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> I find that a rather unlikely level of incompetence. I believe government is the only place where that level of incompetence is common. The problem with the

by n3rdy 14y ago

> I find that a rather unlikely level of incompetence. I believe government is the only place where that level of incompetence is common. The problem with the 2% figure is that 2% of even 3,000 would only be 60 innocent people killed, but 160+ children have been killed.. so if someone is saying its only 2%, how do 5% of these deaths turn out to be children? http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drone-data/ http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drone... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/us-drone-strikes-are-caus_b_2224627.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-greenwald/us-drone-stri... The military is denying that the number of children killed is that high. http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/us-reported-drone-strike-casualties-off-mark/story?id=14290464#.UNbJDG9m7Kc http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/us-reported-drone-strike-casua... If our government would share their data with the organizations that did these investigations, maybe it would show they were wrong, but I doubt it. We know the precise number of military causalities, we even know the precise number of police officers injured or killed, our government is meticulous about reporting on those, but try and find out how many U.S citizens are killed annually by police and you won't get anywhere. If they won't accurately report how many of us are killed by police, what are the chances that they are keeping track of foreign civilian casualties any more accurately?

Dove 14y ago
I believe government is the only place where that level of incompetence is common. Ha! No. No, even clerks at the DMV get things right a whole lot more often than that. ;) And coming from drone operators and intelligence officers? That's completely unbelievable to me. Those guys are professionals. Quite the opposite, I've seen plenty of footage of the systems in operation, and I find a collateral damage rate of 2% or lower completely believable. With a drone, you can be watching your target for tens of minutes, making sure he's really the guy you want. Maybe you haven't seen it from a drone camera? It looks like this: http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-08/video-annotated-predator-drone-attack http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/20... The problem with the 2% figure is that 2% of even 3,000 would only be 60 innocent people killed, but 160+ children have been killed.. Well, it's 2% "so far in 2012". I think they said it was 11% over the life of the program, and that it's gotten much better over time. So even if the numbers are accurate, that still works out. The CIA says it isn't that high, though, and I'm inclined to trust them on that. They do have cameras on the target when they take the shot and all. And I don't know about you, but it's a bit too paranoid for me to believe they're making figures up out of whole cloth. Why not share the data with news organizations? The camera footage almost certainly contains classified information about system capabilities and tactics. From their perspective, keeping systems effective is 100000% more important than looking good in the media. Especially since you look bad in the media anyway, even if you give them all the data (just ask scientists). try and find out how many U.S citizens are killed annually by police and you won't get anywhere. What, like this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States_2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforce... I put "us citizens killed annually by police" into google and it was the first link. What are the chances that they are keeping track of foreign civilian casualties? Pretty good. They care deeply about the effectiveness of their systems.
Dove 14y ago
accountswu, I can't reply to you, as both comments are [dead]. I don't know if they've been downvoted to death or what, but that's why my reply is up here. Would you support drone attacks to kill mass murderers that happen to reside in your neighborhood? I think the level of collateral damage is too high for normal law enforcement. Police don't normally need to leave craters. ;) If we were talking about warfare, though -- foreign spies, terrorists? Especially if my city/state were protecting them? Hell yes, bring it on. You're a wolf in a Dove's clothing. Ha! I'd never thought about the political connotations of the name until this moment--it means other things to me. It's not my intent to mislead; I'm nowhere close to dove territory, politically speaking. Maybe you can tell. ;) Can Obama kill you and then claim you are a militant leader? That would be pretty difficult. It's not as though he operates with no oversight. Nor is it as though he doesn't have political opponents who would be all over that sort of scandal.
- accountswu 14y ago
  I hit the submit button a couple of times due to ISP latency and I think the multiple submit blocked me from posting for a while and probably has to do with greyed out links. I don't see downvotes (even though I know the bitter truth is not appreciated by many folks here who like to think highly of the murderous military industrial complex regime). Did you read anything about the new definition of militants that has been adopted by Mr. Hopey Changey? Any male adult in the region where Obama wants to play game is considered a "militant" by default. "In particular, given that the above link established that 2% of drone kills were on media-confirmed terrorist leaders, that means your article is claiming all the other kills, all 3000+, have been on innocent civilians." So if some media confirms that "according to the government officials a high-ranking terrorist nicknamed Dove was successfully killed in the latest drone strike" then your murder would be a justified murder and your loved ones can sleep well at night trusting the government and media that you must be a bad guy....?
- accountswu 14y ago
  Hopefully one day you would want to apply the rule of law to the lowly non-Americans and not kill them with a remote control button but ask for a trial of any criminals if there is any evidence incriminating them. BTW what do you think of the recent "media confirmation" of a successful strike on terrorists in Yemen which later turned out to be a murder of ALL innocent civilians and not one militant? 11 lowly Yemenis were "liberated" from life within seconds and more died later on the same day. Now the entire village is ready to join the bad guys to seek revenge of the murder of innocent women, children and regular folks. http://news.antiwar.com/2012/12/26/yemen-fears-backlash-as-drone-strike-victims-side-with-al-qaeda/ http://news.antiwar.com/2012/12/26/yemen-fears-backlash-as-d... "In early September, Yemeni officials sought to bury stories about a US drone strike killing 14 civilians in an attack on a highway by insisting they were actually their own warplanes that launched the attack. Eventually, the truth came out." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/19/newtown-drones-children-deaths http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/19/newtown-... "Consider this irony: Monday was the three-year anniversary of President Obama's cruise missile and cluster-bomb attack on al-Majala in Southern Yemen that ended the lives of 14 women and 21 children: one more child than was killed by the Newtown gunman. In the US, that mass slaughter received not even a small fraction of the attention commanded by Newtown, and prompted almost no objections (in predominantly Muslim nations, by contrast, it received ample attention and anger)."

by n3rdy 14y ago

Dove 14y ago

I believe government is the only place where that level of incompetence is common. Ha! No. No, even clerks at the DMV get things right a whole lot more often than that. ;) And coming from drone operators and intelligence officers? That's completely unbelievable to me. Those guys are professionals. Quite the opposite, I've seen plenty of footage of the systems in operation, and I find a collateral damage rate of 2% or lower completely believable. With a drone, you can be watching your target for tens of minutes, making sure he's really the guy you want. Maybe you haven't seen it from a drone camera? It looks like this: http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-08/video-annotated-predator-drone-attack http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/20... The problem with the 2% figure is that 2% of even 3,000 would only be 60 innocent people killed, but 160+ children have been killed.. Well, it's 2% "so far in 2012". I think they said it was 11% over the life of the program, and that it's gotten much better over time. So even if the numbers are accurate, that still works out. The CIA says it isn't that high, though, and I'm inclined to trust them on that. They do have cameras on the target when they take the shot and all. And I don't know about you, but it's a bit too paranoid for me to believe they're making figures up out of whole cloth. Why not share the data with news organizations? The camera footage almost certainly contains classified information about system capabilities and tactics. From their perspective, keeping systems effective is 100000% more important than looking good in the media. Especially since you look bad in the media anyway, even if you give them all the data (just ask scientists). try and find out how many U.S citizens are killed annually by police and you won't get anywhere. What, like this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States_2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforce... I put "us citizens killed annually by police" into google and it was the first link. What are the chances that they are keeping track of foreign civilian casualties? Pretty good. They care deeply about the effectiveness of their systems.

Dove 14y ago

accountswu, I can't reply to you, as both comments are [dead]. I don't know if they've been downvoted to death or what, but that's why my reply is up here. Would you support drone attacks to kill mass murderers that happen to reside in your neighborhood? I think the level of collateral damage is too high for normal law enforcement. Police don't normally need to leave craters. ;) If we were talking about warfare, though -- foreign spies, terrorists? Especially if my city/state were protecting them? Hell yes, bring it on. You're a wolf in a Dove's clothing. Ha! I'd never thought about the political connotations of the name until this moment--it means other things to me. It's not my intent to mislead; I'm nowhere close to dove territory, politically speaking. Maybe you can tell. ;) Can Obama kill you and then claim you are a militant leader? That would be pretty difficult. It's not as though he operates with no oversight. Nor is it as though he doesn't have political opponents who would be all over that sort of scandal.

accountswu 14y ago
I hit the submit button a couple of times due to ISP latency and I think the multiple submit blocked me from posting for a while and probably has to do with greyed out links. I don't see downvotes (even though I know the bitter truth is not appreciated by many folks here who like to think highly of the murderous military industrial complex regime). Did you read anything about the new definition of militants that has been adopted by Mr. Hopey Changey? Any male adult in the region where Obama wants to play game is considered a "militant" by default. "In particular, given that the above link established that 2% of drone kills were on media-confirmed terrorist leaders, that means your article is claiming all the other kills, all 3000+, have been on innocent civilians." So if some media confirms that "according to the government officials a high-ranking terrorist nicknamed Dove was successfully killed in the latest drone strike" then your murder would be a justified murder and your loved ones can sleep well at night trusting the government and media that you must be a bad guy....?
accountswu 14y ago
Hopefully one day you would want to apply the rule of law to the lowly non-Americans and not kill them with a remote control button but ask for a trial of any criminals if there is any evidence incriminating them. BTW what do you think of the recent "media confirmation" of a successful strike on terrorists in Yemen which later turned out to be a murder of ALL innocent civilians and not one militant? 11 lowly Yemenis were "liberated" from life within seconds and more died later on the same day. Now the entire village is ready to join the bad guys to seek revenge of the murder of innocent women, children and regular folks. http://news.antiwar.com/2012/12/26/yemen-fears-backlash-as-drone-strike-victims-side-with-al-qaeda/ http://news.antiwar.com/2012/12/26/yemen-fears-backlash-as-d... "In early September, Yemeni officials sought to bury stories about a US drone strike killing 14 civilians in an attack on a highway by insisting they were actually their own warplanes that launched the attack. Eventually, the truth came out." http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/19/newtown-drones-children-deaths http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/19/newtown-... "Consider this irony: Monday was the three-year anniversary of President Obama's cruise missile and cluster-bomb attack on al-Majala in Southern Yemen that ended the lives of 14 women and 21 children: one more child than was killed by the Newtown gunman. In the US, that mass slaughter received not even a small fraction of the attention commanded by Newtown, and prompted almost no objections (in predominantly Muslim nations, by contrast, it received ample attention and anger)."