According to Drudge today, the NSA has been providing targets for all those drone strikes so highly praised by the Obama administration. Following is a link to an article in The Intercept:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/
According to this source, if the NSA identifies a target phone, they just wait for the phone/sim card to show up on the GPS and its bombs away. There doesn’t appear to be any requirement for confirmation that the actual person targeted has the phone. Even if they have the right person, apparently they don’t worry much about collateral damage.
It is unclear where or when this started. President Bush definitely ordered drone attacks, but he appeared to have focused on al Qaeda leaders. President Obama expanded the program and used it to kill a lot of lower level combatants. He even bragged about it. The following report from CNN in 2012 explains this in detail:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/opinion/bergen-obama-drone/
When you combine the willingness to kill almost anyone with the targeting of people based solely on the location of a cell phone it paints a very ugly picture. This is particularly true when our troops in Afghanistan have highly restricted rules of engagement specifically designed to avoid civilian casualties, even if it puts our own troops in jeopardy.
I don’t see how anyone can justify this. This borders on insanity. It sure looks like President Obama was lying, again. Here is what he said last May:
“before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.”
“by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life.”
His statement that drones are only used where there is “near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured” is absurd. There is no possibility that this is accurate. It is even less true than the crap about how you can keep your current health plan and you can keep your current doctor. Only this time the phrase “Obama lied, people died” is all too accurate.
One has to wonder how bad it has to get before the main stream media becomes concerned. If there had been a hint that George W. Bush was ordering drones to kill people solely because they were holding the wrong cell phone the main stream media would have gone postal. They would have been justified to do so. They went nuts because he was listening to people who were calling known terrorist associates overseas. We already know that being a liberal Democrat justifies a President lying under oath. We know that being a liberal Democrat justifies a President lying to the American people and arbritarily changing the law. Now are we to assume that being a liberal Democrat justifies a President ordering numerous assassinations without even bothering to find out if we are getting the right guy? Liberals must be very proud.
TDM