Drones and who profits from war is timely.

Also is debating the relationship between General Atomics and Labor
governments, e.g. Premier Rann and Deputy Foley and uranium mining and the drone war.

See my blog http://chriswhiteonline.org ...go to Rann.

It is a question of public policy and sustainable social and ecological
development.

Chris White Canberra

When soldiers don't wear a uniform then that is when civilians get killed.
By merging with civilians as viewed from a drone or directly
the civilians are at risk.

Drones, mines - what is the difference? Drones aren't popular because of some conspiracy. They are popular because they are relatively cheap compared to the fighters/bombers they replace and it is impossible to get yourself killed while flying a drone.

Mines are the same. They be very inefficient but they are cheap and near riskless to deploy. Because of this they are used despite the fact that they kill far more civilians than enemy combatants. They are banned for the same reasons of course. But there is fat chance of such a ban working in all but the most politely conducted war. Ditto for drones - another similarity.

The one hope is drones will get better at killing the people they are supposed to kill. Well it is a possibility anyway. But secondly thoughts, perhaps a highly efficient, dirt cheap, completely automated killing machine is such a wonderful idea.

Maybe it isn't possible to have nice thoughts about drones after all. So back the original conspiracy theories in the article. They are just junk. Or at least they had better be, because next year the US will spend 25% or its air force equipment budget on buying them. That is one hell of a lot of drones.

The author seems to suggest that the US is randomly killing people in the hope of eliminating a few Taliban leaders. The so-called strike rate of 2% is complete conjecture in his part based on information coming from areas of strong Taliban support. As in the middle east, reports of civilian casualties are often grossly exaggerated by the enemy in an effort to win the media propaganda war by causing unease amongst the general public in the West. The author seems naive enough to believe this information without question yet distrustful of that coming from the US military. His bias is clear and he has therefore lost his ability to look at the situation dispassionately.

What no one seems to pick up on is that if you kill a Taliban you kill
a civilian.
To turn the killing of a group of Taliban into a photo opportunity
of the killing of civilians all you have to do is remove the weapons.

If real civilians get killed they should not have stayed near Taliban.
This is what happens when the Taliban do not wear uniforms.

Why on earth do you think uniforms are worn ?

This article presents quite a contrast with Hollywood's propagandist version of the 'drone war', which is surgically precise and with no collateral damage. For 60 years the Americans have been highly skilled at bombing foreigners "into the Stone Age", it's sometimes ineffective,counterproductive and criminal,however,they don't seem to care.