Question about unmanned drones

Twice today now, I've heard/read that unmanned drones can fire missiles. The first mention was in this blog by a Canadian journalist who was kidnapped and miraculously later released (the interview is interesting too):

Kidnapped by Ansar Al-Islam: How Scott Taylor Survived and Was Saved in Iraq
(Canadian journalist) by Christopher Deliso
http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=3606
Taylor's blog http://www.espritdecorps.ca/new_page_243.htm

And the 2nd was just now on Fox News about an Hamas leader killed by an unmanned drone firing at his vehicle (or so say some eye witnesses).

My question: I guess these are remote controlled with video capability and someone back at the ranch pulls the trigger when a target is in sight, is that right?

You guessed it. Or they can be programmed to match targets, if one fits its profile it can fire automatically.

He says there was much debate over whether the Predator should be armed or not. The Air Force didn't want to arm unmanned drones, but the CIA did. THe CIA won the argument, and the Predators are now owned and maintained by the Air Force, but tasked by the CIA. As of Feb. 2001, Predators became capable of carrying and launching a Hellfire missile.

Graham tells about observing a Predator flight in progress over Afghanistan. The pilot was in a control room in CIA Headquarters at Langley, Virginia. Several screens aid the pilot. One shows what the Predator is "seeing". Another shows the Predator's progress against a map of the area. Another shows the Predator's info: altitude, speed, etc.

The thing can fly 400 miles from its base, and can fly for 24 hours. Evidently, it can be piloted from the other side of the world.

-- which we assume to be a rather small craft -- to controlling a boeing 757?

Remote control aircraft of that size exist.

Now, rewiring the aircraft controls can be done. It can even be done so the flight crew wouldn't notice until you took over.

AT WHICH POINT SAID FLIGHT CREW SCREAMS BLOODY MURDER OVER THE RADIO!

-- If they've been disabled, killed, etc.

and flown to unknown destinations. What hit WTC and Pentagon were drones.

What's easier...

1. The CIA (or other sinister group) convincing a bunch of fanatics to hijack a set of planes and fly them into buildings OR
2. The CIA subsitutes a set of planes with drones and flys the drones into buildings while murdering the passengers and crews of the planes and disposing of the planes without anyone knowing.

Plan 1 needs only a small group. Plan 2 requires a large group. The larger the group, the more likely the leaks.

According to his stripper girl friend, Mohammed Atta ate PORK, swore, drank, had wads of cash, multiple identities, and snorted coke (among many peculiar things concerning our would-be "fanatics," their lives and training about which you've heard virtually nothing on ABCNBCCBSCNNETC).

Now, how do you "convince" that kind of "magic fanatic" to do a kamikaze, eh?

LOL

Wake UP. The whole "fundamentalist terrorist" issue is a bogus back story. The 9/11 event was STAGED to achieve a particular political result and you and millions of other terrified people around the world fell for it hook line and sinker.

When designing a HISTORY SHAPING CRIME OF STATE the one thing you NEVER want to do is rely on the potential for human error to screw it up. Those special effect fire-balls needed an egnitor. Otherwise, who would believe that the fire impact was enough to blast and burn off the insulation material that protected the steel girders of the towers. Without that, you can not explain the collapse of those towers.

BWWAAAAHAHAHA

NEVER MAKE THE PLAN MORE COMPLEX THEN NEEDED.

It was not required to collapse the towers, nor fly planes into 3 buildings, nor kill 4 planeloads of people to accomplish the objective.

The 'Muslim fanatic' acted just like the Catholic Crusaders, on a Holy Mission For God: They had been Forgiven all thier sins beforehand, therefore they could commit all they wanted to.

IF it was a conspiracy, and they needed 1000s of casualties, then setting off a big set of bombs in the bottom of the WTC would have provided them... just plant the evidence that it was OBL, and we're off and running. Hijacking 4 planes, rigging them for remote control, planting exposives on the planes and buildings, fireing missile into the Pentagon, etc. ad nausuem is NOT needed. Too many conspirators, too likely to be found out. Easier to believe 19 (or 20) fanatics, plus foriegn leaders, PLUS CIA assistance hiding it.

I have no objection to your basic premise NEVER MAKE THE PLAN MORE COMPLEX THEN NEEDED except to point out that it begs the question: WHAT (precisely) WAS NEEDED?

9/11 happened and you seem to assume that IT (alone) was "what was needed"--that "what was needed" was to wantonly murder thousands of people while slamming icons of American economic and military power, using conveniently available commercial airliners as WMD.

The logical inconsistency in this based on your own premise is that Jihadists could have done MUCH MORE DAMMAGE, perhaps with even less means. I doubt that it would have been any MORE difficult, for example, to dive bomb three or four hijacked planes into completely unprotected NUCLEAR REACTORS around the country than it was to do what was done. The outcome? Likely strategic consequences in MAGNITUDES of greater significance. Potentially thousands of immediate casualties and MILLIONS of long range casualties from radiation exposure, not to mention contaminating everything down wind for tens of thousands of years and not to mention vastly more significant impact upon the nations economy, also long term. To hell with SYMBOLIC warfare, THAT would be STRATEGIC thinking that could have done real and lasting damage to this country.

But, I suppose, Osama just didn't think of it. How fucking lucky for us. :eyes:

There is NO DOUBT that there is a conspiracy. Absolutely no doubt. The question is precisely WHO is BEHIND this conspiracy?

You echo the conspiracy theory of the National Security State run Federal Government and their subservient Corporate Media. According to you, the events of 9/11 were quote: AN ATTACK:/quote and that the "attackers" were Fundamentalist Jihadist Muslims.

Now I ask you, what EVIDENCE do you have to back up that assertion? Good GOD, even the FBI -- better known as the Federal Bureau of Obfuscation -- has damn little evidence to back that up.

There is FAR MORE EVIDENCE that what happened that day was something else altogether. But, of course, the National Security State run Federal Government and their subservient Corporate Media isn't telling you this. Quite the contrary. They are busily doing everything they can to obfuscate this evidence, ridicule it, show how it is so "irrational" that no sane person would give it a moments doubt. They want us to believe that AT WORST CASE this was an "intelligence failure" and a "military failure" and a "command failure."

Why do you believe this? Other than them showing you the images of the planes hitting the towers over and over, the towers collapsing; other than the talking heads every time they mention the events of 9/11 using the words "attack" and "terrorists" and "fundamentalist Muslims" and "Osama" and showing you pictures of Atta and his 'pals' -- what actual, verifiable EVIDENCE have they given you to back up these assertions. You believe them, obviously. You aren't LIEING to me when you say that this is what happened. You BELIEVE it to be true.

You do know they are lying to you about many things, right? You know, for example, that George W. Bush DID NOT WIN the election of 2000, right? You know he was INSTALLED, right? There is no big secret about it or anything -- but, then again, no one ever really TALKS about it now, do they?

You do know, don't you, that the United States was PLANNING to invade Afghanistan MONTHS before 9/11, right? If you don't know this, then you need to look at some of the well established and well documented 9/11 time-lines.
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&theme=afghanwar

You KNOW, don't you, that the PNAC players -- the very men empowered by the Bush Installation -- had written in their position paper "Rebuilding Americas Defenses," that to move the United States toward a greater global MILITARY suprimacy a "catalyzing event" "like a new Peral Harbor" would likely be necessary?
cf: http://www.newamercancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf page 63.

And it is APPARENT TO YOU, I must assume, that the Federal Government LIED about WMD in Iraq and Iraq's involvement in 9/11, thus rationalizing an illegal, unlawful, immoral INVASION of that sovereign nation that has cost over 1,000 lives of our own troops and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives.

The National Security State run Federal Government LIES TO YOU via their electronic media ON A DAILY BASIS ABOUT ALMOST EVERYTHING and has been doing so most if not all of your life. Of course it is difficult to believe they would ever LIE or, failing that, not tell the WHOLE truth -- and yet we see that they do lie and they do "fudge" the truth on a regular basis.

At this point it gets very "tricksy", of course, BECAUSE, like you, MOST OF THE PEOPLE TELLING THE LIES HAVE BEEN CONVINCED THE LIES THEY PARROT ARE TRUE. Not all, of course, but most. (The ones with the most power and influence are the ones who can LIE MOST CONVINCINGLY as needed.)

Now, perhaps at this point you may think I am simply some paranoid nut. Obviously I don't think so. As evidence, I had been expecting a "9/11 like" event for several years before it happened. Not fearfully, but watchfully, as in a prediction made to test the veracity of a theory. I had no idea what, precisely, was going to happen but I'm 56 years old and I've been watching the flow of history unfold for a nice long time now and it looked to me like we were headed toward major social turbulence. The installation of George W. Bush as President of the United States, something I steadfastly opposed, was, to me, a clear sign that we were in for a VERY bumpy ride.

Back in 1971, Gregory Bateson, one of the geniuses of the century just passed said:

"If I am right, the whole of our thinking about what we are and what other people are has got to be restructured. This is not funny, and I do not know how long we have to do it in. If we continue to operate on the premises that were fashionable in the prescybernetic era, and which were especially underlined and strengthened during the Industrial Revolution, which seemed to validate the Darwinian unit of survival, we may have twenty or thirty years before the logical reductio ad absurdum of our old positions destroy us. Nobody knows how long we have, under the present system, before some disaster strikes us, more serious than the destruction of any group of nations.

Of course Bateson wasn't speaking of politics directly, but, rather, of the social and ecological consequences of inaccurate Epistemologies.

This is what we are dealing with here.

SIGH. Our survival as a society and a civilization depend upon having an accurate "map" of the REAL WORLD. It was made quite clear almost a generation ago now that building an advanced, high-energy dependent Civilization on NON RENEWABLE ENERGY sources was a BIG MISTAKE; that doing so would lead PRECISELY to the current geopolitical situation. The neo-cons knew this. They've been DRIVING US TOWARD this EVOLUTIONARY BOTTLENECK for 35 years.

And here we are.

PROBLEM: Not enough energy resources to sustain advanced civilization.

SOLUTION: Secure Strategic acquisition of energy resources while implementing rapid depopulation, especially among competitive groups.

PROBLEM: Humanistic Idealism in the form of moral scruples prevents implementation of Solution above.

SOLUTION: Implementation of JUSTIFICATION SCENARIO.

From Gustave Gilbert's book Nuremberg Diary:

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Edit to add:

The social reality bubble we live in is imploding around us at an accelerating rate. This is MY basic premise. If I am right then you can EXPECT increasing cognizant dissonance as is now occurring between many DUers, for example, and their inability to comprehend WHY media doesn't report the most important things and why Democrats in Congress continue to do things that SUPPORT, rather than counter, the almost gravity like pull of this Nations free-fall toward unmitigated fascism. I do see some slim signs that there are some in the military and elsewhere who want to halt this situation and are searching feverishly for a way to avoid outcomes that have already been set in motion. I wish I could say that I have much hope. I don't.

The truly aggravating thing is that all this could have, at least potentially, been avoided if our RULING CLASSES were motivated by something other than the self-preservation instinct and out and out greed. But, of course, I suppose if they were motivated by anything else, they wouldn't be the RULING CLASSES, now would they?

Fascinating. I should probably get Graham's book (along with about 95 others).