How do we pick targets for drone attacks?

• Cleveland Buck

  

  BoatShoes;1384820 wrote:Fwiw a lot of liberals/democrats are in quite an uproar over these drone memos...

  Let me guess, you aren't though. The president should have the authority to murder anyone he so desires, entirely at his own whim, correct?
• tk421

  

  What happened to the "most transparent administration in history"?
• stlouiedipalma

  Con_Alma;1384420 wrote:I don't necessarily like it at all. It being legislated doesn't change the fluid nature of it's outcome along with it's projected impacts.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ...and I continue to hope that we don't rely on framers opinions to make contemporary military decisions. What you deem as not being a threat is not the same as those who are stewards of making such decisions.

  But many like to cite the framers when it's convenient to them, like the whole issue with gun control. I don't believe the framers had modern weaponry in mind when they drafted the 2nd Amendment, but plenty of people want to hide behind the framers on this issue.
• Con_Alma

  stlouiedipalma;1384889 wrote:But many like to cite the framers when it's convenient to them, like the whole issue with gun control. I don't believe the framers had modern weaponry in mind when they drafted the 2nd Amendment, but plenty of people want to hide behind the framers on this issue.

  I am not one of them ...especially not whne it comes to gun rights. I think you'll find that to be the case in the gun control threads.
• stlouiedipalma

  And I happen to agree with your position.
• Con_Alma

  It appears the executive branch and CIA also agree that it's not the framers intentions that should be the source of decisions when it comes to present day military decision making.
• majorspark

  

  stlouiedipalma;1384889 wrote:But many like to cite the framers when it's convenient to them, like the whole issue with gun control. I don't believe the framers had modern weaponry in mind when they drafted the 2nd Amendment, but plenty of people want to hide behind the framers on this issue.

  But many like to cite the framers when it's convenient to them, like the whole issue with speech control. I don't believe the framers had the internet in mind when they drafted the 1st Amendment, but plenty of people want to hide behind the framers on this issue.
  
  After all why should we allow the possibility of individuals having the power to influence the masses. We need background checks for all bloggers. Also we should limit the amount of words individuals can disseminate to the masses in one blog. I am thinking 25 words should suffice.
• BoatShoes

  Cleveland Buck;1384847 wrote:Let me guess, you aren't though. The president should have the authority to murder anyone he so desires, entirely at his own whim, correct?

  you would be wrong. I am very concerned about drones because they do not have a conscience. This is just more proof That Obama is not the great liberal that we've been waiting for.
• BoatShoes

  majorspark;1384924 wrote:But many like to cite the framers when it's convenient to them, like the whole issue with speech control. I don't believe the framers had the internet in mind when they drafted the 1st Amendment, but plenty of people want to hide behind the framers on this issue.
  
  After all why should we allow the possibility of individuals having the power to influence the masses. We need background checks for all bloggers. Also we should limit the amount of words individuals can disseminate to the masses in one blog. I am thinking 25 words should suffice.

  Speech is regularly regulated quite a bit and may be when the people have a Compelling interest or doing so. I imagine it would be hard to show a compelling reason to limit the size of blogs. speech that incites imminent lawless action though? Completely unprotected by the 1st amendment. Why can some types of speech get no protection but suggesting that some ypes of arms get none s a great sin?
• FatHobbit

  

  BoatShoes;1384820 wrote:Fwiw a lot of liberals/democrats are in quite an uproar over these drone memos...

  The Dems and Repubs are equally guilty here. I think Bush started this and Obama just continued it. I have no doubt that Romney would have done the same.
• ptown_trojans_1

  

  FatHobbit;1385071 wrote:The Dems and Repubs are equally guilty here. I think Bush started this and Obama just continued it. I have no doubt that Romney would have done the same.

  And every administration going back hell, FDR would have done the same thing.
  Back in 1998 if we had the technology to arm a Predator, we could have taken out Bin Laden. But, instead, we launched a cruise missile and missed him.
• FatHobbit

  

  ptown_trojans_1;1385215 wrote:And every administration going back hell, FDR would have done the same thing.
  Back in 1998 if we had the technology to arm a Predator, we could have taken out Bin Laden. But, instead, we launched a cruise missile and missed him.

  I have no issue with taking out Bin Laden or Al Qaeda. I think the rules are a little fuzzy on who they can take out (the obvious people that should die are I think obvious but I think they are a little fuzzy on the people who might just be "associated" with Al Qaeda) and I do not like that they are going to be flying them in US airspace.
• ptown_trojans_1

  

  FatHobbit;1385220 wrote:I have no issue with taking out Bin Laden or Al Qaeda. I think the rules are a little fuzzy on who they can take out (the obvious people that should die are I think obvious but I think they are a little fuzzy on the people who might just be "associated" with Al Qaeda) and I do not like that they are going to be flying them in US airspace.

  Valid questions and concerns.
  But, unarmed drones to say protect the border and to help law enforcement are one thing, armed drones by the CIA and Air Force are a whole other issue and leap.
  
  I do agree there does need to be a more open process into how targets are chosen and what the criteria is for a killing.
  And the Senate and House Intel committees need to be involved.
• BoatShoes

  
  
  Pic of al-Awlaki's son who was an American citizen and killed by a drone.
• Cleveland Buck

  

  by Paul Craig Roberts
  
  The Bush regime’s response to 9/11 and the Obama regime’s validation of this response have destroyed accountable democratic government in the United States. So much unaccountable power has been concentrated in the executive branch that the US Constitution is no longer an operable document.
  
  
  Whether a person believes the official story of 9/11 which rests on unproven government assertions or believes the documented evidence provided by a large number of scientists, first responders, and structural engineers and architects, the result is the same. 9/11 was used to create an open-ended “war on terror” and a police state. It is extraordinary that so many Americans believe that “it can’t happen here” when it already has.
  
  
  We have had a decade of highly visible evidence of the construction of a police state:
  the PATRIOT Act, illegal spying on Americans in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the initiation of wars of aggression – war crimes under the Nuremberg Standard – based on intentional lies, the Justice Department’s concocted legal memos justifying the executive branch’s violation of domestic and international laws against torture, the indefinite detention of US citizens in violation of the constitutionally protected rights of habeas corpus and due process, the use of secret evidence and secret “expert witnesses” who cannot be cross-examined against defendants in trials, the creation of military tribunals in order to evade federal courts, secret legal memos giving the president authority to launch preemptive cyber attacks on any country without providing evidence that the country constitutes a threat, and the Obama regime’s murder of US citizens without evidence or due process.
  
  
  
  As if this were not enough, the Obama regime now creates new presidential powers by crafting secret laws, refusing to disclose the legal reasoning on which the asserted power rests. In other words, laws now originate in secret executive branch memos and not in acts of Congress. Congress? We don’t need no stinking Congress.
  
  
  Despite laws protecting whistleblowers and the media and the US Military Code which requires soldiers to report war crimes, whistleblowers such as CIA agent John Kiriakou, media such as Julian Assange, and soldiers such as Bradley Manning are persecuted and prosecuted for revealing US government crimes. The criminals go free, and those who report the crimes are punished.
  
  
  The justification for the American police state is the “war on terror,” a hoax kept alive by the FBI’s “sting operations.” Normally speaking, a sting operation is when a policewoman poses as a prostitute in order to ensnare a “John,” or a police officer poses as a drug dealer or user in order to ensnare drug users or dealers. The FBI’s “sting operation” goes beyond these victimless crimes that fill up US prisons.
  
  
  The FBI’s sting operations are different. They are just as victimless as no plot ever happens, but the FBI doesn’t pose as bomb makers for terrorists who have a plot but lack the weapon. Instead, the FBI has the plot and looks for a hapless or demented person or group, or for a Muslim enraged over the latest Washington insult to him and/or his religion. When the FBI locates its victim, its agents approach the selected perpetrator pretending to be Al-Qaeda or some such and ply the selected perpetrator with money, the promise of fame, or threats until the victim signs on to the FBI’s plot and is arrested.
  
  
  Trevor Aaronson in his book, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s War on Terrorism, documents that the FBI has so far concocted 150 “terrorist plots” and that almost all of the other “terrorist cases” are cases unrelated to terrorism, such as immigration, with a terror charge tacked on. The presstitute American media doesn’t ask why, if there is so much real terrorism requiring an American war against it, the FBI has to invent and solicit terrorist plots.
  
  

  [RIGHT] [/RIGHT]

  Neither does the media inquire how the Taliban, which resists the US invasion and attempted occupation of Afghanistan, fighting the US superpower to a standstill after 11 years, came to be designated as terrorists. Nor does the US presstitute media want to know how tribesmen in remote regions of Pakistan came to be designated as “terrorists” deserving of US drone attacks on the citizens, schools and medical clinics of a country with which the US is not at war.
  
  
  Instead the media protects and perpetrates the hoax that has given America the police state. The American media has become Leni Riefenstahl, as has Hollywood with the anti-Muslim propaganda film, Zero Dark Thirty. This propaganda film is a hate crime that spreads Islamophobia. Nevertheless, the film is likely to win awards and to sink Americans into both tyranny and a hundred-year war in the name of fighting the Muslim threat.
  
  
  What I learned many years ago as a professor is that movies are important molders of Americans‘ attitudes. Once, after giving a thorough explanation of the Russian Revolution that led to communist rule, a student raised his hand and said: “That’s not the way it happened in the movie.”
  
  
  At first I thought he was making a witty joke, but then I realized that he thought that the truth resided in the movie, not in the professor who was well versed in the subject. Ever since I have been puzzled how the US has survived for so long, considering the ignorance of its population. Americans have lived in the power of the US economy. Now that this power is waning, sooner or later Americans will have to come to terms with reality.
  
  
  It is a reality that will be unfamiliar to them.
  
  
  

  http://lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts388.html
• Footwedge

  For those that view PC Roberts piece as TL;DR...
  
  "Neither does the media inquire how the Taliban, which resists the US invasion and attempted occupation of Afghanistan, fighting the US superpower to a standstill after 11 years, came to be designated as terrorists. Nor does the US presstitute media want to know how tribesmen in remote regions of Pakistan came to be designated as “terrorists” deserving of US drone attacks on the citizens, schools and medical clinics of a country with which the US is not at war.
  
  
  Instead the media protects and perpetrates the hoax that has given America the police state. The American media has become Leni Riefenstahl, as has Hollywood with the anti-Muslim propaganda film, Zero Dark Thirty. This propaganda film is a hate crime that spreads Islamophobia. Nevertheless, the film is likely to win awards and to sink Americans into both tyranny and a hundred-year war in the name of fighting the Muslim threat."
  
  This just in folks....Muslims are no threat to our people nor our interests. The GWOT is a fraud...and given the sunk costs, the daily costs, and very sadly the future costs associated with GWOT...Bin Ladin won.
  
  Paul Craig Roberts was a Reaganite, editor of the Wall Street Journal and pretty much a straight line conservative for most of his life.
  
  I wish the fugger would run for president....and clean house on what we've become.
  
• majorspark

  

  BoatShoes;1384928 wrote:Speech is regularly regulated quite a bit and may be when the people have a Compelling interest or doing so.

  
  
  Not as much as firearms. In fact there is a federal bureau with one of its main tasks being to ensure the regulation of firearms. They come to your door well armed looking like they are going to take Fallujah. Not sure of any federal bureau tasked with ensuring speech regulation. At least not yet.
  

  BoatShoes;1384928 wrote:I imagine it would be hard to show a compelling reason to limit the size of blogs.

  
  
  Well after tragedies like this recent one politicians have run to the microphone criticizing certain types of speech. Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing criticized "loud and angry voices". Years later Clinton warned against "demonizing the government". After the shooting in Tuscon politicians and media outlets were running around criticizing the use of certain words used in political discourse. "Target", "crosshairs" etc... Maybe not size but content. The thought is out there we just have not had the right tragedy yet.
  

  BoatShoes;1384928 wrote:speech that incites imminent lawless action though? Completely unprotected by the 1st amendment. Why can some types of speech get no protection but suggesting that some ypes of arms get none s a great sin?

  "Assault" rifles don't incite imminent lawless action. I have held one in my hand. Fired it. Myself and the people around me felt no desire to commit lawless action.
• Manhattan Buckeye

  Raw Dawgin' it;1381969 wrote:lol didn't see this post coming. Honestly, how different would your life be without guns? When was the last time you pulled your gun in self defense? I'm gonna say...never.

  I haven't, but happened to my family twice. Once when I was 8 years old and another when I was grown and away from home (both attacks against my mother).
  
  Not all people live in suburban American where the cops are a 5 minute call away. The nearest police station from our house was at least a 30 minute drive, there are deputy sheriffs that live closer but the time to cal 911, get dispatch to get in touch with a deputy, have the deputy ready and on site would likely exceed 30 minutes.
  
  This entire "war on guns" completely ignores the lifestyles of many law-abiding Americans. My parents aren't NRA members, and we never hunted, even for deer meat. But we always had some time of firearm safely secured in their home.
• BoatShoes

  majorspark;1385515 wrote:Not as much as firearms. In fact there is a federal bureau with one of its main tasks being to ensure the regulation of firearms. They come to your door well armed looking like they are going to take Fallujah. Not sure of any federal bureau tasked with ensuring speech regulation. At least not yet.
  
  
  
  Well after tragedies like this recent one politicians have run to the microphone criticizing certain types of speech. Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing criticized "loud and angry voices". Years later Clinton warned against "demonizing the government". After the shooting in Tuscon politicians and media outlets were running around criticizing the use of certain words used in political discourse. "Target", "crosshairs" etc... Maybe not size but content. The thought is out there we just have not had the right tragedy yet.
  
  
  
  "Assault" rifles don't incite imminent lawless action. I have held one in my hand. Fired it. Myself and the people around me felt no desire to commit lawless action.

  I disagree that firearms are more regulated than speech or other fundamental rights. It appears to me hat the FCC imposes more burdens on the first amendment than the ATF imposes on the 2nd...and hat isnt even counting time, place and manner restrictions.
  
  And...i never said "assault weapons" incite imminent lawless action....just pointing out that some speech gets zero protection so we might reasonably conclude that some guns dont. There are several types of speech that get none. Speech that incites imminent lawless action is just one example
• majorspark

  

  BoatShoes;1385683 wrote:I disagree that firearms are more regulated than speech or other fundamental rights. It appears to me hat the FCC imposes more burdens on the first amendment than the ATF imposes on the 2nd...and hat isnt even counting time, place and manner restrictions.

  I forgot about the role the FCC plays. Without listing all the federal laws, taxes, regulations, and penalties (including severity like hard jail time). I would say that the federal government has imposed more of these upon its citizens than the King of England. Albeit not by decree. Did I just demonize the government?
  

  BoatShoes;1385683 wrote:And...i never said "assault weapons" incite imminent lawless action....just pointing out that some speech gets zero protection so we might reasonably conclude that some guns dont. There are several types of speech that get none. Speech that incites imminent lawless action is just one example

  Libel, perjury, copyrights, blackmail, soliciting a crime, etc... The reasoning behind speech that gets zero protection is those types are speech actions taken against another. Merely possessing and firing an "assault weapon" is of zero consequence to any other individual. Now if one were to point the weapon in the direction of another individual, that action against another.
• BoatShoes

  majorspark;1385845 wrote:I forgot about the role the FCC plays. Without listing all the federal laws, taxes, regulations, and penalties (including severity like hard jail time). I would say that the federal government has imposed more of these upon its citizens than the King of England. Albeit not by decree. Did I just demonize the government?
  
  
  
  Libel, perjury, copyrights, blackmail, soliciting a crime, etc... The reasoning behind speech that gets zero protection is those types are speech actions taken against another. Merely possessing and firing an "assault weapon" is of zero consequence to any other individual. Now if one were to point the weapon in the direction of another individual, that action against another.

  Obscene Speech is not directed at anyone but it is completely unprotected. In fact, you might even foresee some kind of Miller Test as it pertains to what types of firearms the People as whole might agree don't deserve protection of the 2nd Amendment in the same way they do for obscene speech. It's interesting because the Miller Test basically has a utilitarian prong...does the objective offense caused to the community outweigh any objective value the work provides. I.E. Do the objective harms of widespread gun ownership like extreme gun violence outweigh their objective value???
  
  I think, considering that, it's fair to ask how we are objectively better off with all of these guns and types of guns.
• majorspark

  

  BoatShoes;1385925 wrote:Obscene Speech is not directed at anyone but it is completely unprotected.

  Obscene speech is directed at others when in the public setting. Obscene speech is not banned. Its access is only restricted to those of age that choose to hear/view it.
  

  BoatShoes;1385925 wrote:In fact, you might even foresee some kind of Miller Test as it pertains to what types of firearms the People as whole might agree don't deserve protection of the 2nd Amendment in the same way they do for obscene speech..

  Well you have been humping a total ban. Making Americans criminals for privately possessing certain firearms. This is not the case concerning obscene speech. Your correlation is invalid.
• Manhattan Buckeye

  "Obscene speech is directed at others when in the public setting. Obscene speech is not banned. Its access is only restricted to those of age that choose to hear/view it. "
  
  Sometimes I log on here just to see some arguments being absolutely shot to the ground.
  
  Majorspark > Boatshoes
  
  Apparently Boatshoes doesn't understand the concept of obscenity in American Constitutional law. Most of us have had sex in our lives, that isn't obscene. But if I tape the action and show it to a class of 2nd graders, my guess is I'm going to prison.
  
• Devils Advocate

  

  But let those same 2nd graders have guns though right?
• BoatShoes

  majorspark;1386010 wrote:Obscene speech is directed at others when in the public setting. Obscene speech is not banned. Its access is only restricted to those of age that choose to hear/view it.
  
  
  
  Well you have been humping a total ban. Making Americans criminals for privately possessing certain firearms. This is not the case concerning obscene speech. Your correlation is invalid.

  No, you are incorrect. It amounts to "obscene" and gets no protection anywhere if it violates the Miller Test. Pornography for example that you ahve to be a certain age to view is not considered "unprotected obscene speech". What amounts to "obscene" under the Miller Test gets no protection whatsoever.
  
  A classic example that eventually got its own category is child pornography. In most states, a 16 year old can legally consent to sex with a 50 year old. However, if this was filmed, it would be deemed child pornography and it is one example of speech that gets no protection from the first amendment.
  
  There has also been efforts to make several other types of speech get no protection from the first amendment i.e. flag burning.
  
  It's analagous because just viewing "obscene" speech in your own private home gets no protection. Americans cannot privately possess or produce speech that is considered Obscene/Child Porn. So, you might not lawfully possess weapons that the American People come to believe are "obscene"
  
  And, I'm not sure I've been "humping" a total ban...but if our national conversation lead us to be horrified enough by semi-automatic technology under a miller test type of analysis, I'd be ok with it.