[drone-list] Afghan Drone Savagery Report Released

[John Young]

Centcom.mil released on 22 March 2012 a declassifed 2,100-page report
on drone slaughter of 23 Afghan non-combatants - men, women, children -
in February 2010, blamed on Creech AFB pilots over-enthusiasticly 
calling in Hellfires on a 3-vehicle civilian convoy.

Minutely detailed descriptions are provided of how drones are directed from
screeners at Centcom and pilots at Creech AFB using a battery of secure
communications devices: IRC chat, radio, video, satellites, VOIP, telephone,
not all of which are coordinated and supervised and thus lead to disaster.

Pilots of choppers which fired the Hellfire missiles claim drone operators
cannot be trusted due to lack of contact with real world conditions on
the ground and because mission controllers at Creech reward "Top Gun"
aggressiveness.

Caution of screeners at Centcom and in Afghanistan in this case were 
overridden by drone operators at Creech to authorize kinetic action
against the civilians. As one military interviewee said: from the safety
of Creech drone pilots were too avid for kills and used the Tom Cruise
Top Gun appellation to describe their "juvenile" behavior.

The whole report is worth reading and promulgating to counter the PR 
machinery promoting drones as safe-kill from afar. Interviews of the 
civilians writhing painfully in hospitals probably won't get much press.

Here are a couple of small excerpts:

http://cryptome.org/2012/03/creech-savagery.pdf (summary of the report)

http://cryptome.org/2012/03/creech-savagery2.pdf (hospital interview)


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