The New York Times is leading with this one today:
Use of Drones for Killings Risks a War Without End, Panel Concludes in Report
Let's visit this blogs abysmal record of wanking to the drone beat and sitting in the 101st Kossock Keyboard Kockpit of Hellfire shall we?
This started with a Kadre of Kossacks from the Sec industry, the Defense industry, aerospace engineers, techies and not of few spooks and creeps attempting to undermine what remained of the left's influence in this site. They did a very good job from January 2009 well into 2013. A full four years of equivocations and excuses about how the drone wars in the next stage of GWOT was an amazing alternative to our Nobel Prize winning Commander-in-Chief. With an AUMF still in hand from his predecessor.
I chimed in on the day the al-Awlaki assassination was announced (we didn't know until months later about his teenage son getting drone-whacked). Both Americans. This was the diary from September 30th 2011:
This Terrorist was an American Citizen
Notice the fucking poll at the end. Yes on any give day this site gave plenty of safe harbor for some of the most appalling excuses of "progressive" ideas about how to conduct foreign policy, war and even concerning assassination of Americans. As long as these Americans were brown and wore rags on their heads, it was A-Ok here at Daily Kos.
This was going on for quite a while because I remember back then following all the fucktards like Setrack(who I'm convinced is definitely a defense analyst of some retired sort),SemDem, who that day wrote the fine whine diary of "How Many Terrorists Does Obama HAVE To Kill?".
There were a few more polls I ran in diaries in subsequent years after the drone issue became a mainstream issue long before it finally caught on here as cause for concern going into 2016 for all the damage it's done to the Democratic Party. I won't bother again running a poll because you can see for yourself that this site only burrowed deeper into its ignorance:
Poll: Drone Attacks PC Here?
and
Poll: How do we feel now about Drone Assassination?
It only got worse with the years. Either the site REALLY dumbed down after that or just really thinned out of any credible lefty opinion as folks left it to its own devices.
Little Green Football stuff. 35% in favor of Drones. Then 55% in favor of drones in 2013 (the year the issue went south for just about everyone else, including the Pentagon since the CIA was conducting the Drone Wars).
The New York Times piece in this mornings edition mentions that the panel that describes the slippery slope to "perpetual war" is made up of retired generals, CIA, counterterrorism officials, a real cadre from the establishment of the MI Complex and yet they get much more right than any armchair blogger around this pathetic site of an excuse of a Democrat blog. For years this site supported drone warfare as legitimate because it made Obama look good. Bottom line.
Ending with this quote which said it best inside the report:
The panel instead reserves the bulk of its criticism for how two successive American presidents have conducted a “long-term killing program based on secret rationales,” and how too little thought has been given to what consequences might be spawned by this new way of waging war.
"How too little thought has been given to what consequences might be spawned..."
Well take a good look at the ongoing headlines ISIL and al Qaeda are making and the continued opening of ever new fronts in GWOT that never ends. And just how bad the reputation of the US government is with Sunni, Shia and most everyone in the Middle East. Disaster because too little thought was ever given to raining death from the skies on "terrorists", militants, and civilians alike. By BOTH presidents and I might easily say most Kossacks. At the time it seemed...enlightened by its pragmatic approach to pursuing GWOT yet pulling our boys and girls out of harms way on the battlefield so we could claim the war was over. The war was never over. Only wonkish attention to its relevance over reelection prospects of 2012. The election has been over for a year. We have Obamacare...woohoo! But the War is raging like never before and no Drone or Man with Drone can put a stop to it.
ps. Don't give a flying fuck about what any Kossack has to say about this diary or how slighted they feel. That train left the station years ago for me. This diary isn't written to change anybody's minds here either b/c this is a Democrat Blog Dedicated to Electing Democrats Damn the Drones. With absolutely no clue to how irrelevant that is going to be in coming months.
Good luck and Drone on.