Dronestrike-led foreign policy - bad timing?

[TheFallen]

Pakistan officials say US drone strike sabotaged peace talks with Taliban

Pakistani officials sharply criticized the United States on Saturday for a drone strike that killed the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, summoning Washington's ambassador to lodge a protest and accusing the Obama administration of sabotaging peace talks between their country and the Islamic militant group.

Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Pakistan's interior minister and the official in charge of negotiations with the Taliban, called Friday's CIA drone strike that killed the brash Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud "counterproductive" to peace negotiations and announced that the Cabinet Committee on National Security, the highest conflict-management body in Pakistan’s newly elected government, will “review all perspectives of the relationship with the U.S.”

Khan said Pakistan had invested "days and weeks and months of work" in peace talks with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the official name of the Pakistan Taliban, but that the drone strike that targeted Mehsud "murdered the hope and progress for peace in the region.”

Speaking angrily at a press conference in Islamabad, and disclosing details of interactions with President Barack Obama, Secretary Kerry and Ambassador Richard Olson, Khan wondered “how can the U.S. say it supports the peace process in the region when it takes out the leader of the other outfit on the eve of the talks?”

Pakistan’s Foreign Office took a similar line as it lodged a protest with Ambassador Olson, summoning him to lodge a protest but not issuing a diplomatic “demarche” -- a formal protest about the U.S. government's policy or actions -- that Khan had threatened.

"The latest drone strike will have a negative impact on the government's initiative to undertake a dialogue with the TTP," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Saturday. "The government, however, is determined to continue with these efforts to engage with the TTP, to bring an end to the ongoing violence and make them a part of mainstream politics within the parameters of our constitution."

The statement added the recent U.S. drone strikes violate their sovereignty and international humanitarian laws and said Pakistan's leaders have raised their concerns with President Barack Obama and the United Nations.

Politically, Mehsud’s death is becoming an anti-American rallying cry in Pakistan. Imran Khan, the chairman of Pakistan’s Movement for Justice (the Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf, or PTI), whose party rules the violent Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province adjacent to Afghanistan, also condemned the strike and threatened to “stop all NATO convoys that pass through our land.”

The NATO convoy routes pass through what the U.S. military calls GLOCs (Ground Lines of Communication) that are essential for the billions of dollars worth of military hardware that is expected to pass through Pakistan’s roads and through its ports as the U.S. and other western coalition powers prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014.

Pakistan has officially blocked the NATO supply routes in the past as a form of protest against U.S. actions, but neither Khan, the interior minister nor the Foreign Office have mentioned their closure since Friday’s drone strike.

Pakistani and U.S. officials, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, confirmed Mehsud's death in a CIA drone strike in northwest Pakistan on Friday, along with the Taliban.

A Pakistani security official said the attack occurred in Danday Darpakhel village of North Waziristan, the tribal area where a majority of US drone attacks have occurred since 2004.

A Taliban spokesperson told NBC News that the militant group held an emergency meeting in the tribal area of North Waziristan soon after learning of Mehsud's death and shortlisted four commanders – Khan Said “Sajna”, a TTP leader in South Waziristan, Hafiz Saeed Khan, a TTP leader from the tribal Orakzai area, Maulvi Omar Khalid Khurasani, a commander in the Mohmand tribal region, and Maulana Fazlullah, head of the Swat Taliban -- as possible replacements for Mehsud.

In the meeting, the TTP Shura members from South Waziristan, North Waziristan, Kurram, Orakzai and Bajaur tribal regions as well as representatives of settled areas took part. According to Taliban sources, another meeting took place somewhere in Afghanistan's Kunar province, where militant leaders of the Malakand, Bajaur and Mohmand tribal regions were present.

"In both the meetings, Maulana Fazlullah and Hafiz Saeed Khan were shortlisted and it was decided that a final meeting of the Shura will nominate one of them as the next head of the Pakistani Taliban," one of the Shura members said.

TTP spokesman for South Waziristan Maulana Azam Tariq denied reports of Commander Khan Said's nomination.

Unlike the Afghan Taliban, who believe in the religious superiority of their leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, the self-declared “commander of the faithful”, the Pakistani Taliban are more decentralized and “vote in” their leadership through consensus, usually built around operational prowess and tribal lines.

The TTP has waged a decade-long insurgency against the Pakistani government from sanctuaries along the Afghan border, claiming thousands of lives of civilians in vicious suicide bombing and complex attacks on military installations.

It has mainly targeted the Pakistani state but has on occasion helped the Afghan Taliban in their war against U.S.-led NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The TTP claimed responsibility for a failed bombing plot in New York City's Times Square in 2010 as well as an attack on Camp Chapman in Afghanistan's Khost province in 2009 that killed seven CIA officials.

Mehsud had a $5 million bounty on his head posted by the U.S. It’s not clear if his death is related to the apprehension of his deputy and cousin, Latifullah Mehsud, in Afghanistan by U.S. Special Forces in early October.

So the timing of this one's bothering me even more than usual - apparently occurring just a few days before the Pakistani government were about to commence peace talks with the local Taliban. As such, it seems the most blatantly cynical example of Pres. Obomber's bizarre foreign policy being delivered at the end of a warhead.

Okay, so I get that Mehsud was on a US "most wanted" list.

Okay, so I get that Mehsud had claimed responsibility for the failed Times Square attack and also for an attack on CIA assets within Afghanistan.

Okay, so I get that the peace talks were most likely going to turn out to achieve nothing, given that the Pakistani Taliban want the imposition of Sharia law across all of Pakistan, and that's never going to happen.

Having said all that, it's harder to imagine a more successful way to turn pretty much the entirety of a sovereign nation's population against you - including its elected government. Hey, if that elected government wants to negotiate with the Taliban, it's got every right to do so.

Looking at the bigger of the pictures here and forgetting the somewhat dubious motivation of vengeance, can any supporters of Obama's "badder than Bush" drone-based foreign policy towards the Middle East and beyond find enough justification on balance for this one?

[Cail]

But it's what he's good at.

According to the new book “Double Down,” in which journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann chronicle the 2012 presidential election, President Barack Obama told his aides that he’s “really good at killing people” while discussing drone strikes.

[TheFallen]

...and from the same article that Cail linked to, here's how Obomber, the illustrious Nobel Peace Prize recipient, has got to be so "really good at killing people":-

There have been 326 drone strikes in Pakistan, 93 in Yemen, and several in Somalia under Obama, compared to a total of 52 under George Bush.

In 2011 two of those strikes killed American-born al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki and his American-born, 16-year-old son within two weeks.

Under Obama U.S. drone operators began practicing “signature strikes,” a tactic in which targets are chosen based on patterns of suspicious behavior and the identities of those to be killed aren't necessarily known. (The administration counts all “military-age males” in a strike zone as combatants.)

Furthermore, the disturbing trend of the “double tap” — bombing the same place in quick succession and often hitting first responders — has become common practice.

So, thus far, Obomber's used going on ten times more drone strikes than Dubya, and staggeringly indiscriminately...

What a legacy! Whatta guy!

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Things like this happen because our Administration doesn't give a rat's ass what Pakistan wants.

I still wonder if the people who approve of the way drone strikes are carried out would accept local police being able to shoot people they think are potential criminals on sight. The principle is exactly the same--targeting someone for death without proof of culpability.

[wayfriend]

A report issued Wednesday by the Pakistani government found that of the 2,227 people it says were killed in U.S. drone strikes since 2008, only 67 (3 percent) were civilians — a figure that has sparked criticism from groups that have investigated deaths from the attacks.

The figure, which was provided by Pakistan's Ministry of Defense to the country's Senate, is much lower than past government calculations and estimates by independent organizations, which have placed the number as high as 300 (13.5 percent). [link]

Which side are you guys arguing? That we believe Pakistan now? Or that we don't? I can go either way.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

I am arguing that we stop killing people without definitive proof that they are deserving of Death From Above without the dignity of facing their accusers or without anyone reviewing the evidence against them.

Again, I note that the parallel would be for local police officers to be given the ability to shoot people they suspect of being criminals on sight without oversight, review of the evidence, or negative repercussions. Why is "death by drone" allowable but "shoot first and ask questions later" police activity not allowable?

[wayfriend]

Again, I note that the parallel would be for local police officers to be given the ability to shoot people they suspect of being criminals on sight without oversight, review of the evidence, or negative repercussions. Why is "death by drone" allowable but "shoot first and ask questions later" police activity not allowable?[/color]

I would highly dispute that there is any such parallel. (A) This is an offensive military attack not policing; (B) there is plenty of documentation of oversight and review, more than sufficient for an offensive military attack, and certainly more than "none".

What you request is that, in a war, we give enemy soldiers a trial before we shoot at them. Which is ludicrous. If it wasn't all about bashing Obama it would not even come up. In the Bush days, anyone who spoke such as you was "siding with the terrorists".

[Hashi Lebwohl]

I am not bashing Obama so you can just stop with that nonsense right there. I was against Bush using drones for precisely the same reasons--no proof and no oversight.

We are NOT at war, I don't care what any of the authorities say. These days, the people being droned might, at most, be planning to do something, even something awful, but we should never be killing someone because of their potential actions--that is tantamount to thought crime, killing someone for wanting to do something. How can you not see that as wrong?

How do you know there is documentation? Have you seen it? How do you know that the information is reviewed? Have you reviewed it? Are you on that committee? Who is reviewing it? This, of course, all boils down to trust--you trust the Administration and I do not. I didn't trust the Bush Administration, either, for what it is worth.

Killing people who are not actively attacking us makes us the Bad Guys.

[Cail]

If we were at war, that would be one thing, but since we're not.....

[wayfriend]

Whether or not you disagree that we are at war, comparing acts done in war, by the military, to the enemy, with acts done at peace time, by the police, to one's own population, is still very silly, isn't it? Of course people who operate as if we are at war aren't acting as if we weren't.

You've taken a position that is contrary to all known facts - that we are not at war - just for an opportunity to criticize. What mindless bashing.

If Obama was giving them all trials, you'd be all like, what? trials for the enemy before we can attack them? Obama is such a bleeding heart liberal!

Sorry, Hashi. You can recognize a partisan attack when the subject of that attack can't win with you no matter what he does.

[Cail]

Whether or not you disagree that we are at war, comparing acts done in war, by the military, to the enemy, with acts done at peace time, by the police, to one's own population, is still very silly, isn't it? Of course people who operate as if we are at war aren't acting as if we weren't.

You've taken a position that is contrary to all known facts - that we are not at war - just for an opportunity to criticize. What mindless bashing.

If Obama was giving them all trials, you'd be all like, what? trials for the enemy before we can attack them? Obama is such a bleeding heart liberal!

Sorry, Hashi. You can recognize a partisan attack when the subject of that attack can't win with you no matter what he does.

No, I'm not believing the Republocrat (or Democrublican if you prefer) party line that we're at war.

I've suggested time and time again that we try terrorists in court. Said so about the 9/11 guys, said so about OBL, said so about AA and his son, said so about the Times Square bomber, said so about Major Hassan. I've been completely consistent about this.

We absolutely should not be violating other nations' sovereignty by sending in SEAL teams or blowing stuff up with drones.

A lot of hay was made about the folly of preemptively invading Iraq in 2003. That haymaking was correct. It's unfortunate that the same hay isn't made by many of the same people regarding the same actions in Libya, Syria, and with our continuing drone war in the region.

There's simply no need to continue to prosecute this war of aggression against various Middle Eastern nations. If we wish to deal with people we deem as terrorists, there are diplomatic channels available to get those guys into our custody. If the host nation(s) rebuff us, we can then decide whether or not it's worth committing an act of war to get them.

As it stands, all we're doing is lobbing firecrackers into a gasoline-soaked hornet's nest. One day it's going to blow up and consume us in the process.

[wayfriend]

I've suggested time and time again that we try terrorists in court.

Well, terrorists we've captured isn't the same thing as terrorists we know about but can't capture, is it? AFAIK, Obama isn't sending drones to attack the terrorists we've captured. This is another silly comparison.

So what do we do with the ones we know about that are in Pakistan? Leave them be? Should Obama ever do that, it would all be criticizing Obama for not going after terrorists like Congress demanded of him, the bleeding heart liberal.

Lose/Lose. Try having a viable foreign policy to contrast against Obama's before the complaints start.

[Cail]

I've suggested time and time again that we try terrorists in court.

Well, terrorists we've captured isn't the same thing as terrorists we know about but can't capture, is it? AFAIK, Obama isn't sending drones to attack the terrorists we've captured. This is another silly comparison.

So what do we do with the ones we know about that are in Pakistan? Leave them be? Should Obama ever do that, it would all be criticizing Obama for not going after terrorists like Congress demanded of him, the bleeding heart liberal.

Lose/Lose. Try having a viable foreign policy to contrast against Obama's before the complaints start.

A viable policy, like not attacking sovreign nations? Like using diplomacy to arrest suspected terrorists?

[finn]

Whether or not you disagree that we are at war, comparing acts done in war, by the military, to the enemy, with acts done at peace time, by the police, to one's own population, is still very silly, isn't it? Of course people who operate as if we are at war aren't acting as if we weren't.

You've taken a position that is contrary to all known facts - that we are not at war - just for an opportunity to criticize. What mindless bashing.

If Obama was giving them all trials, you'd be all like, what? trials for the enemy before we can attack them? Obama is such a bleeding heart liberal!

Sorry, Hashi. You can recognize a partisan attack when the subject of that attack can't win with you no matter what he does.

No, I'm not believing the Republocrat (or Democrublican if you prefer) party line that we're at war.

I've suggested time and time again that we try terrorists in court. Said so about the 9/11 guys, said so about OBL, said so about AA and his son, said so about the Times Square bomber, said so about Major Hassan. I've been completely consistent about this.

We absolutely should not be violating other nations' sovereignty by sending in SEAL teams or blowing stuff up with drones.

A lot of hay was made about the folly of preemptively invading Iraq in 2003. That haymaking was correct. It's unfortunate that the same hay isn't made by many of the same people regarding the same actions in Libya, Syria, and with our continuing drone war in the region.

There's simply no need to continue to prosecute this war of aggression against various Middle Eastern nations. If we wish to deal with people we deem as terrorists, there are diplomatic channels available to get those guys into our custody. If the host nation(s) rebuff us, we can then decide whether or not it's worth committing an act of war to get them.

As it stands, all we're doing is lobbing firecrackers into a gasoline-soaked hornet's nest. One day it's going to blow up and consume us in the process.

Wholeheartedly agree. The use of "war on..." is self-aggrandisement of the first order and elevates criminals and their activities. Would there really be so many martyrs-for-the-cause if the cause was labelled criminal instead of idealogical?

Under Obama U.S. drone operators began practicing “signature strikes,” a tactic in which targets are chosen based on patterns of suspicious behavior and the identities of those to be killed aren't necessarily known. (The administration counts all “military-age males” in a strike zone as combatants.)

Furthermore, the disturbing trend of the “double tap” — bombing the same place in quick succession and often hitting first responders — has become common practice.

Now if this were happening anywhere in the West that practice would be called "terrorism" ..... I really don't know how you can rationalise this Wayfriend: dogged loyalty to a party line is one thing but really, this is not defensible ethically or legally.

[Avatar]

Things like this happen because our Administration doesn't give a rat's ass what Pakistan wants.

Well, if you think about it, the US wouldn't want Pakistan, or anybody else, to make peace with the Taliban.

It would compromise their war on terror...

--A

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Whether or not you disagree that we are at war, comparing acts done in war, by the military, to the enemy, with acts done at peace time, by the police, to one's own population, is still very silly, isn't it? Of course people who operate as if we are at war aren't acting as if we weren't.

No, silly is being a good little sheep and following along behind your shepherd no matter what. A person engaged in critical thinking and trying to be a realist will always be questioning the people who claim to be in charge and holding them to a higher standard.

You've taken a position that is contrary to all known facts - that we are not at war - just for an opportunity to criticize. What mindless bashing.

We can be "at war" only if Congress has issued a Declaration of War. Where is this declaration? When did it occur? This whole nonsense of "we are at war because the President has decided that we are" started with Johnson and that awful Tonkin Gulf Resolution and has taken us down a path we should never have trod. There is a term for a political leader who also has absolute and final authority to use the military in whatever manner he chooses but who is not necessarily cruel in his manner of governance and that term is "dictator". Obama is simply the latest one, neither better nor worse than the ones who came before.

If Obama was giving them all trials, you'd be all like, what? trials for the enemy before we can attack them? Obama is such a bleeding heart liberal!

Can I put words into your mouth, too? You sure throw a fit when other people do it so I suppose it makes you feel empowered to dish it out a little.

Sorry, Hashi. You can recognize a partisan attack when the subject of that attack can't win with you no matter what he does.

I can also recognize when someone has bet all his chips on one person and you have gone all in for Obama, whether he is right or wrong. 10 years from now people will be looking back and realizing that Obama was nothing more than Bush III, given the fact that he has continued and/or ramped up virtually everything Bush did during his two terms.
Right now, Obama's legacy is "Yes We Can", "Hope and Change", and ACA. On the first...well, No We Didn't. On the second...not much has changed since 2008 and what little hope came back to many people in 2009 has already died. ACA--yes, they managed to pass it but it has turned out to be a flop.

I do wonder, though, exactly how much is the DNC paying you to be one of their cheerleaders? Just so we are clear, your support of our current drone program means you support killing people based on little to no evidence.

I notice that you still don't bother answering direct questions. How do you know the evidence against drone targets exists and is reviewed? Who reviews it? How do they know it is accurate? Bush invaded Iraq based on inaccurate intelligence he was given so don't you think it is likely that Obama has also received faulty intelligence from time to time? If not, then did all those analysts get replaced in 2009?

I'll use a movie trope here: you just don't get it, do you?

Under Obama U.S. drone operators began practicing “signature strikes,” a tactic in which targets are chosen based on patterns of suspicious behavior and the identities of those to be killed aren't necessarily known. (The administration counts all “military-age males” in a strike zone as combatants.)

Furthermore, the disturbing trend of the “double tap” — bombing the same place in quick succession and often hitting first responders — has become common practice.

Now if this were happening anywhere in the West that practice would be called "terrorism"

Exactly. This is what we call a "double standard". If you hit your wife it is "domestic violence" but if I hit my wife it is "just a disagreement". Bullshit it what it is. Terrorism is terrorism no matter who does it and right now we are the ones doing it to Pakistan and Yemen. We are supposed to know better than that.

[TheFallen]

The use of "war on..." is self-aggrandisement of the first order and elevates criminals and their activities. Would there really be so many martyrs-for-the-cause if the cause was labelled criminal instead of idealogical?

Under Obama U.S. drone operators began practicing “signature strikes,” a tactic in which targets are chosen based on patterns of suspicious behavior and the identities of those to be killed aren't necessarily known. (The administration counts all “military-age males” in a strike zone as combatants.)

Furthermore, the disturbing trend of the “double tap” — bombing the same place in quick succession and often hitting first responders — has become common practice.

Now if this were happening anywhere in the West that practice would be called "terrorism" ..... I really don't know how you can rationalise this Wayfriend: dogged loyalty to a party line is one thing but really, this is not defensible ethically or legally.

This really is not a difficult issue, except to those deliberately self-blinded, who will continue to insist that the sky is green.

First off, no war has been declared by Congress, as every right-thinking poster here has pointed out. The U.S. has not declared war on Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia. That's an indisputable fact.

Secondly, I will agree with WF when he terms U.S. drone strikes as "offensive military acts". Yes they are, but when such are ordered and carried out without the legal sanction of war, these are instead more accurately termed as criminal and effectively terrorist acts. These are attacks carried out against other sovereign nations without due cause in both legal and constitutional terms. They actually give Pakistan every legal ground to declare war against the US.

Thirdly, Hashi's entirely right to point out that no POTUS should ever have the right to sanction some CIA Poindexter pressing the button to drone strike a location, based solely upon the supposition that someone the U.S. doesn't like, or someone who might act in the future against the U.S. might well be there. Obama as judge, jury and executioner yet again. A death sentence passed upon suspicion and nothing more. Not really what one might hope from a country that styles itself as the shining exemplar of justice and democracy. As Hashi says, such "policy" makes you the bad guys and it is so horribly like tossing Cail's firecracker into a gasoline-soaked hornets' nest.

Finally - and I paused much before drawing this comparison, but I think it's bleakly valid in several ways - Obama is busily sending in aerial missiles to "out of the blue" kill those that the US views as potentially acting against its interests, plus anyone else that unluckily happens to be in the same area at the same time. I'd call this government-sanctioned murder, since it isn't happening under any legal sanction of war and collateral damage/indiscriminate civilian deaths are clearly considered an acceptable price. Leaving the emotion out of it, apart from degree, is there much of a substantive difference between Obama's loathably unjust drone policy and the actions of the 9/11 terrorists, who also used what were effectively aerial missiles to "out of the blue" kill those they viewed as potentially acting against their interests?

[SerScot]

Wayfriend, (or anyone who supports drone strikes in nations against whom we have no formal declaration of war)

I've asked you this before and you've dodged. Would you be cool with Mexico sending drones to attack gun stores in the the US that have sold weapons to Mexican Drug cartels.

If not, why not, and if not why is the situation with Pakistan different? Hell, a gun store can legally sell to whoever comes in to buy. At least Pakistan has made the actions of people who supply terroists illegal.

[wayfriend]

No, silly is being a good little sheep and following along behind your shepherd no matter what.

Well, that's a personal attack. If you don't bash Obama, you're a sheep? Excuse me while your "rational" argument makes me barf.

We can be "at war" only if Congress has issued a Declaration of War. Where is this declaration?

Again? Let me cut to the chase a little bit.

You [general] say we're not at war, I point out the Congressional Authorization to use force, you say it doesn't say "War" in the title of the authorization. Why do we repeat this over and over?

On one side, congress authorized the use of force against the terrorists.

On the other side, the authorization didn't say the word "War" in it.

The Constitution says Congress declares war, it does not say the manner in which it must do so, so you'd think if Congress is fine with it, there wouldn't be an issue. The objection that it doesn't say "War" in the title was made up for the occassion.

Ditto the stance that we cannot be at war with terrorists - a completely unsubstantiated made-up rule. And you also have to conveniently forget that we have authorization to send the drones where we send them from the nations involved, obviating the need to declare war on any specific nation.

We're going after terrorists, not nations. Why declare war against a nation?

We have congressional authorization made in full knowledge of how the authorization would be used, preserving the Constitutional checks and balances.

Can I put words into your mouth, too? You sure throw a fit when other people do it so I suppose it makes you feel empowered to dish it out a little.

Recognition that this is a set up to blast Obama no matter which way he leans isn't putting words in anyone's mouth.

The way that you could show it is not a setup but a fair opinion is you show that there is a possible right choice for Obama to make, without making up something ludicrous and call that a right choice.

I do wonder, though, exactly how much is the DNC paying you to be one of their cheerleaders?

I guess if even the moderator engages in personal attacks to discredit the poster, there's not much hope that this forum will ever contain much actual balanced discussion. Just a bunch of conservatives patting each other on the back in a circle, and if anyone stumbles in to disagree, having fun calling them names and making them angry.

I notice that you still don't bother answering direct questions. How do you know the evidence against drone targets exists and is reviewed?

Gosh, even you don't believe I can choose to post whatever I want to post. You are yet another person with pretenses of authority over what I choose to discuss.

The process for review has been documented. No one has said it wasn't a true statement. No one has any reason to suspect it is a lie other than "I want to bash Obama". So the onus of showing that there is no review is on you.

Wayfriend, (or anyone who supports drone strikes in nations against whom we have no formal declaration of war)

That's a rather nasty way of posting false information about me, isn't it, SerScot? I think that the crapola people post about why they are illegal is crapola, but that doesn't make me a supporter. Nor do I consider the situatuation undeclared, as we have congressional authorization. You set up your question with a double falsehood about me before it even starts.

I've asked you this before and you've dodged. Would you be cool with Mexico sending drones to attack gun stores in the the US that have sold weapons to Mexican Drug cartels.

Third falsehood. Follow the link if you actually care what my answer is. Evidence suggests you don't, you're just after opportunities to malign me.

First off, no war has been declared by Congress, as every right-thinking poster here has pointed out. The U.S. has not declared war on Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia. That's an indisputable fact.

But congress has authorized the president to do exactly what he's doing. As every right-leaning poster here has completely ignored whenever it's inconvenient to remember it.

[TheFallen]

I notice that you still don't bother answering direct questions. How do you know the evidence against drone targets exists and is reviewed?

Gosh, even you don't believe I can choose to post whatever I want to post. You are yet another person with pretenses of authority over what I choose to discuss.

...or possibly yet another person getting frustrated with the fact that you only ever choose to post pro-admin propagandist dogma, while permanently dodging any sincerely asked cogent question as to where you actually stand on anything. You don't actually ever "choose to discuss" anything, whenever politics are involved. Anyhow...

The process for review has been documented. No one has said it wasn't a true statement. No one has any reason to suspect it is a lie other than "I want to bash Obama". So the onus of showing that there is no review is on you.

...and here's a couple of extracts from the very same NY Times article that you linked to above, claiming that "the process for review has been documented".

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Monday offered its first extensive explanation of how American officials decide when to use drones to kill suspected terrorists — a tactic that the government often treats as a classified secret even though it is widely known around the world.

The use of armed drones to strike at suspected militants in places like Pakistan and Yemen has grown dramatically under the Obama administration, and the emergence of the new technology — which has sharply reduced the cost and risk of warfare to its operators, making it easier to engage in sporadic combat in far-flung regions — has led to growing concerns both about civilian casualties and about a future in which other countries also acquire drones.

But Mr. Brennan sidestepped a question about the use of “signature strikes,” in which drones are used to target unidentified people whose activities — such as presence at a training camp — suggest they probably are militants. He said he was speaking only of “targeted strikes against specific individuals.”

So, that's the POTUS ordering multiple executions of people in other sovereign nations based upon no more than suspicion and suggestion. So I'm an "unidentified person," whose "activities suggest" that I am "probably" a militant. On those clear as mud grounds, damn but I sure do deserve to be blown to pieces. Hardly a supportative article...

It surely is a brave new world that you're invariably cheering for, Wayfriend. One where it's fine to have state-sanctioned executions based on no more than suspicion or suggestion. Pick any example you like from any number of tyrannies over the last 100 years, but I'll choose to say that to me it bears scary similarities to Stalin's Russia.