> there is still a human pulling the trigger. There is a human pulling the trigger in New Mexico and an anonymous on-screen chat message from Washington inform

> there is still a human pulling the trigger. There is a human pulling the trigger in New Mexico and an anonymous on-screen chat message from Washington informing the operator that, no that little figure they just accidentally blasted halfway across the world was most definitely a "dog". http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/pain-continues-after-war-for-american-drone-pilot-a-872726.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/pain-continues-aft... >> For more than five years, Brandon Bryant worked in an oblong, windowless container about the size of a trailer, where the air-conditioning was kept at 17 degrees Celsius (63 degrees Fahrenheit) and, for security reasons, the door couldn't be opened. Bryant and his coworkers sat in front of 14 computer monitors and four keyboards. When Bryant pressed a button in New Mexico, someone died on the other side of the world. THAT is the difference between a missile fired by a manned jet or other vehicle. Complete detachment from the people they're killing. "When Bryant pressed a button in New Mexico, someone died on the other side of the world." See how that goes? They didn't "really" murder someone, they push a button and someone died on the other side of the world. And I think that's not an incorrect view of what it is. There's various degrees of personal up-closeness when you actually kill another human, with bare hands, a knife, a gun, grenades/explosives, that bring with them gruweling psychological effects because for most people it is so deeply wrong ... and on the very other end of the spectrum there is "press a button and someone dies on the other side of the world", just a few steps removed from "buying a hot dog makes you somewhat responsible for a number of animal's deaths". If that doesn't disgust you to the core of your being, then I don't quite know how I could explain it more clearly. >> Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach. >> "Did we just kill a kid?" he asked the man sitting next to him. >> "Yeah, I guess that was a kid," the pilot replied. >> "Was that a kid?" they wrote into a chat window on the monitor. >> Then, someone they didn't know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. "No. That was a dog," the person wrote. (BTW, this is not the same article I read a few years ago, it seems to fail to mention that Bryant was fired over this incident a few days after)