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Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations with her cellphone, report says

salon.com

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

#91

Post by 7Z7 »

belorn wrote: post #14
golergka wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This description fits almost any action that you can perform when you're at war. So, either you advocate that war courts review cases of all the enemy soldiers before aithorizing an attack, or you have to come up with a more precise definition of what is exactly wrong here. Clarification: I'm not a fan of CIA assasinations, far from it; but "execution without a trial" isn't logically justifiable complaint: we do it i…

Any action? Lets look at some specifics and ask which ones should count as murder. A reasonable person might see a different degree of justification in each case. A person wielding a gun is running and firring their weapon towards a solider. The solider shoots back and kills them. A boat full with military weapons enters an areas which marines are defending and refuse to turn back. The marines sinks the boat. A tank…

Whose soldiers? Whose civilians?

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

#92

Post by coldtea »

babuskov wrote: post #85
awesomerobot wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: is there a definition of the difference between execution and combat?

Sure. Execution is where the victim is captured, disarmed and has no means of retaliating.

Godwin's law or not, it's very tempting to see analogies with the Nazi Germany in an era where we are seriously and casually asking questions such as for the difference between "execution" and "combat" -- or re-legitimize torture...

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

#93

Post by bvtd22 »

Clinton approved a number of controversial things during her tenure, but who approved this article at Salon, knowing full well that the major search engines would not curate it? We can be fairly certain a satirical piece from the Onion or NYT's Borowitz on Trump ordering drone strikes via Twitter would be far more likely to make search engine news.

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

#94

Post by mohsinr »

factorialboy wrote: post #59
chopin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

One could reasonably argue that the location of the strikes were regions which were not under the writ of the Pakistani govt. Didn't the Pak army launch a major operation is recent years to retake control of FATA and NWFP from the Taliban / local armed tribals?

Civilians, lot of civilians were killed! Period!

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

#95

Post by Waterluvian »

raddad wrote: post #89
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.

The US stopped having wars with nations and instead has gone onto wars against ideas and things. The war against terror and the war against drugs being two of them. This way they can pick and choose which country to war with those elements without warring with a nation.

Things that look like colonialism are no longer considered acceptable in this era.

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

#96

Post by rando444 »

Patient0 wrote: post #72

This is exactly the sort of political crap I'd rather not see on the Hacker News front page.

It's political, but if you think about it, it's really technology/security.

I mean not only about this information falling into the wrong hands, but also the fact that using unsecured channels for these things could lead to hackers approving or even ordering drone strikes themselves.

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

#97

Post by dragonwriter »

kefka wrote: post #70
jkn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Letters of marque aren't an alternative to war for non-state enemies (no such alternative is needed; war precedes the concept of the nation-state).

Letters of marque are a means of authorizing private vessels to act as naval auxiliaries (such that they are portrayed by and subject to the laws of war, rather than legally pirates.)

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

#98

Post by tajen »

tajen wrote: post #29
belorn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any action? Lets look at some specifics and ask which ones should count as murder. A reasonable person might see a different degree of justification in each case. A person wielding a gun is running and firring their weapon towards a solider. The solider shoots back and kills them. A boat full with military weapons enters an areas which marines are defending and refuse to turn back. The marines sinks the boat. A tank…

I don't see what degree of difference there is in your first 4 examples: They're all armed people in a situation of war. Of course the last 3 are murders (although we know that the Allied erased most of German and Japanese cities, including the civilian neighbourhoods, for morale and retaliation) and the 4th before the end (killing military workers) is debatable. Last point, concerning French nationals who went to Sy…

I don't mind the downvotes, please explain first how parent's 8 examples are different, and how people being trained in enemy military camps and coming back doesn't raise the POW legislation.

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

#99

Post by golergka »

ionised wrote: post #54
golergka wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of comments with similar sentiments, so I'll reply just to yours, because it's on top. Basically, you're making my point for me: there's nothing inherently wrong with remote strikes or drones in particular. It's just a tool; and as a tool, it can be used rightly and wrongly. So, the fact that Clinton used that tool doesn't make her bad. But if you would have information about her using that tool to authorize a…

The Reprieve report 'You Never Die Twice: Multiple Kills in the US Drone Program' (November 2014) provided the first estimate of the number of people – including children – killed each time the US attempts to assassinate a ‘high value target.’ For example, drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed as many as 1,147 unknown people in failed attempts to kill just 41 named individuals. That was a while ago. Things…

> For example, drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan have killed as many as 1,147 unknown people in failed attempts to kill just 41 named individuals.

So? If you're trying to make a point that this is a bad situation, this information is not enough — to judge that, we would need to know who these targeted individuals were and how much destruction could they bring.

Also, who are these unknown people statistically? Example to clarify what I mean: if you execute a drone strike on a terrorist training camp, most of the casualties will likely be "unknown", and of course will include innocent civilians as well, but it's reasonable to assume that on average, more of them will be "bad guys" that were just unknown to you than if you execute a strike on a regular village.

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

#100

Post by JoBrad »

rando444 wrote: post #96
Patient0 wrote: post #72

This is exactly the sort of political crap I'd rather not see on the Hacker News front page.

It's political, but if you think about it, it's really technology/security. I mean not only about this information falling into the wrong hands, but also the fact that using unsecured channels for these things could lead to hackers approving or even ordering drone strikes themselves.

Everything could be about technology/security. That doesn't mean it should be on Hacker News.
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