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Documents Expose the Inner Workings of Obama's Drone Wars
An anonymous reader writes: A little over two years ago, Edward Snowden leaked a giant batch of NSA documents. Chelsea Manning handed Wikileaks a pile of government secrets in 2010, and now another source has leaked an equally impressive cache of papers focusing on Obama's drone program. The Intercept published the documents covering the U.S.'s use of drones to kill targets. Perhaps most eye-opening is the disclosure that as much as 90% of attacks over a five-month period hit the wrong targets. According to The Intercept: "When the Obama administration has discussed drone strikes publicly, it has offered assurances that such operations are a more precise alternative to boots on the ground and are authorized only when an 'imminent' threat is present and there is 'near certainty' that the intended target will be eliminated. Those terms, however, appear to have been bluntly redefined to bear almost no resemblance to their commonly understood meanings."
even if the Nobel commite asked him to. He is now a man of a different conviction, who has gone a full 180 on the promises he campaigned on, ending up running the politics he campaigned against. I liked Senator Obama. President Obama, not so much.
Had we not interject ourselves when the Russians were attacking Afghanistan, we wouldn't have the messy mixed up with Pakistan and the mujahideen which morphed into the Taliban, and the super powerful bin laden family
Had we not invade Iraq under false pretense we wouldn't have thousands of our sons and daughters killed / maimed in Iraq - and Islamic State wouldn't have a chance to come into fruition either
Had we not 'leading from the back' in overthrowing the Qaddafi regime of Libya the number of foot soldiers for islamic terrorist network wouldn't be so numerous
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
He is now a man of a different conviction, who has gone a full 180 on the promises he campaigned on, ending up running the politics he campaigned against. I liked Senator Obama. President Obama, not so much.
No, you liked Candidate Obama.
In mid-2008, he voted to grant the telecoms immunity from prosecution for warrantless (i.e. illegal) wiretapping. The red flags were already there if you paid attention to his actions rather than his words.
not a black or white in sight
brown and pink and tan and olive everywhere
black white black white black white
make it stop mommy
The Taliban was not guaranteed to beat the other mujahideen. The Taliban could have just formed a peaceful, sharia heavy nation, like Saudi Arabia. The desire to host al qaeda, and that al qaeda would carry out successful attacks, was somewhat unexpected.
Saddam wanted to make a nuclear ballistic missile, which could reach Tehran. It would have been sooner, or later. Thanks to the Bush Administration's screw-up on Iraq's indigenous solid rocket program, it happened sooner. Iran has a similar, more successful arms program (regional arms race).
Europeans wanted Qaddafi dead, and America provided some muscle, so I blame Europe for that.
Should I be looking out for drones? Under the definitions “continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons,” Could I be targeted by a drone strike... Well yes, I tend to avoid american products in my weekly shop, (mostly because they are inferior) this could be defined as a "threat" in a broad sense of the word, Normally Common sense would mean that the "threat" was danger to US persons in the form of attack but from the way words have been twisted not buying american products could threaten US interests.
Yes Sir, I'll Buy your coca-cola just don't kill me with a drone....
But they've bought their media, so they will never tell you. And the Republicans are even worse they're proud of their authoritarianism.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
It's more about collateral damage. They didn't say they missed the intended target, only that some innocent people were killed. ... It's time to shut the drone program down. The systemic problems outlined in the docs show incompetence up and down the chain of command.
Secret program, no oversight, wasted money, "acceptable" losses
Captcha: disarm
Another source? Is this person(s) also in hiding in (of all places, Russia), or locked in a cell on their own for months at a time? I'd even settle for someone hiding out in a foreign embassy.
As a brainwashed media consumer, I can't think of a leak being even vaguely true unless the whistleblower is being actively hounded by the US authorities.
A Response to the âoeDrone Papersâ: AUMF Targeting is a Deliberate Process with Robust Political Accountability
By Adam Klein Thursday, October 15, 2015, 5:40 PM
The Interceptâ(TM)s âoeDrone Papersâ leaker âoebelieves the public has a right to know how the U.S. government decides to assassinate people.â Maybe soâ"or maybe public safety and the need for secrecy trump the publicâ(TM)s curiosity. Unfortunately, the leaker has unilaterally decided for all of us. One person with a thumb drive again trumps the democratic process.
Tant pis; the âoeDrone Papersâ are out there (the name suggests a massive archive; in fact, there are only four documents, one of which is a shorter version of another). So what do they tell us about how the U.S. Government is targeting terrorist leaders in Somalia and Yemen for drone strikesâ"or, as The Intercept would have it, âoedecid[ing] how to assassinate peopleâ? Unsurprisingly, The Intercept is out to convict; its focus is on the âoeshortcomings and flawsâ of the program, as supposedly exemplified by its ingenuous account of the life and death of al Qaeda commander Bilal el-Berjawi.
But the documents themselves are hardly as damning as the breathless tone of the reporting suggests. In fact, for those concerned about oversight and accountability in the targeting process for AUMF-based strikes, the documents should reassure rather than unsettle. The overall impression is of thorough, individualized review, at the highest levels of government, that meaningfully constrains those developing and carrying out these operations.
The key documents, two DOD slide decks on âoeISR support to small footprint CT operationsâ in Somalia and Yemen (a full deck and an executive summary) include these details:
- The âoeaverage approval timeâ for a proposed strike under the AUMF process was 79 days. Even excluding the single longest approval, presumably an unrepresentative outlier, the average was 58 days. The fastest approval was 27 days.
- These approvals were preceded by lengthy periods of gathering and analyzing intelligence on the targetsâ"an average of six years.
- Four out of 24 proposed concepts of operations covered by the study were disapproved under the AUMF review process.
- Each proposed operation must be approved by a lengthy sequence of high-ranking officials, culminating in the President.
- The process for approving strikes under the AUMF âoerequires significant intel/ISR to justify (and maintain) approvals.â âoeRelatively few, high-level terrorists meet criteria for targetingâ under this process. (Note that this isnâ(TM)t a press release touting the programâ(TM)s robust oversight; itâ(TM)s an internal DOD assessment, written from the perspective of operators for whom a laborious approval process is an obstacle rather than a virtue.)
- These âoe[p]olitical constraintsâ make these operations âoechallengingâ and âoefundamentally different from what weâ(TM)ve experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq.â
These slides do not suggest operators run amok, âoeassassinat[ing]â targets with little forethought or oversight. To the contrary, the âoeDrone Papersâ suggest that these operations go forward only after a deliberate, individualized process. They confirm that senior political decisionmakers, including the President, review and approve each individual operation. And they reveal that operators view this review process as a significant constraintâ"a constraint that distinguishes these operations from the (presumably more liberal) operating environments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There may be other flaws in the program, as the accompanying articles urgeâ"unintended victims, truncated intelligence collecti
Drones don't miss 90% of the time. Most of the time, the missile hits what the drone operator has targeted. The problem is how often the target has been misidentified.
The real story here is the willingness of the military to take poor, inconclusive intelligence and use that to make decisions that kill people.
So the president who has been lambasted by congress for being soft on terrorists and has no backbone for attacking people who we hate has been found to have been picking people off a dozen at a time right under our noses.
The question to ask, then, is whether the Republicans who are decrying Obamas lack of any action in the middle east are
(1) Wrong, because they didn't know he was actually doing something (and, by the report, quite a lot)
or
(2) Liars, because they all had the security briefing - apparently every.fucking.week - that we were taking out hostile targets and decided to capitalize on the fact that the president couldn't defend himself from their political attacks without exposing the program
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If you look at the fact that the USA/Obama Admin didn't care about how much they missed their target, and you look at the Doctors without Borders Hospital bombing. The USA knew, didn't care because they have been getting away with bombing the wrong targets for the last decade. Only problem now is the truth is coming out and it's looking bad for the Obama Admin.
Be seeing you...
poopy #1 #1 #1
That sounds so cute. Much better than murder.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What does this have to do with your privacy? Why did he steal these documents?
The drone program is a killing machine that creates it's own targets by itself. One of the basic things you learn about government agencies and programs is that they can't be stopped or reduced. You can only slow down their growth. Fortunately, this isn't 100% true for the US, but generally, people like to keep their jobs and positions. And they will go to any length to do this. They will keep finding reasons why their work should continue to exist.
Once you set something up, it is very, very difficult to tear it down.
Why should the drone program be any different? Target lists are secret. As well as the reasons given for people being targeted. If you were to reduce the target list, you would need less drones, less people and less money. Is there any sane reason why this should ever happen when there is no oversight over target lists?
Anything we have heard about the drone program confirms this. They are now down to shooting kids that made suspicious posts in online forums.
If it were Israel defending itself from indiscriminate rocket attacks from a hostile neighbor, it would matter. But it's just the US killing people in wars it has no business being involved in, on the other side of the world, so who gives a shit?
Bradley Manning handed over documents; it was before he decided to start calling himself Chelsea.
Don't jump on the 90% figure too eagerly. ONE info ops tactic is to manipulate media by feeding inaccurate info to joirnalists, or changing their published material to make it inaccurate, to discredit inconvenient media outlets or media figures.
From "Blogs and Military Information Strategy."
Perhaps most eye-opening is the disclosure that as much as 90% of attacks over a five-month period hit the wrong targets. According to The Intercept: "When the Obama administration has discussed drone strikes publicly, it has offered assurances that such operations are a more precise alternative to boots on the ground"
We might have been targeting the wrong car, but we still took the car out! Successful mission!.
At least when you have boots on the ground locals have an opportunity to interact with you and possibly set up a dialogue. Random bombings from the air by a robot is just going to piss people off. The only thing that can beat extremism is moderation, and you have a hard time finding moderates when you are blowing up weddings and funerals (bonus points for bombing the funeral of people you killed in an earlier bombing). This is the problem with increased automation in warfare: it removes the political pressure. Because honestly, people don't really care when people from "over there" get killed. But when they see the bodies of their own start piling up they start putting pressure on the government to end the fighting. War needs to have a human cost because that is the only way to have a political cost. Without that political cost it becomes way too attractive a tool.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Indeed, look up the definition for a "rogue state" and we fit it to a T.
I don't understand how a smart man like Obama can think that "precision" is some sort of guarantee against hitting the wrong target. It's not like the drone knows any better then the president which targets to hit. If you drop a precision bomb in the wrong location it will just very precisely hit the wrong target.
O'Bummer.
That is NOT a haiku! >:(
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
OK I RTFA and the cache of documents. They are hard to understand owing to the use of acronyms but the Guardian article helps a lot with that (ABP == Advanced Battlefield Placement) .
I'm sorry, but it looks to me like the drone war is on track and performing as well as can be expected. Since the alternatives are doing nothing or risking boots on the ground in remote places with little local support and trying to leverage intelligence which by it's very nature is ephemeral (Person X is at location Y at time Z) , it seems like the best way to prosecute this war.
Sure, we'd like the strikes to be even more pinpoint. You have to imagine we're working on it.
In the meantime- what else are we supposed to do? Let them alone to peace so they can do what they did on 9-11 again?
Greenwald et.al. take every instance of collateral damage- a horrible term for killing the wrong people- and try to whip it up into some kind of War Crime committed by people displaying just gross indifference to their fellow human beings.
You know what? It's not. It's just not. No one tries harder than the US military to avoid taking innocent life. What army, what society in the history of humans making war on each other has ever expended so many resources - time , money, effort, research that goes on for decades and decades, on creating weapons that kill as FEW people as possible?
The drone war is war on a completely new basis, where the enemy is identified PERSONALLY and targeted PERSONALLY. It's still imperfect, not least because targets deliberately spend as little time alone as possible for obvious reasons, but its goals are a huge humanitarian advance in warfare. They are.
Greenwald et. al. feign surprise when people die in war, when innocent people get accidentally targeted or hit with the target. They hate military action of virtually any sort. Greenwald is a libertarian and also basically hates the government to begin with. Sorry , that's just not my POV so I have a different take on this same information.
Take aways from the article:
EKIA: (enemy killed in action) is a controversial category used, its critics claim, to misclassify innocent people physically near the target when he was hit. They outnumber 5 to 1 the targets themselves.
MAM: (military age man) are usually what's around the targets when they're hit. It's not unreasonable and probably even correct to guess that they are also soldiers prosecuting the same war as the target they're standing next to.
The drone war has been ferocious and effective, but not as effective as we'd like. Specific improvements involve more satellites so the satellite coverage doesn't ever "blink" (their term) and lose the target. More HUMINT ( human intelligence) and more live captures for the purpose of interrogations. Better cameras on the drones and faster time to target.
If even ONE person in the longish chain of authorization says "no" to a target, then the operation is stopped.
If any civilians are likely to be hit, then the President wants to see the case personally and sign off on it personally. It's his decision to go or no-go. He is personally involved in and concerned with limiting collateral damage.
There is some kind of drone turf war between JSOC and the CIA and the release of these documents are a part of that.
A sense of the scale of things. The number of specific targets in a calendar year numbers less than 100 generally. This is not 1000s of people being killed by drones.
and a liar and a murderer. What a travesty that the Nobel committee doesn't demand the peace prize back from this war monger.
Eff every one of you suckers that voted for HOPE and CHANGE.
From a practical standpoint the drone operations are counter-productive.
...and then all props go out to warrior Obama.
They come off as cowardly
(no risk of personal injury while killing others),
while the attacks also kill many innocent people.
(To quibble over numbers is insulting.)
The drone attacks likely represent the greatest recruiting tool of the groups they mean to diminish.
So why use them so much, and seemingly with so little regard for collateral damage?
For the headlines:
"Number [insert low number] enemy killed by US drone!"
They chose to word this poorly, and you compounded their error: They hit the identified target AND killed people who were also present, so it's not a matter of missing the target, it's that they are killing people who aren't the target TOO that skews the percentages. I would venture to say many people agree with the sentiments they quoted that these additional casualties brought it upon themselves by being in association with the targeted individuals. I do hope that there is at least some threshold at which the "gunners" would "hold-fire", but I admit the actions of ISIS and the Taliban have battered down my sense of moral outrage regarding people from that region ... I no longer care so much for THOSE people. Some days that bothers me.
At this point I'd vote for anybody who would come out and say "A pox on ALL your houses! We are taking our troops and leaving, you feel free to kill each other without us for a while."
It is a war, get over how they prosecute it or reject all war, just don't pretend that any war can be clean and civilised.
95% of All comments on the web are JEWS, distraction, dumbing down, 'voting' up bogus posts, keep morons spinning while the jew sets up more mass murder. load all comments, see JEW drone post above. There are millions in the jew tribe. Chemtrail virus.
thezog.info
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v21/v21n2p34_sheehan.html
Is Israel Our Friend?
"Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can't help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East."
-- John Sheehan, S.J.
http://waronyou.com/forums/index.php?topic=12114.0
When They Tell You To Love Israel
26Oct09
Show Them This:
“The state of Israel must invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the methods of provocation and revenge. And above all, let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space.”
— From the diary of Moshe Sharett, Israeli’s first Foreign Minister from 1948-1956, and Prime Minister from 1954-1956
“Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered, but never before have I watched as soldiers enticed children like mice into a trap and murdered them for sport.”
— Christopher Hedges, American Journalist on assignment in Gaza
“The Israeli soldiers shoot with silencers. The bullets from the M-16 rifles tumble end over end through the children’s slight bodies. Later, in the hospital, I will see the destruction: the stomachs ripped out, the gaping holes in limbs and torsos. Yesterday at this spot the Israelis shot eight young men, six of who were under the age of eighteen. One was twelve. This afternoon they killed an eleven-year-old boy, Ali Murad, and seriously wound four more, three of who are under eighteen.”
— Christopher Hedges, American Journalist on assignment in Gaza
“Arab Palestinian Christians and Arab Palestinian Muslims lived side by side for the past 1400 years, and for anybody to say that the Arab Palestinian Christians have been persecuted recently by Muslims is absolutely another big lie, like the big lie that spoke of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.”
— Riah Abu El-Assal, Christian Bishop of Jerusalem
“The big winner today, intended or not, is the state of Israel. There is no question that as a result of these attacks the Israeli leadership is feeling relief.”
— George Friedman, director of www.stratfor.com, a pro-Israeli intelligence think tank, commenting upon the attacks of September 11th.
“Regarding what took place on September 11, well it’s very good Well, it’s not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy for Israel.”
— Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to the attacks on America as reported in The Jerusalem Post, September 12, 2001.
“Why should they, the Americans, have trusted us? We were a bunch of Russians, socialist Russians.”
— Isser Harel, former head of Mossad, speaking of the unlikely union between America and the Marxist state of Israel.
“Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East.”
— John Sheehan, S.J. (a Jesuit priest)
“It is interesting, but not surprising, to note that in all the words written and uttered about the Kennedy assassination, Israel’s intelligence service agency, the Mossad, has never been mentioned. And yet a Mossad motive is obvious. On this question, as on almost all others, American reporters cannot bring themselves to cast Israel in an unfavorable light -despite the fact that Mossad complicity is as plausible as any of the other theories.”
— US Representative Paul Findley, March 1992
“Israel should have exploited the repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the Arabs of the territories.”
— Benyamin Netanyahu, then Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister of Israel, speaking to students at Bar Ilan University, from the Israeli
These numbers are meaningless without knowing the full statistics.
Read the article. You have NO way of knowing the full statistics, because anyone not targeted who happens to be killed in a drone strike is automatically identified as an enemy, by default. As the article notes, this is insane. Everyone's an enemy by default if they get killed, and statistics are released on this basis. The logic is basically: if we kill them, they're bad guys. So unless somebody miraculously proves otherwise, how would one know?
These are targets that we may not even know the name of, who in many cases are algorithmic selections based on phone call records. Those comprise many of the 10% of intended targets.
This is simply pure, unadulterated murder. Terrorism of the first world.
Fraud JEW 'wars'. It was JEWS that did 911. Their fraud 'wars' all for jew world takeover, killing the middle east countries that stood up to the jews and bogus jew 'isreal', using their fraud '911'
http://jewishcrimenetworkdid911.blogspot.com/
The taliban in afghanistan was stopping the jew heroin trade, so they got targeted, now the jew heroin drug scheme there is 10 times what it was in 2001. This while scumbag dupes chant 'kill da muslim terrists'. Idiot scum 'troops' killing off the taliban and their families even now. The 'troops' guard heroin, and kill for the jew, idiot 'americans' sit on their asses. Now 'america' is the target of the jew. The first mass cull by chemtrail VIRUS bio weapon and it's already been sprayed, time release cull to start soon.
95% of the comments and 'votes' on the web are JEW trolls, paying themselves from bogus 'governmnet' and 'tax' and their 'holocaust' fraud and a hundred other schemes. The jews are a RACE, most 'whites' in fraud 'government', lying 'media' liar 'scientists' vaccine pushing 'dokters' fraud 'lawyers' 'judges' and not nordic whites they are 'white' skin ashkenazi Jew race.
Recognize Jew FACES - thezog.info - see all pages at right, also top of main page 'required reading' page, bottom half of list copy articles from vnn. don't waste time at vnn, also run by them just see pages, copy pages for backup.
More FACES http://web.archive.org/web/20100825152627/http://jewishfaces.com/banking.html -see all catagory pages at top -
leuchter report at archive.org
holodomorinfo.com - just see pages, don't waste time on videos, even 'jew truther' sites run by them so you sit 'reading' or 'follow' and don't get off your ass and stop them. Stop 'following'. Copy this for links and to re read. Make your own tribes. No one is going to 'save' you. Time is short. Pass on links/sites to others -
Obama is a racial JEW, his mother 'white' ashkenzi jew - ALL of them jews, also the scum bushes. The fraud 'government' was made up by jews, look at 'washington' face on dollar, other currency, different type jew faces, all scum lying fraud JEWS. The 'constitution' their 'states' bs a proven fraud. Their 'laws' are fraud. http://jim.com/treason.htm copy page, ignore rest of site, sites bait with L. Spooner then use other bs to distract from the fact that we are free. All 'law' is based on contract between men. There is no other form of law. Any other claim of 'law' is but cons making up fraud papers to dictate 'laws' to 'tax' and kill you. See washinton's face on the dollar, jew, same as the rest, the bogus 'founders' didn’t 'found' anything, all cons, and dupes just went along. The so-called 'consitution' is a fraud. They made up the bogus 'government' and 'states' to 'tax' dupes to get themselves trillions in weapons. The jews are anarchists in a tribe, using bogus 'government' as cover for their robbing and mass schemes. The only freedom is nature anarchism and making our own tribes. The jew doesn't want anyone else to figure that out, so they are the only tribe.
Recognize Jew FACES - thezog.info - see all pages at right, also top of main page 'required reading' page, bottom half of list copy articles from vnn. don't waste time at vnn, also run by them just see pages, copy pages for backup.
More FACES http://web.archive.org/web/20100825152627/http://jewishfaces.com/banking.html -see all catagory pages at top -
they are behind porno scum smut to break up families, all the schemes, fraud 'wars', see page obama JEW
holo fraud
leuchter report at archive.org
Copy this for links and to re read. Pass on links/sites to others -
Bogus Jew trolling. The 'usa' is not a 'being' of itself, he JEWS control the 'usa', the fraud 'wars', the fraud 'federal reserve' fake 'political parties' they are all jew tribe. The jews are mass murders, from scum jew 'washington' and other bogus 'founders' who didn't 'found' anything to obama who is a racial askenazi jew by his white mother, all those in control are jews or work for jews. the 'obama racial jew' post contains a mass of facts on the jews their lies, schemes, mass murders, and, now they have all the weapons, their plans now to exterminate masses by chemtrail virus.
Others, see 'obama racial jew' post above.
hidden comments, have to click show comments button, and slide bar over before REAL comments appear. Know who owns you. open all comments, see 'jew posts' below.