From a great McClatchy piece:
Obama’s drone speech appeared to expand those who are targeted in drone strikes and other undisclosed “lethal actions” in apparent anticipation of an overhaul of the 2001 congressional resolution authorizing the use of force against al Qaida and allied groups that supported the 9/11 attacks on the United States. In every previous speech, interview and congressional testimony, Obama and his top aides have said that drone strikes are restricted to killing confirmed “senior operational leaders of al Qaida and associated forces” plotting imminent violent attacks against the United States. But Obama dropped that wording Thursday, making no reference at all to senior operational leaders. While saying that the United States is at war with al Qaida and its associated forces, he used a variety of descriptions of potential targets, from “those who want to kill us” and “terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat” to “all potential terrorist targets.”
Needless to say, Americans won’t notice the Lawyer-in-Chief’s masterful linguistic manipulation.
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According to the New York Times, probably every single person killed by a drone was a senior terrorist. It is possible (but not likely) that a very few innocents were killed as collateral damage, but, if so, the terrorists are 110% guilty of the deaths of those innocents, since the US has to protect itself. Some of the extreme leftists writing for the New York Times question the unrestricted program. Obviously, Bush, Jr and Obama have only killed terrorists, but if there are absolutely no restrictions on the program, might we someday have to worry about one of their successors killing innocents? Nah. The President of the US can never do anything wrong.
However, the Manchester Guardian (and a Rall cartoon from a few months ago) say that the most reliable independent experts have concluded that fewer than 2% of those killed have the slightest possibility that could have been terrorists. These experts say that, of the thousands killed, 98% couldn’t possibly have been guilty of terrorism, and were absolutely no threat of any kind to the US.
Of course, I believe the US president and the US press. The US government doesn’t need to close subversive newspapers–angry crowds will toss well deserved Molotov cocktails at any publisher who doesn’t stick to the Truth, and the Truth is that the US is the best country that ever was, the Greatest Force For Good that ever was, and the US has only fought for Good against Evil, never doing anything wrong, never killing anyone who didn’t deserve it.
Mr Rall should recall that President Obama said he wasn’t planning to use weapons drones inside the US. Unless it’s necessary.
So keep looking up.
Consider that Apple followed the laws as written by Congress (which is now howling about how Apple applied the laws that Congress wrote). If Congress is unhappy about how Apple has worked under these laws, they have to the power to, well, re-write those laws. Of course, a lot of major donors who also use these laws might become upset if the laws were actually changed. Easier to yell at Apple, and threaten them until they realize that some of those profits need to go to election campaigns. I think there’s a term for private organizations that threaten lawful businesses engaged in lawful commerce with harm if they don’t ‘pay up’. Oh yeah…extortion.
And President Obama is green-lighting the deployment of police drones within U.S. borders. Philadelphia’s bombing of itself was merely premature; this will be the enforcement of the future.
Right on, Ted – Nattering nabobs of negativism vs. simpering sycophants of sophistry! – I just had a facebook friend post a picture of an American flag with the sentence below: “They hate our flag, but they don’t love our welfare system!” – an incredible mix of apples, oranges, blind patriotism and gullibility, eh?
Dron’in, Dron’in, Dron’in
Famlies, kids and moan’in
Da’ body count is ris’in, Rawhide!
Don’t try to understand ’em,
Just drone and shoot and kill’em,
Soon there will be no place to hide…
My hearts calculatin’
There’s no end to the hate’in’,
Waiting at the end of our ride.
Ted is overestimating the American Public.
He is excessively optimistic.
A few months back, I spoke to an Army vet. I mentioned drones. She didn’t know what I was talking about. I have friends and associates in the news business who miss entire scandals.
Anecdotes aside, the issues of the day don’t trickle down to a shocking number of people.
A significant portion of the population doesn’t even know that drones exist.
We don’t need to be distracted from truth. We aren’t interested in it in the first place.
Mr Obama is a clever and cautious constitutional lawyer, who works by establishing a «legal precedent» for those actions, however unconstitutional they may seem to be (5th Amendment on indictment of a Grand Jury, due process of law), that he desires to take. How does he do so ? By fiat, of course, by killing people first and arranging the legal justification afterwards. Land of the free, home of the brave….
Henri