If you label the target racist sepratists, most people would be okay with droning them. If we had Predators back in the Ruby Ridge days, it would have saved the feds some money and the body count wouldn't have changed by much.

Feinstein, simply unable to admit to the full-scale of what's occuring, or engaging in a cover-up for Obama?

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/08/fact_ch ... singleton/

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/07/liberal ... rones_too/

This was interesting also.

"in a foreign country" is part of the first sentence of the white paper. http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/secti ... _Paper.pdf

this isn't about killing an american on american soil

I wonder if the numbers would move if the true scope of civilian casualties was made known.

Nada, the fact is it's impossible to know exactly how many civilians are being killed by drones.
Estimates are all over the place...from a "few" to over a thousand. Would special ops be more
or less efficient? Seems like quite a hypothetical, although we seemed to get OBL with no civilians killed.

Apparently a drone was used to hunt Chris Dorner, the rouge LAPD officer who murdered 3 people last week.

This entire situation is incredibly disturbing.

Using an unmanned drone for search of a dangerous fugitive - is it any different than using a manned LAPD helicopter?

Yeah I was thinking the same thing. I don't have a problem with this, but it obviously points out that there need to be some legislation to regulate when this is allowed.

I feel like technology has vastly outpaced the knowlege base and thought process behind using that new techology as a weapon of war. Using drones, keeps American servicemen out of harms way so it's very simple to see why they would be embraced in this sort of a role. In the past 60 years or so attempts have been made to make munitions "smarter" and to cause less collateral damage. I think what your argument here is MIB, is that these drone strikes are being billed and sold as if they are precise weapons of war only killing terrorists, when in fact their use has been so common place and with such little oversite they are killing a lot of people that they should not be killing and this whole policy needs to be examined. I don't think using drones on the whole is unmerited, but the video game detachment that exists with drone strikes and killing civilians needlessly is absolutely an issue that needs to be discussed at length. If possible feasability should be considered prior to any drone strike as there would be for any incursion team, and if a strike team is the best option, they should use the strike team. Part of the reason drones are so popular with the executive branch and CIA is probably because they don't have many hard and fast rules to follow and it is fairly difficult for the public to discern how many civilians are dying as a result of strikes. So the pressure to have a real policy hasn't been there, even though the president continues to tell people he's being transparent.

Thats not to say that the same justifications couldn't be used domestically.

Would you feel different if a drone were to successfully kill Dorner after locating him?

In this particular incidence such an outcome would be undoubtedly safer for the residents of Southern California. Its pretty clear that the police already have shoot on sight orders which seem to apply to anyone driving a pickup.

It's scary to me how many people really and truly feel like this is fine.

On this situation yes. He's a serial murderer who has his eyes set on avenging those that fucked him over or anyone who may possibly be in his way. And I feel like he could kill dozens more if given a chance.

Again this doesn't mean carte blanche for future issues and that this is a scary precedent.

so 4/5, are you not fine with using a surveillance-only drone to search for this ex-cop?