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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."

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  1. Re:Candidate Obama by Mr.+Cancelled · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    If you look at (fairly) recent history, I think you'll see a pattern with the 2 main parties: Republicans are open about what they plan to do, so people take offense with it and treat them as "haters", painting them to be old fashioned religious zealots (and to be fair, some are).

    Democrats on the other hand have a tendency to say whatever the voting public wants to hear in order to get votes, but they often lie and do something different once in office. Obama has lots of example of this behavior, as does Hillary (and many others, but they're the focus due to the election)

    Personally, I prefer honesty and openness vs. lies and half-truths. I'm sick of being lied to, and Obama has lied a lot.

    There's a big difference between an elected official who understands they're there to represent the people, versus an elitist who thinks that the people are not capable of making the right decisions. The latter is the "nanny government" mentality, which is what we're dealing with here.