obama..takes care of our vets

innocent bystanders = militants

[Danzig]

Originally Posted by Coach Pants

innocent bystanders = militants

yep, if they're a certain age and male, they're obviously militants. the one article i read-if they posthumously find that a 'militant' wasn't one, well they'll remove that tag. fat lot of good it does the dead guy.

[Danzig]

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/06/is_drone_war_moral/

Protocol I of the Geneva Convention clearly states that there is a legal requirement to accept the surrender of an individual who expresses the intent to surrender himself. Such a person is literally considered “outside of combat” and thus even if he is a combatant at the point where he surrenders he is as illegitimate a target as any other civilian. Drone warfare, of course, offers no inherent facility to deal with such individuals, save for killing them or conversely allowing them safe passage — the latter being an extremely unlikely outcome in most cases. The oft-horrific result of such a circumstance has been noted by the people most intimately familiar with the program itself. As former vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff James Cartwright put it, “To me, the weakness in the drone activity is that if there’s no one on the ground, and the person puts his hands out, he can’t surrender … What makes it worse with a Predator is you’re actually watching it. You know when he puts his hands up.”


Roughly speaking, there are two types of drone strikes that can be carried out: ones where the identity of the target is known and ones where it is not. The latter are known as “signature strikes” – drone strikes that are carried out against targets whose names, ages, occupations and political sympathies are completely unknown but who are still killed based on the opinions of those observing from abroad as to whether they are connected to militant activity. Behavior that may arouse such suspicion includes a group of males meeting together in an area considered hostile, a car driving in an area where militants are believed to be operating and other highly speculative and unverifiable rationales. In the revelations about the Obama administration’s secret “kill lists,” it also came out what exactly the official definition of a “militant” is from the White House’s perspective: “All military-age males in a strike zone.” In other words: Every man killed by a drone is by official definition a militant according to the U.S. government and correspondingly the news organizations who release reports regularly citing “militant” deaths.



As many have noted, this policy of “kill first, ask questions later” is tantamount to extra-judicial murder and the supposed moral benefit of firing accurate missiles is greatly reduced when you don’t even know who is on the other end of them.

[Danzig]

the same people saying bush should be 'on trial for war crimes' say nothing about obama and his use of 'signature' strikes. bush was bad because he ordered captured militants to gitmo and other bases.
but obama-he just kills them and others with drone strikes, so it's all okey-dokey.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Danzig

the same people saying bush should be 'on trial for war crimes' say nothing about obama and his use of 'signature' strikes.

Nonsense. You could read the lefty world more. There are plenty of lefties that are refusing to vote for Obama, and far more lefties that would put Obama up on charges at the Hague immediately than neocon right wingers who forgive because they secretly get off on the aggression, while bemoaning the lack of defense contracts compared to Iraq.

The right has forgiven Bush, even if he can't travel to Europe without be arrested as a war criminal.

[Rudeboyelvis]

Originally Posted by Danzig

the same people saying bush should be 'on trial for war crimes' say nothing about obama and his use of 'signature' strikes. bush was bad because he ordered captured militants to gitmo and other bases.
but obama-he just kills them and others with drone strikes, so it's all okey-dokey.

The daughter of the assistant Police Chief of St. Petersburg was killed last week in Afghanistan along with three other by a suicide bomber dressed as an Afghani Intelligence Officer.

Here's a link to the story in the local paper - though it doesn't go into much detail surrounding the circumstances:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/militar...nistan/1256424

What is very interesting to note, is that the suicide bomber previously had no ties whatsoever to Al Queda or the Taliban - he was a simple tribesman caring for his family.
That was until a drone wiped out some of his family - or specifically, an uncle who had held a fairly high stature within the tribe, and by tribal law, his unprovoked attack and subsequent death was required to be avenged.

So there you have it. It isn't bad enough to unilaterally occupy a sovereign nation and go to war against an undefined enemy, with no exit strategy or even so much as an end game, but now we are giving the non-Al Queda afghani's an excuse to be recruited to kill our kids. But BigDumb loves it -

[Danzig]

yeah, that was mentioned in an article i read about the drone strikes. that people who weren't involved are becoming so because their relatives are killed and were in no way involved as terrorists.
a bad war is a bad war, regardless of who, or how it's being waged. a 'war' on terror has as much of a chance of ultimate success as a war on drugs.

the terror 'war' can't be waged conventionally, because it's not a country. that explains why we're still in afganistan after all these years, with no winning end in sight. terrorists are individuals in various countries. they're criminals and must be handled the same as any other criminal. they should have never been elevated to combatant status. they aren't combatants. they're members of gangs essentially.