Friday, October 16, 2015

The Drone Papers

Scoop by the Intercept. A whistleblower provides a cache of documents detailing the machinations of U.S. military's assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Filed under rubrics by various journalists:

The Assassination Complex
A Visual Glossary
The Kill Chain
Find, Fix, Finish
Manhunting in the Hindu Kush
Firing Blind
The Life and Death of Objective Peckham
Target Africa
Glossary the Alphabet of Assassination
ANd other documents
Small Footprint Operations 1 & 2
Operation Haymaker
Geolocation Watchlist

It is impressive journalism. Great reporting, great writing and editing. It is a splendid presentation.

You may have heard that every drone strike begins with sold intelligence and strict oversight. Not so much. Huffington Post.

85% of people killed by recent US drone strikes were unintended targets. Intercept.com/dronepapers.

You're the White House budget director. You're good with numbers. Turns out you're involved in assassinating people. Spencer Ackerman to Intercept.com/dronepapers/killchain

Jeremy Schahill, Ryan Devereaux, Cora Currier discuss the Drone Papers. Democracy Now.

How is a threat imminent when it takes months for the drone attack on it to proceed? Kenneth Roth

So under the military's definition, a drone mission that kills target + 15 innocents is a 100% success. Radley Balko

Watch for reactions to the intercept's Drone Papers piece to show us as much about post-9/11 America as the strikes themselves. Popehat

Why the intercepts' new whistleblower disclosed secret docs on the drone program and kill list Trevor Tim "The source said he decided to provide these documents to the Intercept because he believes the public has a right to understand the process by which people are placed on kill lists and ultimately assassinated on orders from the highest echelons of the U.S. government."
This outrageious explosion of watchlisting -- of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning, them numbers, assigning them 'baseball cards,' assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield -- it was, from the very first instance, wrong. 

5 comments:

Chip Ahoy said...

Did the best I could with links. They mostly go to the Intercept indirectly. They're all talking about the same thing.

Rabel said...

"Turns out I'm really good at killing people," Obama said quietly, "Didn't know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine."

Chip Ahoy said...

Oh man. Apparently I was up all night again. This is how those extra day time warp things happen.

Thanks Deb on the correction coming up. It was Webb that I saw on tv and not O'Malley. Right? Webb is guy who must leave his party behind him. Yes. Just looked. That's him.

I want to say to him, Webb, loyalty is a fine character trait and you do show fine character throughout, admirably so, but blind faith requires a seeing-eye dog. Here's Barko, your new blind faith seeing eye dog, he'll help you steer clear of unworthy fealties.

bagoh20 said...

We imagine that people like the woman in the video below don't even exist, yet they are the only hope for our future short of the annihilation of an immense swath of humanity, which gets more likely each year. How many like her are there? Can they ever get the press, the voice, the respect we all need them to in order to save millions of lives. How many are there like her? Will they be heard? The disaster will come for sure without them.

LUCY AHARISH

deborah said...

Chip, in my liveblog in your 'thanks Hillary book post,' I have Chafee saying his party left him. Was I wrong?

Also, I was wrong, his son did not die in Iraq, but Webb did where his son's combat boots during his senate run.