Something similar is happening with gravity bombs – the small diameter bomb. Not only can more be carried, but they have better calibrated lethality by using a casing such that shrapnel range is greatly reduced (smaller, lighter shrapnel pieces).

As for the media, they will always be a propaganda arm for our enemies. It has been in their DNA since the 1968 Tet offensive (my generation’s war). They are a bunch of amoral slime who need to be fought as an ally of the enemy.

Excuse me for being a retrograde who looks fondly favorably at the time when there wasn’t any ‘decision’ about supporting fire; it was just done. For a decade or two after WWII the world revered the US, yet we won that war by ruthlessness that would terrify the p out of the prissy poll-addicted politicians today.

The average Joe-in-the-field made everyday decisions about a machine gun nest in a French farmhouse, or an ambush from an abbey. The US took plenty of prisoners, but it didn’t stint from eliminating opposition either. Sometimes Joe decided to save a house or a civilian or a monastery; and other times they got shelled or bombed.

Today we have spineless, decision-paralyzed leadership at the top, ‘rules of engagement’ we wouldn’t put on the cops, and I’d rather we retreat than waste more good lives. And to stay on topic, we can pull out and be done with it; but Predator drones performing “targeted killing” are just going to stir the pot. Then we would have to go back in again or face retaliation here in the states.

We could wipe out a platoon sized element of bad guys, move out to another objective, and when the news arrives on scene, the story they are told is that we killed 50+ civilians. Even in a situation where there was not a civilian in sight during the whole engagement! Which story do you think they print 9 times out of 10? Hell, as far as we can see, 90% of time the major news organizations rely on stringers to feed them the stories, and those same stringers are on the bad guys payroll more often than not.

One serious thing that the people back home do not understand, is that we are losing the information war with these guys. Amazing, but true. While it’s true that most of their rank and file are illiterate, backwoods nimrods, their higher leadership is not. They know how to use urban legends, rumor, and propaganda to their benefit. Hell, Zawahiri has quoted from Ho Chi Minh’s book for gods sake. They have studied how to use a western culture against itself, including using it’s news organizations, and it’s so called “progressive elements”, to further their aims. I just wish more folks back home would realize that.

So we just give up the tactic? Or do we put it on twitter and let people vote on each target?

There’s not one shred of evidence that ‘List’ procedures are different, yet try to make it a swipe at ‘delusion’.

I see. So you assert that the who-to-kill decisions are made by the same criteria as the TSA’s don’t fly list. Brilliant argument.

There’s not one shred of evidence that ‘List’ procedures are different, yet try to make it a swipe at ‘delusion’. Close to one million names on the no-fly List are (in your words) “utterly irrelevant”, since the Canadians use a list that is close to one million names shorter, and their security record equals the US security record. That’s close to the definition of irrelevant.

In your scenario there is no accountability —not unless you count “Moore’s highly secret accountability”— for who or what the list contains.

‘Highly secret accountability’; what a load! Normal people would be ashamed to write that, yet it’s the core of your argument.

Veterans can’t be censored (within reason), while a remote-control operation run out of a bunker in Cheyenne can and will be censored. The operation itself, the List, and the List’s criteria; all will be classified.

So the folks operating out of that bunker don’t become “veterans?”

Are you aware that the military Predator video stream is available to a wide number of personnel – not just in the bunker, but at the Pentagon, AO op centers and other command centers? It even has a slang term: “Predator Porn.”

As for the CIA, do you think that a Predator operations team is more classified and less accountable than a field team of operators?

Yes, accountability is needed. Highly secret accountability, but with appropriate controls. And you can bet that the accountability exists, because the people who run these operations are not stupid – they know that they will be second and third and fourth guessed by Monday morning quarterbacks, so they will be sure that 6 lawyers, two psychiatrists and the janitor sign off on every killing.

They also know that there will be leaks, classified or not. A whole lot of the information leaked under the Bush Administration was classified at Top-Secret or higher (in the SigInt leaks, MUCH higher).

That’s not true, the Canadian no-fly List shows another set of bureaucrats can pare the list to a tiny fraction of its size.

The primary problem is accountability: What assurances do we have that the horrible terrorist John Moore —now on the “targeted kill” list— really needs killing?

In combat, there is group accountability. We civilians can talk to friends and acquaintances who served; we can get a rough sense of how just and justified the combat is. How hard or easy it is to avoid shooting the wrong people. Every community in America now has dozens of combat veterans, people who served on the ground, and most are willing to talk.

Veterans can’t be censored (within reason), while a remote-control operation run out of a bunker in Cheyenne can and will be censored. The operation itself, the List, and the List’s criteria; all will be classified.

The same folks who are appalled at the state executing the wrong people once or twice a year, sure seem eager to make some ‘hits’ on brown people overseas with not once trace of accountability.

So yes, I am making the specific point that our government cannot make ‘enemies’ lists with anything close to reasonable accuracy; but I’ll be open to any opposing evidence. When people are denied transportation due to lousy lists, we can live with it. When people get murdered on the same basis, there will be blowback.

Incidentally, I’ve never met anyone named Mark Buehner before in my life. I’ll leave you to concoct whatever conspiracy theories you want, though.

[Sorry I didn't recognize 'Ricardo' as 'Mark Buehner’s sockpuppet more quickly.]

For the accuracy of the No-Fly List, try the Volokh Conspiracy’s coverage of Walter Murphy, a series of posts that exposed the ‘List’ as a hack with no apparent or discernible controls for accuracy.

In 2007 TSA’s Administrator told Congress that after names on the 350,000 name List were checked “. . . maybe half the names will be cut”; a governmental admission of 50% inaccuracy. That promised review never happened. We also know since that time government critics —whistleblowers, political protesters, policy writers— have had their names added to the no-fly List.

Today the no-fly List contains about a million names. To maintain that fiction, you must believe one million people, most in the US, are so dangerous or willing to destroy the airplane that they cannot be allowed to board.

It’s a claim that one out of every 300 people (but only since the year 2001!) is willing to commit suicide by airplane and take all other passengers with them. Including convicted murderers in prison, there aren’t that many people in the US willing to murder one other person, much less kill a plane-load while killing themselves.

The Canadian version of the List contains up to a total of 2,000 names. Using it as a baseline, the American no-fly List is wrong 500 times for every time it is right.

And you defend using this technology for “targeted killing”. [spit]

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By every measure available the List is worthless as a representation of terrorism or even danger, and my guesstimate of 10% accuracy extremely generous. But it’s a better measure than any garbage the Ricardo/Buehner puppets have fielded.

subpatre: Common sense backs a figure smaller than 10% accuracy.

In other words, you can’t actually back that figure up with evidence. Thanks for clarifying.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
-Albert Einstein

There are many who will seek to hobble your efforts and endanger your life, out of foolish high-mindedness without regard for the outcome. Some are present frequently in the comment section of this board.

The transnationalists hold “international law” above life and liberty. The assure themselves that if we don’t obey these bureaucratic and ill thought-out or outdated rules, even more injustice will happen.

In short, they are fools.

Don’t let the bastardsfools get you down.

Cheers.

It is incumbent on the claimant —that’s you, making the claim— to cite support for their claim. Until you have some facts, some citation, then claiming any kind of effectiveness is pure crap. Oops, Buehner already did that.

My previous comment was that despite incredible casualty and effectiveness claims —now including yours— there’s no factual or logical foundation for any of them. My second point was government claims about the effectiveness (worthiness, wondrousness, ad nauseum) of government actions should not be accepted without independent corroboration.

Ten Four: Brad – thanks for your service, good luck, and good hunting.

Well-said. Thank you, Brad.

The second, and largely unspoken option, is to acknowledge that the rules of soccer don’t work in a rugby game, and to admit that trans-national Islamic terrorism is neither a war between nation-states nor a problem that can be solved with the proper application of jurisprudence, and to develop new rules to deal with the problem.

That’s certainly true, although i’d prefer the analogy of bringing a knife to a gun fight.

The whole premise is silly as a question of saving lives. Want to see what ‘the old fashioned’ way of digging out terrorists from friendly strongholds looks like? Best case is the Israelis in Gaza. Worst case is the Russians in Grozny. Take your pick. Does bringing down a building and killing a handful of civilians offend you? How does leveling a city make you feel better?

subpatre says:

Ricardo writes “You are basically claiming 8% of all killed by targeted killings are terrorists while the other 92% are innocents (this is “all but guaranteed”). Do you have support for this claim?”

Do you have any support for anything different?

Err, ok lets play your game by your rules. Instead of targeted killing, we should drop a squad of commandos into the village and dig out the terrorists the old fashioned way. Now, ‘facts’ prove that every time we attack a village, 90% of the population is killed in the crossfire, 90% of which are children under the age of 1.

Don’t believe my figures? Prove they are wrong.

More broadly, the west has spent the last 350 years or so building an international regime based on the concept of state sovereignity – nation-states are responsible for the things that happen within their borders, nation-states have a monopoly on the use of force (only nation-states may wage war), and thus nation-states make and honor agreements to try to minimize the chances of and to mitigate the effects of war, and so on.

We are now faced with a substantial threat from a large band of people that never agreed to play by our rules, and it seems to me that there are two responses we can make – the first, the “international law” response that seems to be implicitly proposed here, is to pretend that our opponents are, in fact, participants in our rules and our sense of order, and to insist on applying the same rules to our war with them as we would to a traditional (in the post Westphalian sense) war between nation-states. That is, the argument being framed here seems to assume that, of course, we’re going to apply the rules of international law developed to govern relationships between nations to the present conflict, and the only decision to be made is how to apply those rules.

The second, and largely unspoken option, is to acknowledge that the rules of soccer don’t work in a rugby game, and to admit that trans-national Islamic terrorism is neither a war between nation-states nor a problem that can be solved with the proper application of jurisprudence, and to develop new rules to deal with the problem. (I think that’s what the Bush administration was stumbling towards, but they either couldn’t or wouldn’t make the issue explicit.)

Personally, I think that the laws of nations that governed piracy in the 18th and 19th centuries aren’t a bad place to start. Declaring and treating terrorists as hostis humani generis and hunting them to the uttermost ends of the earth seems like a good place to start – it worked for the Royal Navy, at any rate – but I think it would make things a lot clearer and intellectually honest if we just said so. It seems to me that the international law crowd and the pragmatic “we’d like to actually win this thing” crowd spend a lot of time talking past each other, largely because we haven’t done a good job of articulating the core issue.

And, as long as I’m running on, lets not forget that the 800 lb. gorilla in the western room is that one of the transformational outcomes of the peace of Westphalia was to establish the primacy of the secular sovereign over the religious establishment as the proper repository of the use of force – if you need another reason to confront the idea that our opponents are not participants in the framework we’ve built to regulate the trans-national use of force. Extrajudicial, indeed . . .

Do you have any support for anything different? This is the same government, operating on much the same principle, and in much the same way, that keeps ‘no fly’ lists of people to keep off of airlines. Lists known to be wrong for the overwhelming majority of names.

Common sense backs a figure smaller than 10% accuracy. Whether Carter, Bush I, or Church gutted the intelligence community is immaterial; the US hasn’t had accurate intelligence information for a very long time. As a matter of fact, the US intelligence agencies have repeatedly demonstrated they are consistently wrong —or worse equivocating— about information derived from human assets.

The shoe is on the other foot about the concept of any ‘accuracy’ in identifying enemy individuals needs to be supported by evidence. This isn’t postal employees bringing well marked, printed envelopes to buildings with jumbo numbers attached to them. The default assumption in this case should be utter incompetence.

tz: When we attempt “targeted killing”, we might or might not get one or two terrorists. We are all but guaranteed to get a dozen or two innocents. And the hundreds of the friends and relatives of the innocents turn into terrorists.

That’s quite a claim. You are basically claiming 8% of all killed by targeted killings are terrorists while the other 92% are innocents (this is “all but guaranteed”). Do you have support for this claim?

Any imprisonment of enemy combatants becomes a PR nightmare, and serves little purpose other than temporarily removing enemies from the fight. Unlike foot soldiers, terrorist leaders can’t be freed or amnestied without a good chance of them rejoining the war. So, it becomes much more sensible, from a military standpoint, to kill them in open combat rather than trying to capture them. It’s become more palatable politically as well, as it’s much easier to justify targeted killing than prisoner interrogation.

This is a bad thing. There are very often civilians around enemy leaders, often their families. Also, we don’t gain the benefit of the information they possess. Prisoners who know that they won’t be interrogated harshly are much less likely to talk.

The current climate encourages killing rather than capture, which is a perverse incentive. Captured enemies are alive, whatever else happens to them. It’s hard to justify the position that killing them, often with civilians as well, is preferable. But that’s exactly what’s happened.

The Taliban, (the old Gov of Afghanistan), provided safe haven to a rather large organization, (Al Queda), that commited a act of war against us, (the United States), by murdering over 3000 of our civilians. The Taliban allowed that same group t build training camps in their country, for the express purpose of training people to kill our citizens. The Taliban was given a choice by our President at the time, to either turn over Al Queda’s leadership to us for trial, or face the consequences. They chose unwisely. We declared war on both the Taliban, and Al Queda because of this. Both the Taliban, and Al Queda, continue to use civilians as shields to launch attacks against other civilians, as well as our troops, (A violation of the Laws of Armed Conflict). The refuse to wear uniforms, instead they disguise themselves as civilians, even up to and including dressing up as females (more violations of the laws of war), to take advantage of the cultural mores in place that make it a insult to view women without them being completely covered from head to toe.

This is just a small example of the actual laundry list of violations of the Laws of Armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, ect ect, that these clowns commit on a daily basis. I have fought them through 3 different deployments over the last 8 years. I am currently back in their god forsaken lands for yet another 6 months, and back home we are discussing whether it’s right to try and target them as individuals, so we can avoid killing the civilians they surround themselves with. The next time we go to war, I think I would rather be on the side of the guerillas. They don’t have to follow rules. They are not taken to task by anyone, including the news organizations, for any of their behavior. They seem to receive the benefit of the doubt from a larger portion of the international community, and a good portion of my fellow citizens, than I currently do.

Just once I would like to hear a news organization report the results of a firefight like this, “Today the Taliban, in direct violation of the Laws of War, caused the deaths of 30 civilians by attacking US troops, while using women and children as human shields. The UN has condemned this behavior as barbaric, and asked the US Government to apprehend, and/or execute, the unlawful combatants as soon as possible.”.

Sorry this was so long.

Not accurate, but even if it were, are you implying that the pre-Carter humint was worth anything?

I would note the first WTC bombing was handled judicially, not militarily.

And a lot of good that did.

There appears to be a need for standards about extra-judicial killings, but they won’t come from the international legal community. I’m sure the CIA and the military have their standards – whether they are appropriate or not, who can tell – but most likely they err on the side of caution (less killing) – it’s a natural bureaucratic trait.

The strategy of decapitation works except for something like the mythical Hydra, but that is what these 4th generation wars are. For a lot more very good information:

http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Lind_Index,00.html

Meanwhile, think back to 9/11 – how many of Al Queda’s targets would the buildings need to have contained to make that a perfectly justifiable “Targeted Killing”.

The identical act with identical intent too often is labeled differently when it is preceded by “we” instead of “they”. “We” battle and inflict collateral damage. “They” commit acts of terror.

I hate globalism perhaps more than anyone else on this board, but believe in the rule of law. If we do not like Spain trying Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc. directly or in absentia, we cannot credibly condemn other countries who then practice exactly the same things.

We can bully and get our way on practically anything through force, but PLEASE don’t try to make even a single argument to excuse it as being something else. Extra-judicial killings are precisely that – entirely outside of any rule of law or standard or virtue of justice.

For a time we can afford to lower our standard from one of justice (and I would extend that to marque and reprisal which is subtly different) and become savages to destroy our enemies, though I would note the first WTC bombing was handled judicially, not militarily. But having become savages there will always be some fear, hatred, or other voice from our darker side saying we must stay savage lest a return to civilization make us seem weak, or that playing by rules will cause us to lose.

At some point that lesson will be learned and politicians, judges, and lawyers will end up being ignored or the targets of people who wish to bypass the inconvenience – either the ruling class or the people. For if there ought to be extra-judicial killings, and a judge blocks or certifies a criminal complaint, why not simply kill the judge? Won’t everyone be safer if we just dispense with this kubuki and turn into a junta? It would at least lose the hypocrisy.

It seems that in the absence of a declared war with a Westphalian state with uniformed combatants, the alternative actually on offer here is to do nothing. Just sit back and wait to be attacked at our enemy’s convenience.

If the “law” does not permit effective forward defense, then the “law” needs to be changed. But one rather thinks the “law” here is being twisted by parties who are our adversaries to further their own ends. It is simply foolish to allow that.

As a couple of posters above have noted, the most moral course is to successfully end the conflict as quickly as possible. Given reasonable efforts on our part to avoid collateral damage (a standard which we routinely far exceed), the targets bear the moral culpability for collateral damaage by intentionally hiding among civilians.

Carter gutted humint intelligence, and now 30 years later our fearless leader thinks that a few drones with Hellfires will tip the balance. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose. The idiots on the left will never learn.

If someone is conducting and/or planning attacks on the US or US forces in a foreign country and the local government can’t stop them that government is not sovereign. If there is no sovereign government there isn’t anyone to declare war on. It’s like declaring war on pirates.

usual suspect: Targeted killings lead to a lot of civilians (including children) being killed for no reason. Also there is no mechanisms to determine if the target of a bomb is a “thug” or an inconvenient journalist, human rights activist or a competitor to corrupt local authorities. There are no legal justification which can be used to back killing and maiming children in foreign countries which are not at war with the US

Even though this was in-country in a legal war, that didn’t prevent the opponents of the war, internally and internationally, from using it as an example of the supposed vileness of the US participants.

I suspect that the international law community is ultimately going to implode. While international law on “human rights” and other nice but unenforceable rights continues to advance, war stubbornly refuses to change. It is still a bloody, nasty business where being on the side of international law (and US law) becomes an ever disadvantage to the forces of good.