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Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says

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Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says

#61

Post by jkn »

chopin wrote: post #47
factorialboy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question is are you in a state of war? Are these considered casualties of war? If yes, then execution without trial is a given.

Last I looked the US weren't at war with Pakistan.

Are they at war with the Taliban?

The US haven't formally been at war with anyone since WWII[1], so we must rely on an informal definition of war (otherwise even Vietnam would be excluded).

A middle-ground definition of war that requires parties to be nation states but doesn't require a declaration of war, seems a bit arbitrary.

Instead of declaring war, the US now has Congress-sanctioned "use of military force". This includes the current "conflict" with the Taliban regime.

In this context the line between war casualties and assassination is very blurry. I think the blur itself might be one of the worst things about this new way of waging war.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/all-the-...

Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says

#62

Post by chopin »

bduerst wrote: post #55
chopin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I looked the US weren't at war with Pakistan.

But the U.S. is at war with ISIL, as part of a joint task force involving the Pakistan armed forces. It's not total war, so the real issue is whether or not the CIA drone assassinations killed innocent civilians. The article mentions how drone attacks have killed civilians, but it doesn't specify if those are the CIA requested attacks or if they were approved by Clinton.

By the same logic, China could declare war at certain dissident groups, say Tibet activists (which I think China assumes to be terrorists) and then drone strike their members in the US, if the US refuses to act against those.

I don't think this is the standard a civilized nation should hold.

EDIT: spelling

Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says

#63

Post by mtgx »

curiousgal wrote: post #31

I finished watching "13 Hours" last night, a movie about the Benghazi events. The use of drones to kill indirect threats is ubiquitous and yet when it came to saving Americans citizens, drones suddenly weren't in use? dafuq.

What's scary is that most still don't seem to realize how much worse this will be made by autonomous killer robots.

They're already killing people essentially based on an algorithm, that may have only a 51% chance of identifying the "right target" (that's the logic they use to spy on Americans, too). They've already admitted to targeting people with drone strikes based on the phone SIM alone, which is not much better than targeting someone based on their IP address.

But now they would be able to just build that into an autonomous drone, and allow it to kill anyone it meets that has a 51%+ chance of being a "bad guy".

Truly scary stuff, which many still seem to excuse with nonsense such as "yeah, but they would've killed those guys just the same with Apache helicopters!".

No, they wouldn't. They would only target the most important targets and the ones they are most sure it's who they think they are. With autonomous killer drones they can just launch 1,000 of them upon a country and allow them to kill anyone on sight that has whatever chance of being a target is implemented into their code.

It's also the same BS excuse people used post-Snowden revelations: "But NSA has always spied on a few dictators and rival countries - surely that's just the same as them now spying on everything billions of people are doing every day, storing everything for decades, and from all ally countries as well? Right?!"

And that's without even discussing the possibility of these machines being hacked, or having software bugs (which they'll probably use as an excuse everytime they get caught killing innocent people by the media - "Whoopsie, a software bug just killed 20 innocent people - What ya gonna do? - What's important is that nobody takes responsibility and gets punished for it now..."

Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says

#64

Post by bduerst »

chopin wrote: post #62
bduerst wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the U.S. is at war with ISIL, as part of a joint task force involving the Pakistan armed forces. It's not total war, so the real issue is whether or not the CIA drone assassinations killed innocent civilians. The article mentions how drone attacks have killed civilians, but it doesn't specify if those are the CIA requested attacks or if they were approved by Clinton.

By the same logic, China could declare war at certain dissident groups, say Tibet activists (which I think China assumes to be terrorists) and then drone strike their members in the US, if the US refuses to act against those. I don't think this is the standard a civilized nation should hold. EDIT: spelling

Assuming that the U.S. Military is allied with China against (and at war with) the Tibeten activists, and the drone assassination was of a leader in that group - then yes, your hypothetical slippery slope is analogous.

Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says

#65

Post by richmarr »

rottyguy wrote: post #57
richmarr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Black and white decisions are a luxury... Yes and no. In this case a lot of the 'grey' in these decisions is caused directly by wilful and callous foriegn policy, in which Clinton has played her part. You don't see the Prime Minister of Sweden executing foreigners on his Apple Watch

Except life is not like writing a program where you've coded down some rabbit hole and realize you should have done X several layers up and are able to go back and fix it. It's more of hack as you go and hope the whole thing doesn't blow up until you, possibly, get a chance to rewrite or build an improved version

> Except life is not like writing a program...

So, your argument is that it's okay to have terrible foreign policy because we don't have time travel. Are you sure you want to go with that?

Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says

#66

Post by gonvaled »

rottyguy wrote: post #53
gonvaled wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Black and white decisions are a luxury that not all people are afforded. Specially if you are in a hurry for dinner with your pals and you need to press that "yes, do drone strike" button in your mobile phone while you are getting dressed, even though you never heard about this "Abdulah" guy whose photograph you are seeing in the screen right now, but he is unshaven and looks dirty, and is not looking friendly to t…

I assure you not everyone shares your opinion (as not everyone shares mine). I'll just state there are lots of inconvenient truths in life and, until, you encounter them, you may not fully understand. The trick is to realize the possibility and not hold an absolute stance when in discussion. We are always learning.

> I assure you not everyone shares your opinion (as not everyone shares mine)

I know. And the only thing I would like from you american leaders is to state this openly: we are only interested in defending our way of life, with wherever means it takes.

This is what is happening all around the world right now, but you are hypocritically pretending that you are trying to uphold an specially pure moral standard in your multiple conflicts around the world.

That's something going for Trump: he does not seem to be hypocritical.

Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says

#67

Post by dogma1138 »

huffmsa wrote: post #44
cyberferret wrote: post #2

She could have approved drone strikes using smoke signals or carrier pigeons... - it all boils down to the same thing - execution of human beings without a trial...

Cellphones are functionally equivalent to laptops and desktops-- they're computers. Now, independent of that, if the regulations and law do not treat them equally, they are not legally equal.

I think the issue here is she used her unsecure cellphone and presumably "private" email server to approve these strikes in which case it might have caused operational information to leak.

This isn't about someone using a cellphone or a laptop, this is about someone using any communication device that wasn't clear for the transmission of classified information to approve strikes which i would only presume to be classified if only due to operational reasons.

Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says

#68

Post by return0 »

Fuxy wrote: post #17

Whenever I hear something about US drone Strikes I always think how long until the other side starts getting drones developed and and easy way to mass produce them and smuggle them into the US assemble them and start launching drone strikes from within the US on US persons of interest like politicians and CIA officials. Drone parts are getting cheaper and cheaper and easier to get it's only a matter a time someone st…

> easy way to mass produce them and smuggle them into the US assemble them and start launching drone strikes from within the US on US persons of interest like politicians and CIA officials

Terrorists are a form of those drones.

Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says

#69

Post by tomjen3 »

cyberferret wrote: post #2

She could have approved drone strikes using smoke signals or carrier pigeons... - it all boils down to the same thing - execution of human beings without a trial...

Using this results in a lot fewer civilian casualties compared to carpet bombing the area.

War will always have civilian casualties and it will always be with us.

Re: Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says

#70

Post by kefka »

jkn wrote: post #61
chopin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I looked the US weren't at war with Pakistan.

Are they at war with the Taliban? The US haven't formally been at war with anyone since WWII[1], so we must rely on an informal definition of war (otherwise even Vietnam would be excluded). A middle-ground definition of war that requires parties to be nation states but doesn't require a declaration of war, seems a bit arbitrary. Instead of declaring war, the US now has Congress-sanctioned "use of military force". Thi…

Well, congress has the other legal tool alongside "War", which is to 'grant letters of Marque and Reprisal'. They both grant war, either on a country, or individual scale.

The actual quote from the Constitution is thus:

"To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;"

If ISIS isn't a state-level entity (which I believe it is, but does not follow agreed upon definitions of countries) then these Letters of Marque are sufficient if levied against their organization.

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