Or, maybe getting paychecks from Moscow and Beijing.

president at least the Left was constantly speaking out about it which made it harder for them to hide the program. But over the past several years, there has been a deafening silence and it is reprehensible imo.

I hope all the attention it is now getting will soon put an end this CIA run killing machine. It's way, way past time and way too late for so many beautiful, innocent children.

Shame on us, especially the Left, for the failure to reign in our government by now. What it says is, we the people are equally guilty and history will record that.

I just want to keep repeating my own personal opposition so that when future generations look back at these discussions they will know that not everyone was willing to sell their souls for politics.

damn these human rights groups and their unwillingness to go along with this!

I'm sick of this being swept under the patriotic rug.

but trust you to bring that false bullshit up.

I honestly don't think you give a damn about the suffering that this is causing. You only care about how it might reflect on the President.

Such as:

What are the alternatives to using drone attacks to disrupting/killing/defeating/keeping at bay the Taliban in Af-Pak?

If the alternative to drones is to withdraw our troops completely and let things backslide to 2001 levels, is it really the moral position to take when doing so would mean tens of thousands of dead children every year due to an increased < 5 child mortality rate?

Yes, war is awful and hideous and kills and maims the innocent. The fight in Af-Pak is no different than every other such war in modern history in that regard.

Those willing to denounce a reality are far more common than those willing to own the alternatives.

I like that website's efforts to get to the "truth" behind 9.11 and Sandy Hook.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=globalresearch.ca+sandy+hook&qs=n&form=QBRE&pq=globalresearch.ca+sandy+hook&sc=0-35&sp=-1&sk=&cvid=0dea08980f3340398de6514b6738defc&adlt=strict


We obviously went into Afghanistan because of AQ (those who cling to the silly pipeline fairy tales need to put down the meth pipe).

But, there have been humanitarian benefits/side-effects to the US invasion. <5 child mortality has declined anywhere from 33% to 50% since 2001. Which means roughly 30-50,000 fewer child deaths per year.

Now, certainly a lot of people in the US are willing to see those numbers reverse themselves if it means an end to drone strikes.

Thank you.

Unsurprising GG's arguably most prolific defender here is sourcing right wing libertarian kooks.

Not even bothering to read another Libya screed by such ilk.

is part of that 'y'all'? I don't think we can decipher correctly comments that appear to refer to nothing that is part of the topic. But perhaps you see something the rest of us don't see, so explaining where you got this, which to me, and I could be wrong and do not want to misjudge anyone, is a not so subtle implication that DUers, who btw, ALWAYS opposed the Drone Program going way way back, are actually Tea Baggers.

That is NOT what you are implying I'm sure, but I'm sure I'm not going to be the only one who might wrongfully think that.

that is so ridiculous and blind that ANY criticism of his policies is met with silliness like suggesting "y'all" want to impeach him perhaps all the idiocy from the rw makes them hyper-sensitive

that wasn't quite so pervasive and interactive under previous administrations.

of getting one.

My concern is always for the innocent. I really have no time for all the other 'stuff'. And that is why I am not a Republican.

Thank you for your comment.

propaganda. i am beginning to agree.

I sometimes think people who are against air strikes are positing a world in which the US would stop and Pakistan wouldn't then send its army back in, with significantly higher civilian casualties. I don't think that's realistic, but maybe I'm wrong.

we can do whatever we want and bomb wherever we please.

I think it would be worse than what we're doing.

I also suggest we stop acting like we can do whatever we want and bomb wherever we please.

We primarily use drones over the territory of the two governments that have asked us to, Yemen and Pakistan, plus in the countries we're still at war in, Iraq and Afghanistan. The second two I'm glad we're stopping (and Iraq is basically entirely stopped at this point); the first two... if the result is that it's keeping the Pakistani and Yemeni armies from going into those areas and having a full scale war again, it's hard for me to say that's a bad thing. (Yes, in both cases we're letting the corrupt and awful governments of those countries get counterinsurgency on the political cheap by blaming us for what they want to do anyways -- it's still killing fewer people, though.)

Pakistani politicians have even said that they want to shoot them down (they're in the minority however).

Basically if an armed drone is flying over territory with even a modicum of any sort of radar facilities and some air power it can be detected and shot down.

In other words in the countries which they have been used it's been tacitly supported.

And Pakistan gets to not get its shit together and the US gets all the blame.

They get more dead militants and get to blame us for any dead civilians.

We'll see after next year whether Islamabad or Washington is lying; both claim the attacks are the other's idea. If we keep doing it after it's no longer supporting a campaign in Afghanistan, then that means Islamabad found some other argument to keep us there.

(Or, we'll get a shooting war between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is just what the world needs right now...)

...and the shooting war you describe does happen.

Guess whose fault it is?

how much is the US really willing to wash its hands of Afghanistan?

My bet is the drones continue to fly until there are no more people caught planting IEDs and shooting guns.

The forever war.