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The Drone Papers

theintercept.com

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Re: The Drone Papers

#211

Post by dragonwriter »

Tepix wrote: post #205
koube wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists[1]: "IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism…

So, what's today's interpretation of the word "harboring"? The 9/11 terrorists lived in Germany, this could mean that Germany is considered fair game. Just giving another indication on how vague this wording is.

The key words are "the President...determines"; the condition in the AUMF is not on an activity on the part of the potential enemy, it is a decision by the President.

Given that, any other vagueness is fairly irrelevant; its pretty much a blank check no matter what things like "harbored" mean. Which is why even President Obsma has said it should be repealed.

Re: The Drone Papers

#212

Post by Lawtonfogle »

dragonwriter wrote: post #122
Lawtonfogle wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you hire a hitman to kill your spouse, both you and the hitman are guilty of murder.

> If you hire a hitman to kill your spouse, both you and the hitman are guilty of murder. That's generally because of laws which explicitly make procuring, soliciting, etc., a crime that is actually committed an offense for which the perpetrator can be punished as a principal of the solicited, procured, etc., offense; that is, the law recognizes that the acts involved is meaningfully distinct, but assigns the same cu…

The law isn't an intelligent being that makes its own choices. It is an artifact created by humans, who have a reason for making it such. Humans have considered, in the US, that hiring a hitman to kill a target is murder, so they have ensured the law reflects such. Since an entire rewrite of the law isn't possible for every change, it sometimes means that the law will have to have less than perfect patches applied. But to suggest that the way it is reasoned about in law is the way it is meant to be makes as much sense as looking as a kludge and saying that the kludge is what was wanted, ignoring all the factors that lead to the genesis of a kludge.

Re: The Drone Papers

#213

Post by PavlovsCat »

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #182
jsn117 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So comparing a terrible mistake in an active war zone to a purposeful killing of civilians is..what exactly?

You need to understand how this game works. The word mistake does not mean what you think it means, just like "collect" and "interrogate" doesn't mean what you, and everyone else, thinks it means. How convenient that it was a "mistake". Reminds me of the time the US "mistakenly" bombed Al Jazeera's offices. [1] So the US will offer full support of the MSF's calls for a War Crime tribunal investigation? What really am…

> What really amazes me is that no matter what information comes out, no matter how stark the facts, how brutal the reality, how corrupt the politics, how illegal the tactics, there is always a band of American apologists ready to step up justify cold blooded murder.

Well, that's not so much an American thing, it's very general. I wouldn't even restrict it to nations only, it's a general "tribe" thing. It can even apply to video games and music, sports, and so on.

The worst part to me is that conflicts can very well be driven where people on all sorts of sides "reason" (it really has to be put in quotes I think) this way. With the result that attempts at fairness, any objections to double standards makes a person a perceived traitor to everybody deeply invested on the self-delusion of any of the sides.

From "Notes on Nationalism" by George Orwell: (as most if not all of his writings, it's available on the web and well worth a read)

> The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English Russophiles. Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own antisemitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness. In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one's own mind.

Re: The Drone Papers

#214

Post by dragonwriter »

abecedarius wrote: post #174
koube wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists[1]: "IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism…

That's interesting: surely almost none of the state violence still being committed under this law is aimed at persons who had anything to do with 9/11, right? As for organizations, isn't Al Qaeda just a brand now?

> That's interesting: surely almost none of the state violence still being committed under this law is aimed at persons who had anything to do with 9/11, right?

Its all being targeted at people or organizations the President -- whether Bush or Obama -- has determined have the requisite relationship to 9/11. The accuracy of that determination is immaterial to the AUMF, which isn't contingent on the actual relation of the targets to 9/11, but on the President's determination of the relation.

Re: The Drone Papers

#215

Post by jononomo »

anigbrowl wrote: post #162
themgt wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are to believe the US government, they should release the recorded video from the AC-130 gunship so we can all make up our own minds.

I have no objection to their doing so, but it won't shed any light on the motivations of the people who ordered it into action.

Yes it would.

Re: The Drone Papers

#216

Post by jononomo »

dcre wrote: post #45
d23 wrote: post #40

I know it's a tangent, but I'm actually blown away by the quality of the website itself. They've managed to use modern techniques like header background video and fading in of navigation elements in a way that is classy and reserved. It doesn't lag up my browser; it doesn't make jarring movements that cause UI elements or content to jump out of line of the eye. The best part? It actually helps add to the point they'r…

And 0 trackers that Ghostery has to block. Though I guess it would be pretty ironic if there were any.

nice.

Re: The Drone Papers

#217

Post by jononomo »

rdancer wrote: post #194
mahyarm wrote: post #105

I thought it has been known for years that the US govt uses drones to execute military and assassination targets. And the public has no insight into how these decisions are made. This may reveal internal details, but I don't know how different from what the world has known for years?

facts > guesswork

word

Re: The Drone Papers

#218

Post by TeMPOraL »

DasIch wrote: post #125
TeMPOraL wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy doesn't work because it's obvious that it doesn't work. It takes like five minutes of concentrated thinking to figure out its basic problems. The best thing you can say about democracy is that it's the system with least bloody failure modes out of the systems we know. Belief that it "works" is just a propaganda all of us are constantly exposed to since primary school.

That depends on what you consider "working". I would certainly consider most modern democracies to work, some slightly better than others. Certainly all modern democracies are stable and not threatened with catastrophic failure. The democracy in the Weimar Republic didn't work by any reasonable definition because it was horribly designed. If the Nazis hadn't happened, someone else would've almost cetainly destroyed i…

> Certainly all modern democracies are stable and not threatened with catastrophic failure.

What would you call climate change, or coming energy crisis, or degenerating trust of public in authority leading to things like anti-vaccination movements? I consider them existential threats to technological civilization. Those problems are issues of coordination, and they play right into failure modes of modern democracies. In this sense I consider them not "working".

Re: The Drone Papers

#219

Post by j2kun »

rdancer wrote: post #196
j2kun wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could suppose there is an insane person in our government who is killing for fun, but that has all the usual logical pitfalls of a conspiracy theory. As for economic gain (not sure what is meant by "petty" economic gain), that has been a large part of the source of most international conflicts over the past few hundred years anyway. So that just sounds false.

Far it be from any person to do things just because they can. They're all saints w/o blemish, protestants at that (i.e. they don't enjoy the work, rather they suffer with their victims). Whatever the job description, you will get people gravitating to it who enjoy that kind of work. It's not controversial that cooks enjoy cooking, and programmer enjoy programming. And it's not unusual that they stay after hours and d…

> They're all saints w/o blemish

You're appealing to extremes, which is a fallacy.

> Why would you think jobs that involve killing and torture be any different?

Why don't I think an exceptional job is an exception? It seems self evident to at least consider the possibility that killing people and cooking are fundamentally different.

Re: The Drone Papers

#220

Post by ccvannorman »

merpnderp wrote: post #195
rdancer wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never mind creating & funding both Taliban and ISIS in the first place.

The US has fought ISIS from day one, and before Obama left Iraq they had been reduced to nothing more than a few armed mafioso collecting protection money and robbing banks. And if anyone created the Taliban, it was the ISI. The worst the US did was join a Middle Eastern and Pakistani coalition to arm and train them against a brutal Soviet occupation.

>The US has fought ISIS from day one

http://www.infowars.com/you-do-realize-that-the-u-s-funded-a...

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