Boogaleeboo posted:

Civilians carrying guns to defend military bases isn't a military action....how? Civilians torturing combatants for information isn't a military action because....? I mean I'd think it's fairly obvious that the second you've taken a paycheck to do a job so a soldier doesn't have to, all to the end of supporting a military action, you are a mercenary. And I don't care if that job is fry cook. You are paid to support a war, not in addition to an oath of service to country, but because of love of money. That seems fairly mercenary to any rational definition of the term I can think of.

Clearly though if they aren't actively fighting traditional battles they can't be mercenary. Well guess I'll have to find a new term.

Oh, I know.

Whore.

Mans posted:

They sell themselves to extremely morally bankrupt people, companies and states, completely ignoring the direct consequences of their actions all for the sake of cash. You seem to be offended with the word mercenary for some reason. That's cool. I'll call them cunts instead if it's less harmful for your psyche. Calling them any of those names is more pejorative than factual, that is true. One wonders however why the hell do you so much about that.

And mercenaries don't need to fight a war. Mercenaries were also used historically to escort caravans, ships and people (look at the papal guard for a simplified example). They can also be used as hired thugs to smash up protests, like we've seen all over the Arab world (and Academi in Greece ).

But do go ahead and cry about people calling shitheads who caused so much death in Iraq that they had to be kicked out some bad name you don't like.

Cardiovorax posted:

What exactly does the mercenary status of private military contractors have to do with the issue that private citizens can now be legally executed by governmental edict?

Deteriorata posted:

Not sure why you think this is news. Private citizens have always been capable of being "legally executed by government edict", as you put it. All they have to do is join an organization at war with the US government and they become a valid military target.

This has been true since the country was founded. Drones are just a new way of doing an old thing.

thehumandignity posted:

Okay, let us know if you have anything relevant to the discussion at hand to say.

thehumandignity posted:

That's basically the reason uniforms exist in the first place, so you know who is a valid target and who isn't.

thehumandignity posted:

Except that al-Quaeda is not a valid military target, and neither are Taliban insurgents nor most other Mujahideen groups. If they were actual military organizations, they would have things like uniforms. If that were the case, there would, first of all, be no doubt that when we shoot a hellfire missile at something, it is a Taliban/AQ/whatever facility, and not, say, a house with an accused criminal and a dozen innocent civilians. That's basically the reason uniforms exist in the first place, so you know who is a valid target and who isn't.

This is one of my biggest problems with the "war on terror". We want to have it both ways. We won't acknowledge insurgents and mujahideen as soldiers because they, well, they aren't, so we deny them what otherwise would be their rights as POW's. We prosecute and imprison them. But on the "battlefield", we want to treat them like they are military targets so we can justify things that we couldn't if we treated it like what it is, a police action.

Mans posted:

thehumandignity posted:

Except I, uh, never said that non-uniformed combatants aren't a thing? I said that al-Quaeda isn't an army. They are a non-state actor.

I can not even parse your sentence about snipers. How is that even tangentially related to anything I said?

Deteriorata posted:

Al Qaeda considers itself an army, and has been waging war with the US for nearly 20 years. The 9/11 AUMF clearly defined the conflict with AQ and its affiliated organizations as war. It's a war whether you like it or not.

The use of snipers to target specific enemy officers is not fundamentally different from using a drone to target specific AQ officers.

Mans posted:

But between this post and your shitfit about Academi not being mercenaries it's pretty clear you know gently caress all about anything.

Mans posted:

But i guess since some goons have been PMCs and received those sweet fun bucks and some other tool-heads are wishing to enter said companies we can't call them mercenary cunts.

Deteriorata posted:

Not sure why you think this is news. Private citizens have always been capable of being "legally executed by government edict", as you put it. All they have to do is join an organization at war with the US government and they become a valid military target.

This has been true since the country was founded. Drones are just a new way of doing an old thing.

thehumandignity posted:

Osama bin-Laden is easy for everyone but the most bleeding-heart pacifist to get behind, because the dude masterminded the largest massacre in American history and would do it again if he had the chance

Negerlepper posted:

Well, the law states that it can be done to any terrorist, not only al qaida or whatever, and there is no definition of "terrorist", that might mean what ever the president wants it to be. He can legaly kill what ever American citizen he wants without giving a reason and without a trial. The person needs not have joined any terrorist organization, the government might consider him a terrorist cell. Or the state might consider people like the "occupy" movement as terrorists and start murdering them without a trial, if the president feels like it of course. It might be controversial if he DID that, but perfectly legal, and he do not have to notify the public if he chooses to make some critics "dissapear".

Negerlepper posted:

That is not true, the American government have done massacres on a much larger scale than 9/11 on the native Americans. Millions of them over the years and several separate massacres involved many more deaths during the ethnic cleansing. I include history before the constitution as well when i say millions, but even after the constitution you had events where thousands of men, women and children got slaughtered for land or revenge or whatever reason they made up as they went along.

thehumandignity posted:

Well, it occurred to me that I hadn't thought of that, so I skimmed this page, but I couldn't find any instances of more than 3,000 native americans being murdered by colonial settlers. Sorry. Take consolation in the fact that, even if this had shown you were right, it wouldn't really have made any difference in the context of the subject at hand.

Feel free to link me some other article on something Wikipedia has thus far overlooked, but, you know, it still won't actually affect anything in the post you quoted.

BoutrosBoutros posted:

We committed one of the most effective, thorough genocides in recent history against the Native Americans, and you're quibbling about single incidents? Like our willful extermination of Indian populations is somehow not "the largest massacre" simply because it didn't all happen at one time? Massacres don't have to happen all in one day, you know.

Deteriorata posted:

It's war. Bad poo poo happens.

thehumandignity posted:

Well, it occurred to me that I hadn't thought of that, so I skimmed this page, but I couldn't find any instances of more than 3,000 native americans being murdered by colonial settlers. Sorry. Take consolation in the fact that, even if this had shown you were right, it wouldn't really have made any difference in the context of the subject at hand.

Feel free to link me some other article on something Wikipedia has thus far overlooked, but, you know, it still won't actually affect anything in the post you quoted.

Ambrose Burnside posted:

Everybody has to take a drink every time somebody posts this with a straight face in this thread.

Ambrose Burnside posted:

Everybody has to take a drink every time somebody posts this with a straight face in this thread.

Deteriorata posted:

It seems that everybody involved is treating it that way. OBL was taunting the American military in his '96 fatwah, daring them to try and get him.

Al Qaeda considers it a war. The Americans consider it a war. Please explain why it isn't a war.

Deteriorata posted:

It seems that everybody involved is treating it that way. OBL was taunting the American military in his '96 fatwah, daring them to try and get him.

Al Qaeda considers it a war. The Americans consider it a war. Please explain why it isn't a war.

Lurdiak posted:

Look can we at least drop some drone strikes on PMCs without trial, I'd be down with these two stupid circular arguments if we could do that.

ClemenSalad posted:

I took quite a few drinks when someone unironically thought we killed millions of natives. I didn't think it was really possible to exaggerate things like that but here we are.

Mans posted:

I guess 80 million Americans disappeared without a trace for no reason

ClemenSalad posted:

You're having trouble finding sources saying we killed more than 3-4000. Also if that were even 10% true that would be the greatest genocide in human history to date in terms of numbers.

ClemenSalad posted:

You're having trouble finding sources saying we killed more than 3-4000. Also if that were even 10% true that would be the greatest genocide in human history to date in terms of numbers. Your ignorance is striking and I don't think theres really much else to discuss about this, you clearly aren't in your right mind in this subject.

Mans posted:

Are you seriously saying that the deaths of uncountable millions of Americans due to European and post-colonial states' colonialism is a lie? You're loving worse than a holocaust denier

thehumandignity posted:

I don't think that's what he meant.

MisterBibs posted:

I feel that the notion that the drone attacks being used to target domestic targets is unacceptably fantastical to use as a basis for real-world discussion.

CNN posted:

Holder does not rule out drone strike scenario in U.S.

Washington (CNN) -- Attorney General Eric Holder is not entirely ruling out a scenario under which a drone strike would be ordered against Americans on U.S. soil, but says it has never been done previously and he could only see it being considered in an extraordinary circumstance .

He began to winnow the list of those possible extraordinary circumstances Wednesday. In testimony Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pressed Holder whether he believed it would be constitutional to target an American terror suspect "sitting at a cafe" if the suspect didn't pose an imminent threat.

"No," Holder replied.

But he also said the government has no intention of carrying out drone strikes inside the United States. Echoing what he said in a letter to U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, he called the possibility of domestic drone strikes "entirely hypothetical."

That letter, released Tuesday, was prompted by questions raised over the nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA. Specifically, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee sought the Obama administration's legal rationale for its use of drones to kill terror suspects overseas.

But Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who has said he would do what he could to hold up Brennan's nomination until he got a full answer to his query, wanted to know whether the administration considered that policy applicable domestically.

In a letter to Paul dated on Monday, Holder said it was possible, "I suppose," to imagine an "extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate" under U.S. law for the president to authorize the military to "use lethal force" within the United States.

However, Holder said the question was "entirely hypothetical" and "unlikely to occur."

The United States, he said, has not carried out such action domestically and had no plans to do so.

Holder said a potential scenario might involve a president ordering such action "to protect the homeland" in a case like the 2001 al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington or the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.

But he said the administration rejects the use of military force where law enforcement authorities provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat.

Paul, who released the letter from Holder along with his statement, was not satisfied with the response.

"The U.S. attorney general's refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening. It is an affront to the constitutional due process rights of all Americans," Paul said.

Jeffrey Toobin, CNN senior legal analyst, said on CNN's "The Situation Room" that Holder made it clear in his letter that he would have to examine the facts of each situation separately and advise the president on his legal authority.

"Again, he made a point of saying Sen. Rand Paul's question is hypothetical at this time. But at some point down the road, this may not be hypothetical," Toobin said.

Brennan defended the use of drones overseas at his confirmation hearing weeks ago, but acknowledged there should be more public discussion.

Read letter from Brennan to Paul

In a written response to the intelligence panel, Brennan, too, said the administration has "no intention" of killing Americans with drones in the United States.

The issue of targeting American terror suspects with lethal force was brought into sharp focus in 2011 when New Mexico-born Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in Yemen.

Officials said he played an operational role in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Brennan confirmed a connection at his hearing between al-Awlaki and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a Delta Air Lines jet enroute to Detroit in 2009 with a bomb in his underwear.

The Obama administration has said targeting Americans overseas with drones is only permitted when the U.S. government determines a suspect to be an imminent threat to the United States and when capture would not be feasible. Additionally, all applicable laws must apply.

The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel turned over new documents on its legal rationale to the Senate intelligence panel earlier in the day.

Some key members who had been pressing for the information said they were satisfied with the White House cooperation.

"We are pleased that we now have the access that we have long sought and need to conduct the vigilant oversight with which the committee has been charged. We believe that this sets an important precedent for applying our American system of checks and balances to the challenges of 21st century warfare. We look forward to reviewing and discussing these documents in the days ahead," Democrats Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said in a statement.

They credited Paul with raising the use of drones domestically as a question of "fundamental importance."

The Intelligence Committee approved Brennan's nomination later Tuesday and sent it to the full Senate for consideration.