N.Y. TIMES
A report by a bipartisan panel that includes several former senior intelligence and military officials...found that more than a decade into the era of armed drones, the American government has yet to carry out a thorough analysis of whether the costs of routine secret killing operations outweigh the benefits. The report urges the administration to conduct such an analysis and to give a public accounting of both militants and civilians killed in drone strikes.
The findings amount to a sort of report card — one that delivers middling grades — a year after President Obama gave a speech promising new guidelines for drone strikes and greater transparency about the killing operations. The report is especially critical of the secrecy that continues to envelop drone operations and questions whether they might be creating terrorists even as they are killing them.
The report challenges some widespread criticisms of armed drones. Arguing that they should neither be “glorified nor demonized,” it said there was strong evidence that civilian deaths from armed drone strikes are far fewer than from traditional combat aircraft. The panel also said there was little reason to conclude that drones create a “PlayStation mentality” — turning war into a video game that eliminates the psychological costs to drone pilots.
In fact, the report said, because drone pilots watch their targets sometimes for days and weeks before pulling the trigger — and then see them blown up on a high-resolution video screen — they are more susceptible to post-traumatic stress than pilots of manned aircraft.
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.
The Obama administration has been reluctant to make public any of the legal underpinnings of the targeted killing program.
The report raised warnings that other countries might adopt the same rationale as the United States has for carrying out lethal strikes outside of declared war zones. Using an example of a current crisis, it said that Russia could use armed drones in Ukraine under the justification that it was killing anti-Russian terrorists and then refuse to disclose the intelligence that served as the basis for the strike.
“In such circumstances,” the report asked, “how could the United States credibly condemn Russian targeted killings?”
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GREG SARGENT, WASHINGTON POST
A new New York Times poll finds support for the Tea Party has dropped to all of 21 percent, but Allison Kopicki ferrets out the nugget that matters most:
Then there’s the Highway Trust Fund. If it becomes insolvent, it could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and put many infrastructure projects on hold. The Chamber of Commerce has warned against this outcome, in keeping with business leaders’ general embrace of more investments in infrastructure. But GOP leaders’ ability to come up with a way to pay for this is already constrained by Tea Party hostility to government.
Most glaring of all: Immigration reform. This week, one year will have gone by since the Senate passed a comprehensive bipartisan reform compromise. Yet if anything, House Republicans have moved further to the right on the issue. Darrell Issa is nonsensically coming out for the deportation of DREAMers in response to the current border crisis, and the general GOP posture is that this crisis makes reform less likely, when it should make it more urgent.
BUT TEA PARTY RAGE IS RUNNING HIGH: However, the flip side of the story is that Tea Party anger at the establishment is likely to remain on full boil. Last night, after African Americans voting helped put Cochran over the top, McDaniel railed against “voting irregularities” and “liberal Democrats” who helped Cochran win, and refused to concede, while we saw this from his supporters:
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| Chris McDaniel, a Tea Party favorite, at a campaign event in Biloxi, Miss. Tim Isbell/SUN HERALD, via Associated Press |
GREG SARGENT, WASHINGTON POST
A new New York Times poll finds support for the Tea Party has dropped to all of 21 percent, but Allison Kopicki ferrets out the nugget that matters most:
Eighty-one percent of voters who support the Tea Party say they will definitely vote in the 2014 election, compared with 67 percent of voters who don’t support the Tea Party…Republican Tea Party voters are 15 points more likely to say they are very or somewhat enthusiastic about voting in this November’s elections for Congress than non-Tea Party Republican voters.Meanwhile many House Republicans are cossetted away in districts insulated from broader currents of national demographic trends, and it’s clear why the GOP’s agenda remain so in thrall to Tea Party priorities.
Then there’s the Highway Trust Fund. If it becomes insolvent, it could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and put many infrastructure projects on hold. The Chamber of Commerce has warned against this outcome, in keeping with business leaders’ general embrace of more investments in infrastructure. But GOP leaders’ ability to come up with a way to pay for this is already constrained by Tea Party hostility to government.
Most glaring of all: Immigration reform. This week, one year will have gone by since the Senate passed a comprehensive bipartisan reform compromise. Yet if anything, House Republicans have moved further to the right on the issue. Darrell Issa is nonsensically coming out for the deportation of DREAMers in response to the current border crisis, and the general GOP posture is that this crisis makes reform less likely, when it should make it more urgent.
BUT TEA PARTY RAGE IS RUNNING HIGH: However, the flip side of the story is that Tea Party anger at the establishment is likely to remain on full boil. Last night, after African Americans voting helped put Cochran over the top, McDaniel railed against “voting irregularities” and “liberal Democrats” who helped Cochran win, and refused to concede, while we saw this from his supporters:
They cheered his defiance and chanted “Write Chris In!” as he took the stage and calling out “It’s not over Chris” and “We’re not going with Thad.” McDaniel supporters quickly moved to consider legal challenges based on reported voting irregularities.Sarah Palin and Sean Hannity last night suggested it might be time for conservatives to go third party.