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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.
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....
Just think yourself lucky that you aren't the CEO of Volkswagen right now. I bet he's keeping a good lookout.
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!
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?
You'd better believe he's counting his blessings that Al Gore didn't win.
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...
That sounds so cute. Much better than murder.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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?
1. This hasn't much to do with privacy, but about speaking truthfully.
2. Snowden didn't leak these documents.
No worries, the drones that Americans use aren't licensed for flying in German airspace ;-)
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
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
If Algore had won, that first foreign policy crisis, when the US reconnaisance plane was forced to land and then looted by the Chinese, would have resulted in Algore ordering the Pentagon to give all the blueprints and plans for the plane and its equipment to China (this incident occurred before 9/11)
When 9/11 then occurred a little while later, algore would have went on an apology tour to the middle east.
We wouldn't now be buying Chinese made goods at Walmart now, the retailers would be Chinese themselves.
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.
Hmmm... did Snowden release these? Why are you blaming him?
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!"
When Gore was in office, NATO (I mean the CIA) blew up the Chinese embassy in Belgrade with guided munitions.
What are you using for the basis for this "Algore" anti-history fanfiction?
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?
and that in and of itself isn't suspicious at all.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.