Mr Martin, I had the same impression of the story.At one point Ms. Logan asked a drone commander "What if you make a mistake?" He replied,"we don't!" She did not call him on that obvious prevarication.CBS sounded like a Pentagon cheerleader.Thankyou for Peace Action's good work. peace

Mr. Martin and johnnyhempseed: I muttered to myself (and my long-suffering wife; it was Muttering Day, you know) much of what you said in watching that 60 minute segment. The worst of it (and there was a lot of competition for this honor) was the Nevada drone controller who described how "hard" it was to have breakfast with your family, then "go to war" at a control station; poor baby, maybe he preferred to be in a manned aircraft somewhere over AfPak. But no, another controller admitted, he'd much rather be sitting in front of his console than in the air over the target. The damned 13 minutes ruined my whole day!

The segment made me literally sick. Go to the air-conditioned office for an eight-hour day, sit in perfect safety, play a violent video game, kill lots of men, women and children while playing god in the sky, then go home to your wife and kids. I think I heard "church" mentioned too.

Talk about the banality of evil. Adolph Eichmann would have been proud.

The author lost me at: "Who doesn't love Andy Rooney?"

· Yr Obd't Servant

The only reason MIC TV, has any truth to it is so it can gain your trust, they need you to trust them at times like this.

There is nothing good about 60 minutes, it's carefully programed to get the most bang for the buck in these instances; they pour on the honey and cram it down our throats.

I tried to watch that 60 minute segment and it looked like something that Geobbels would have produced for Nazi Germany! This was whore journalism at its best! The drone commander said: " we are protecting our troops from the enemy ". The military has done a good job of brainwashing him!

Sitting in an underground bunker and choosing which dots on a monitor you will kill with the flick of an Xbox joystick, all from thousands of miles away is neither noble or brave.
Majority of deaths are civilian, mainly women and children. Air force 'pilots' are either soundly brainwashed or lying happily for their death merchant masters. It is so sad many many citizens somehow feel these people are protecting us.
This is state sponsored terror, plain and simple.
I too lost much respect for 60 min. last night.

As I was clicking up the channels I hit '60 Minutes' right at the ticking watch. They had a female 'reporter' heading toward a hangered drone like a groupie toward a rock band.
She didn't throw her panties on the predatory machine so I switched channels and watched an old movie instead.

I'm surprised they didn't end the segment with Kate Smith singing God Bless America while pushing a button to drop a tomahawk on an afghan wedding.

This situation should invoke a very scary scenario, especially for the pro-defense establishment.

a) The US military continues to expand its use of drones, mothballing both fighters and pilots as they are replaced with drones and joystick jockeys.

b) After a few years, foreign technology develops effective countermeasures against remote-controlled drones (if they haven't already).

c) With our air defenses essentially useless and no experienced pilots or battle-ready planes to fly, we're fucked.

d) Lacking other measures, the military responds to some new or resurfacing threat with a grossly disproportionate nuclear response.

e) The end of the world ensues.

q

I agree completely with the author and posters here. I watch the show every Sunday and was hugely disappointed in their single-sided approach. Lara Logan is a good looking woman, but a complete automaton for the military. How cute, she & Chambliss and Mrs. Chambliss hanging out in the kitchen. Jeez, what spin!

My bet is Chambliss goes to his christian church and prays for more kills. Onward, Christian Soldiers.

I found a place for my television set and the sick culture it leaks into my living room: outside in the alley next to the dumpster. The city comes and removes it all for free. I'm surprised anybody on CD is still sitting in front of the Blue Pill Media, getting their shorts in a twist about an ambient dementia that is only going to get worse and worse. If it feels good to write to CBS or picket your local Air Force base, go for it. Let us know how it went. I recommend turning your back on the whole loony bin before it poisons your brain. Don't let them in your yard or near your children. Like the country hippies did forty years ago, go somewhere else. Do something else. Let it go. Don't look back, lest you turn into a pillar of salt.

One CBS subsidiary is Westinghouse, one of the larget military contractors, providing electronics to their war machines. One can't really expect CBS to knock their products. So much for MSM journalism.

Autonomy corrupts, and absolute autonomy corrupts absolutely. Such sterile combat, with none of the horror, danger, and honor of real combat, can only lead to evil. In this case, the success of what is essentially a glorified model airplane carrying a bomb cannot be lost on those we've been targeting.

We've let this cat out of the bag, and we'll pay for it eventually. Those Americans who'll have to pay the price for this honorless form of combat will be different from those who got to play war without the downsides. That's autonomy, and thats corrupting. I don't care how many hail-Mary's you say in the meantime. Already, the over-reliance on this 'combat' option has corrupted our decisionmakers. This WILL come back to us. It always has, and it always will.

Ray Berthiaume

It costs $11 million per drone! And the military has requested more of them. How much food and medicine $11 million would provide the Afghan people!

Lara Logan sold out some time ago - which astonished me. After I saw her awful, fawning wet noodle approach to the Blackwater story last year, I lost all faith in her.

Reverse the situation.....I wonder how the people of the USA would feel if out of the clear blue sky....bombs dropped down and were killing, maiming and blowing them all to pieces.

Children dead, old people, ordinary people in their homes and all the dead babies.

No doubt the enemy would be seen as the devil incarnate and should be spared no mercy whatsoever in retaliating against.

---

Remember that U.N. anti-landmine ad showing US schoolgirls going out to play soccer and then BOOM!, maimed and killed kids everywhere? - It pointed out that landmines hang around for many years killing civilians indiscriminately.

It also pointed out for a change the results of US civilians being killed, which I expect was far more shocking for US people's delicate sensibilities.

As long as the wars are 'over there' and there's nothing heard or seen about them to matter 'locally' then it'll go on forever with a free hand.....and of course escalate as it's exactly doing.

When there's no knowledge or sympathy for fellow people then it always gets worse.

---

(11.4 meg) anti-landmine ad direct link:

http://www.stoplandmines.org/slm/videos/kickoff_hi.wmv

death from above, coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

Lara Logan? You sure it wasn't Thomas Ricks in drag?

The perfect corporate killing machine: unseen, faceless, immoral, uncomprehending, immortal, and nowhere for its victims to hide. A fitting metaphor for the goals and processes of corporatism itself, no?

I must agree. I always felt our tactics in Iraq, starting with Shock and Awe, were like dropping an Atomic Bomb on Sicily to get rid of the mafia.

Look at it this way. "60 Minutes" didn't put anything over on anybody, judging from the comments. The segment was chilling, something even obtuse conservatives couldn't miss. There was no need for critics. I guess the only reason to even put in a disclaimer would be to satisfy those few people who really believe "60 Minutes" was trying to sell the morality of this technique.

So let's say we stop the drones from delivering missiles, bullets, or bombs, those being left to conventional forces. Does that move to moral needle away from evil?

The drones are new, extremely powerful and insidious weapons that will, no matter how they're used, greatly change warfare, like every new, powerful weapon (atomic weapons are an obvious example, but firearms fall into the same category). Should their use by our military be banned the way chemical and nuclear weapons have been? Maybe (do I hear a motion?). But the real enemy is war. As long as we can justify attacking and killing human beings, and causing "collateral damage," in warfare, we've forfeited some of our humanity, regardless of what weapons we use.

I watched the 60 Minutes segment thinking "it must just be me" - and it wasn't. Appalling commercial for the deep satisfaction some feel when they kill without having to see or smell or hear the wreckage.

PS I can't stand Andy Rooney. Never could.

~ Juliann

What I found so disturbing from the 60 Minute show was that CBS casually legitimizes murder. Now it is so safe for American servicemen to kill little brown people far, far away with video games that makes it feel like we're just sitting at home blowing up the bad guys.
No one questions where the orders come from to 'extinguish' these people. We are supposed to believe any and all reports fed to us in spite of the fact that the State Department has shown time after time that they're incredibly ignorant in analyzing and understanding their targets. More likely the targets are fed to our servicemen from the likes of Gates, Rumsfeld and other corporate stooges who use our taxes and our nation's youth to commit murder on behalf of a handful of multi-nationals.
Unocal felt they got the short end of the stick when they negotiated a pipeline through Afghanistan just prior to 2001. Exxon got really miffed when Iran and Iraq kicked out American oil companies. United Fruit Company freaked when indigenous peasants tried to reclaim a small fraction of their farmland in Guatemala. Yet with each crisis the U.S. responded with the full force of their military under the guise of spreading democracy and freedom.
Now corporate America can feel safe in the knowledge that American servicemen can kill for them with the greatest of ease. You'll never meet your targets. You'll never smell the rotten burning, corpses. You'll never hear the bone chilling screams of your victims. You'll never even have any idea of what your target was accused of! Just trust your incredibly knowledgeable bosses when they tell you that these people are really, really bad. That catch phrase "terrorist" can pretty much cover anyone who's deemed anti-American (re: anti-corporate) and lives in a third world country. Isn't technology beautiful?

The drones don't really add anything to the central problems with counter-insurgency war. Rather, for all their "wizz-bang' aura of technical superiority, they simply highlight the stategic fallacy of killing and alienating the very people you are trying to save. At best they encourage Americans to believe the old-new myth that wars can be won bloodlessly. In the end they are simply a political weapon used to support the "morale" of the folks back home.

Besides that, It was only as a child that I found Andy Rooney amusing. It's so annoying statements like "who doesn't love him", "everybody thinks", and the multitude of other means real debate on substantial, bedrock issues is cut-off on a routine basis in this country.

As Matt Taibbi wrote in "The Great Derangement":

"The reality is that the dominant characteristic of our political system is the unchanging nature of the political consensus- while to two parties agree about most all of the important things, they disagree violently about the inconsequential stuff, providing the fodder and the drama for an endless political "struggle that plays itself out in an entertaining fashion every couple of years."

Very good article and a lot of good comments here. Someone, please send Lara Logan a copy of Zinn's History, or Blum's Rogue State, or Ward Churchill's writings.... OR invite her to visit this web site.

"How was your day honey?"
"Same as usual."
"Aw come on, there had to be something interesting. Give us a little dinner conversation."
"Well, I did drop some bombs on a village. Could've taken out some bad guys. Some little kids got shredded along with their parents. Their neighbors and cousins had to dig their bodies out of the rubble. Typical stuff. Say, pass the peas. How was school today Susie?"
"Great Dad! We got to play video games on the computers during recess. Miss Ahmadzadeh says we can't play World of Warcraft though. I wish you could bomb her house, she's stupid."
"Well, she sure does have a stupid name. Ha Ha Ha Ha...."

Apologies to all you very aware CD readers. I wish I would have had time to write a few pieces on this topic but barely had time to write one for a generic audience. I appreciate all the smart comments and I hope people are taking action. Making calls as well as posting smart comments on the CBS blog is important. I think the right and groups like AIPAC do this better than progressives: hound the media with their views. I'm sure most of us have tuned out a good portion of MSM and instead podcast Democracy Now!, read CD, progressive blogs, etc. I still spend a bit of time with MSM so I know what the messages are so we can work to counteract and interject progressive frames. I would love to know if any made any calls and had any response?