Drone Warfare.
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oneshott wrote...
Drone ops are heavily regulated, but of course not all of it is declassified (I'll tell you what isn't classified)
We can use drones for whatever is required for an operation, be it for escort or attacks on militant groups. I can't tell you of any specific operations or how they went, but I can tell you that we take great pains to ensure we have the right people before we are authorized to strike. In fact, it's often that we tell some commander no, or some commander tells us no, because there was not enough to get PID (positive identification) that it was a lawful combatant we were looking at.
Now that last bit of your sentence got me thinking a little more, and I want to make one thing very clear; the CIA does not have free reign over drone operations, we do not just point and click, America does not use drones as a toy nor wield them with lack of judgement. The United States, nor members of it's armed forces, do not, DO NOT, intentionally or purposefully engage civilians of any kind. Ever. Period. End of Story.
I apologize for not choosing my words properly. I fully understand that the U.S. does not outright engage on civilians. What I was trying to ask was if there ever a mission you were involved in where an attack on a possible high valued target also caused civilian casualties or injuries unintentionally. I've heard many stories of civilians and kids getting hurt and/or killed by drone attacks in the past year.
Of course we're not using the same playbook as Vietnam, where napalm and agent orange runs over villages proved disastrous, but I'm skeptical towards just how effective Drone Warfare is. Reports from the CIA state that since May of 2010 there have been no documented cases of civilian casualties, which contradicts many reports from independent sources such as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
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Aud1o Blood wrote...
I prefer my "cynical asshole" pennant, to adorn the points I make.Righteous or otherwise, drones are used to instill fear in the government's enemies.
You can deny whatever you want, but when nobody is around to watch, Geneva goes out the window.
The only enemy I'm aware of are the kind of people who blow up women and children instead of attacking soldiers directly, and if you don't think that's an enemy worth scaring then you are the definition of apathetic.
You too are of course free to claim that the second someone isn't watching the US, we start breaking every rule in the book, but that doesn't make it true. I doubt you fully understand or appreciate the demanding standards that we hold ourselves to during operations, but I am not blind to the opposite side of the coin.
Wow my name is really lon wrote...
What I was trying to ask was if there ever a mission you were involved in where an attack on a possible high valued target also caused civilian casualties or injuries unintentionally. I've heard many stories of civilians and kids getting hurt and/or killed by drone attacks in the past year. I would be a liar if I tried to deny that civilians have been hurt/killed during operations. An unfortunate truth is that accidents can and will happen; even with all our checks, double checks, and then starting it all over again to be sure. To answer the question, I have never been given an order, nor independently made the decision to fire on what turned out to actually be innocents. Our standards of operations give us good guidance on how to tell good people from bad people.
I am also familiar with what I think Aud1o is talking about with regards to violations of Geneva. There are always going to be good eggs and not so good eggs in any country. Sometimes these not so good eggs turn into real fucking bad eggs and think that just because they can take someone's life means that they are entitled to it.
Those men are most definitely not entitled, and I think it unfortunate that the world sees the actions of a few dishonorable men and use them as a basis to judge our entire country on.
