
Diabetic
Chomsky tends to use Nicaragua an an example, no? That specific claim is more than accurate, as is the one in the OP, as are his claims about Socialist and Anarchist history.
Yeah, Bravo because no republicans would ever use a drone.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
"Transparency" .. sure
"Open government" .. right
"Policies on C-Span" .. bullshit
Obama lies so much that it's hard to keep track of them all.
Same reason we were not screaming about them when Bush used them; Iffen you ain't fur us, you is agin us.
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
blackascoal
The Force is With Me
That's sad.
Yeah, that's why I tend to side with SMY even though he is a raving nutbag half of the time.
Disillusioned
New member
Number one killers of Christians are other Christians, number one killer of Shinto's are other Shintos, Same for Hindus and Daoists. You kill the people around you, you don't bother, normally, to travel a long way just to kill somebody.
Airstrip One
Completely Effed
Chomsky tends to use Nicaragua an an example, no? That specific claim is more than accurate, as is the one in the OP, as are his claims about Socialist and Anarchist history.
Perhaps he could do something that is actually useful, like trying to decipher Linear A...