"You are going to war for 12 hours, shooting weapons at targets, directing kills on enemy combatants, and then you get in the car, drive home, and within 20 minutes you are sitting at the dinner table talking to your kids about their homework,"

So ameriKan, so primitive so family oriented. The family that preys together stays together. So this is the end result of evolution... humans have become cold blooded reptiles without remorse or feeling thanks to technology.

But let's not forget that we will indeed reap the harvest of poison and hatred that we have sown. Our sins will indeed be visited on our children. Bank on it, predator nation!

israel and ameriKa feeding each others' depravity but don't forget that the rest of the world sees it for what it is.

When will we ever learn that whatever military technologies we develop can come back and be used upon all of us?!!! How hard will it be for some techno-geek to reproduce these technologies and sell them to the highest (or lowest) bidders? What kind of disastrous weapon for surveillance and destruction, for potential attacks anywhere in the world, for complete elimination of human privacy, will be possible with "fly-size" mobile surveillance equipment with bombs that follow! For Christ sake!!!!

"humans have become cold blooded reptiles without remorse or feeling thanks to technology" ... ditto that sentiment Pancho!

How topical, there was a segment on last night's Daily Show about robotic weapons systems. It seems that iRobot, the company that makes the cute little "Roomba" sweeper has been contracted by the DoD to develop unmanned weapons platforms. Samantha Bee from the Daily Show had a great quip, asking if a certain weapons platform might be named the "Doomba".

I say we try for a boycott of all iRobot products.

We are living in the future, I'l tell you how I know. I read it in the paper fifteen years ago. -John Prine

One can only imagine the flimsy character of the intelligence upon which these drone attacks are based. You know, one drug smuggler or tribal chief eliminating a competitor through the good auspicous of a U.S. officer, communicating through two translators 200 miles from the scene. Government officials in both Afghanistan and Pakistan confirm that mistakes are OFTEN made, that "Collateral Damage" is always significant and that for every real fighter killed in this manner ten more enlist.

In regard to General Lee's remark:""It is good that we find war so horrible, or else we would become fond of it." There is absolutely no evidence that the carnage and suffering of the Civil War dampened Americans relish for war. Walt Whitman, visiting the Hospitals in D.C., prophesized that it would but his observations of the stoical sufferings of the wounded and dying and the upbeat spirits of those that survived even the most horrendous slaughters such as at Fredricksburg, told a different story. On the contrary, as far as American committment to war goes the Civil War was ONLY THE BEGINNING!

Is killing people from the safety of your office outside Las Vegas cowardice, terrorism, or both?

Even in those attacks where no "innocent civilians" are killed, this combinition of cold heartedness combined with sheer cowardice that these remote control attacks entail is stunning. Forget the issue of "innocence" or not. Assuming they are "the enemy", were these "bearded men" (i.e. every man in that region) who I presume weren't even carrying guns, ever given an opportunity to surrender?

And why are they "the enemy" again? They're not my enemy. I have no quarrel with them. Their only quarrel is only with the USAns who invaded their country and want to kill them.

This whole thing is nightmarishly horrific to me. I must be horribly un-modern and old fashioned.

---USAn---

It's strange how 1980s Schwarzenegger movies are becoming prophetic -- Terminator, Running Man (where a fascist government rules what's left of the US after an economic collapse through bread and circuses), Total Recall (where the North is waging war on the South), and Predator.

The article reads...

“…there is almost something seductive about this kind of riskless warfare, says Singer. By lowering the human costs of war, you might be tempted into more wars.”

A stunning sentence because, even in a statement ostensibly arguing against warfare, the implication at the heart of this cost equation suggests that WE are the “humans” and the others, whoever THEY are, don’t count as human in the calculus of war. In order to kill, we must actually deceive ourselves into seeing THEM as inhuman, as objects, in order to bypass—and betray—our own humanity through which we feel our kinship with all people. War may be tempting, but its prerequisite is our constant conscious and unconscious de-humanization of others.

(PS - For a great exploration of this phenomenon, read "The Anatomy of Peace" by the Arbinger Institute)

"You are going to war for 12 hours, shooting weapons at targets, directing kills on enemy combatants...
----------------------

How in the world did this country breed so many psychopaths who accept a paycheck for murdering their brothers and sisters half a world away?

Is it all the GM corn and soy we're eating?

Dennis Kucinich's Dept. of Peace cannot come fast enough.

Welcome to the future.
Soon to become a nightmare.

One of the key points not addressed in this article is that this tele-war is made possible by space-based military communication systems that enable the information from the Predator and the operator to go back and forth.

This ongoing militarization of space is at the heart of long-term US strategic planning to continue and increase our "full-spectrum dominance" over the world's resources.

Remote-controlled Predator drones is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg in the high-tech space-based arsenal that is being planned and developed to enable the US military to enforce access to resources for US-based corporate interests.

Google "full spectrum dominance", "high frontier" or "space 2020" and follow some links. Or go to Obama's revamped White House web site and look over his "defense" priorities, www.whitehouse.gov

Go to the web site of the Global Network for ongoing in-depth analysis of US plans to dominate the Earth from space - www.space4peace.org

Of course, one wishes our friends well and our enemies not-so-well, but the whole idea of making war is to send/deliver ordnance..bombs...not planes, ships or troops.

If the alternative is to actually have soldiers pilots these planes, thereby putting their lives at risk, why is that better?

This is an issue of safety. It's also about putting our technology to good use.

When people say this is cowardly, I wonder if those same people think that using flak jackets and armored Humvees is also cowardly? The point of war is to win, not to arrange as fair a fight as is possible.

Whatever military advantages we have, we should use them, so as not to prolonged the fighting.

"They hate us for our freedom."

In those isolated cases where commanding officers order their troops into the neighborhoods to make friends with the locals there is seen great success in winning hearts and minds.

This sort of remote control killing wins no hearts and turns minds against us forever.

"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell

"On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghan­istan, robots are killing America's enemies and saving American lives... The coming generation of "war-bots" will be immensely more sophisticated," Singer

And that's why we need a global moratorium on technology. This stuff is not saving American lives, on the contrary it threatens American lives.

When you develop these over whelming 'Shock and Awe' robotic weapons, you put in motion three critical realities which will eventually come back to destroy you;

1. Your opponent will develop, copy, steal, your very own technologies and turn them against you. Look at China stealing the blue prints to the US's most miniaturized nuclear warheads in 1999... giving the Chinese a quantum leap in their missile capabilities, increasing the number of nuclear warheads that one of their missiles can deploy from 3 to 15.

2. Radicalizing blowback of victim and world opinion and actions. Does this one really need to be explained?

3. Attacking your unsophisticated opponent with the most sophisticated "war-bots" leaves your opponent with only one option left, to defend themselves with conventional nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

Developing these technologies might appear to make us safer today, but it only endangers us more tomorrow. It's a cycle of violence that must be stopped if humans are to survive the next 100 years.

We need a moratorium on all technologies that have any military application. We need transparency. We need diplomacy. We need to tear down the MIC!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.", Albert Einstein.

Ed note: white phosphorous, dense metal super weapons, nuclear stick-up, missile defense, bailouts and propaganda!!

Exactly. If people would just educate themselves about the horror of war, there would be much less of it. They could start with the World War I poets, then read Stephen Crane and Ambrose Bierce (Civil War), Randall Jarrell, World War II, Brian Turner, Iraq War just for starters, followed by listening and watching every word of testimony by the Winter Soldiers. It's dumb, half-educated people who foment war in every country. As Richard Dawkins recently said in interview with Avi Lewis, "He (George W. Bush) couldn't be as dumb as he looks, but still he must be a pretty dumb man."

Picture, if you will, cargo drones flying supplies into remote, cut off villages. Drones flying over fields and planting areas, finding water sources or looking for blights developing in fields.

Picture, if you will, any of our horrifying modern technologies being turned to the service of peace and aid. The fly bot going into the wreckage of an earthquake torn building, searching for survivors.

Picture, if you will, the MIC ever allowing any of their horror toys to be used for the benefit of mankind...

I know, neither can I. Just science fiction, I guess.

"...the even smaller Wasp (which carries a camera the size of a peanut) are tossed into the air by individual soldiers and fly..." - "...robots the size of flies to carry out reconnaissance..."

Gee, how long will it be before those "flies" are on our windows, or perched unseen inside our homes? Reality is sounding more and more every day like the science fiction I read for years. Guess it's time to start swatting wasps and flies again.

Does a soldier who has no risk to their own life understand the value of the lives of the people they kill, when they show up on a screen like an online combat computer game?

Like other military technologies, will this too be turned onto American streets?

Will this be used to purpetually create false-flag scenarios, keeping Oceania and Eurasia constantly under martial law?

Aloha, salud, lechiem,
- Tobias
http://www.youtube.com/user/tobiasaurusrex

We are become evil. How brave. Who's next?

If war becomes too much like a video game, as described in this article, then many people will become too fond of it.

Those who inflict death and destruction from the comfort of their control rooms thousands of miles away from the war zone before going home to spend time with their families don't have to test their consciences because they see few, if any, faces on the receiving end of their work.

Coward Americans Kill Families Eating, Nursing Babies, the Innocent.

Then Rush Home To their Fat Kids, Pizza & More Video Games.

AF scum near me. SUV's. Bush sticker still. Fences to keep the truth out.

Gutless Cowards that are paid to kill women and children.

CD don't stand for Collateral Damage, it stands for Children, Dead.

COWARDS. Not the guts to get in a ring, on a mat or in a cage. REAL CAREFUL to avoid That.

These punks deserve to be doing hard time, turned into b*#@*^s.

This is scary stuff. How long will it be before these drones come under widespread use? Modern technology will soon put these snooping and deadly devices into many hands... devious, perverted, authoritarian and criminal. They will be easily disassembled and secreted. Soon chem trails and UFOs will not be the only things to look for in the sky.

I get the feeling all of you are rooting against our troops.

Here we have a way to protect them from harm, and everyone is calling it evil.

Do you want American soldiers to die?

Do you wan them to get their legs blown off?

We are talking about using these devices in the middle of a war. People are going to get killed regardless of the drones. All this does is protect our troops. What is wrong with that?

This is why it's so important to support the troops no matter how you feel about the war.

The only difference between a jet and a drone, is that if the jet get shot down, an American could die, but if a drone gets shot down, we lose some money. That's it.