That was a terrible article.

Drones suck though.

The Drone Industry HATES Him

Local militant avoids drones using this one weird trick!

Bo has never read cracked before. Too busy with gossip girl.

You forgot its a 5$ trick

30 adorable drone .gifs!

You won't BELIEVE how this child responds to a drone attack!

30 things about drones that SUCK!

ILN, you could have just said that my preferred network is Upworthy. I would have laughed at that one. Instead you missed a great opportunity.

What the hell happened to Cracked magazine? It's all weird and internetty now.

I have heard a rumour that drones can be really good for you ...... if you have excess children and are struggling to pay the bills every week, why not send them along to a party with the local Taliban leader, a quick call to the Green Zone and your troubles are all over, and you can stop worrying about what school you were going to send them to and getting them a uniform.

I'm torn on drones. Obviously, they're good when they save American lives, but it's too much power for one man or even certain organizations.

Listen To This Man Tell His Story About His Encounter With Drones. I Cried. Then I Was Angry. Then I Felt I Had To Do Something. Then I Cried Again Into My $20 Latte From The Knockoff Hipster Starbucks Downtown. Then I Started A Petition On Change.org To Do Something. You Should Too.

Hey now I have yet to see someone order a 20 dollar latte at Starbucks! Now 6-7 dollars.. easily done.

Only dumb fucks argue against drones.

Personally I support carpet bombing.

Nixon had it right when he sent B52's to carpet bomb Cambodia.

Obviously carpet bombing is much more acceptable than drone.

fuck you assholes

Shit Nixon was a fucking amateur compared to C. Lemay because firebombing civilian residences is always more acceptable than surgical rocket fire. And we don't dare kill people who promote suicide bombing. God forbid.

Grow Your Drone Using These 3 Easy Steps
NO PILLS

What I got from skimming this article was that it is not as glamorous to operate drones as an all-American boy would dream.
It sucks as a video game - the graphics are awful, no realism at all, not much better than Webdiplomacy...

Is there no-one doing anything to improve the work-place conditions of our fighters for peace & freedom?

Carpet Bombing appeared not to be any glamorous at all after trying it a few times... as you all might have heard about... but Drone Operator is no more fun either actually...

Hey, to be fair, Nixon *did* temporarily end the Vietnam War (the mother of all clusterfucks) with two weeks of intense strategic bombing. Not saying it was right, just saying that he shouldn't be automatically condemned for it.

@ dirge

"Shit Nixon was a fucking amateur compared to C. Lemay because firebombing civilian residences is always more acceptable than surgical rocket fire"

Well, it might be a *little* acceptable when the entire enemy population has been brainwashed into participating in the war effort and the entire defense industry is based in wood buildings.

Don't automatically condemn LeMay. He was in a very difficult position.

Inb4 putin's rant on American imperialism.

I still don't get what happened to Cracked.

Still better than a John Cheese article.

@ dirge

"Surgical rocket fire" is an oxymoron. There is no such thing as a "surgical" strike. A missile hits a building. The missile goes boom and everyone in the building is toast, regardless of whether or not they're a bad guy. Not my definition of "surgical". Drones reduce but do not eliminate collateral damage.

Drones are better than B-52s, but both are worse than privateers. Issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal to capture the bad guys.

@ Gunfighter

You've obviously never experienced surgery on the good old NHS.

"Drones are better than B-52s, but both are worse than privateers. Issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal to capture the bad guys."

There's the slight problem there that privateers have been against international law for almost two hundred years. Also, letters of marque authorize individuals to attack and capture another state's ships, not specific people. Therefore using them to go after terrorists doesn't really make sense. What you're really advocating is effectively a bill of attainder, which, ironically, are specifically prohibited by the Constitution.

@ Invictus

The international law to which you are referring is the Paris Declaration of 1856, which the United States never signed or ratified.

"Also, letters of marque authorize individuals to attack and capture another state's ships, not specific people."

Yeah, but I'm referring to Letters of Marque AND Reprisal, not a simple letter of marque. Consider terrorists to be air pirates and take them out with letters of reprisal. Pirates and terrorists are alike in that they are difficult/impossible to fight by conventional means. Privateers proved effective during the Age of Sail, and I think that modern-day private contractors should be given the same opportunity to hunt terrorists. We don't have anything to lose.

Or I suppose you'd rather have the president unilaterally/summarily executing perceived enemies with military force, which has a hell of a lot less legal precedent than privateering.

"The international law to which you are referring is the Paris Declaration of 1856, which the United States never signed or ratified."

If you finish reading the Wikipedia article, where you obviously found it, you'll notice that, despite not being a signatory, the United States abides by the terms of the treaty. There are several types of international law, one of which is called "customary international law." These are things which, while not necessarily part of a treaty a state has signed, are widely acknowledged as binding international law and held in equal weight with law created by treaties, unless there is a conflict. Then the treaty terms win. For example, it was customary international law not to harm diplomats long, long, before the Vienna Convention codified it in the 1960s. Privateering is firmly against customary international law, so it matters not that we aren't a party to this specific treaty.


"Yeah, but I'm referring to Letters of Marque AND Reprisal, not a simple letter of marque. Consider terrorists to be air pirates and take them out with letters of reprisal."

The "reprisal" part just authorizes the individual to cross an international border to achieve the end. What this means is that you can go into a state's internal waters or even a port rather than just operate on the high seas. It doesn't mean "reprisal" as in revenge. Legal terms rarely have the same meaning as the colloquial definition of the word.

As for them being air pirates (assuming that's even a legitimate category, which it probably isn't), how does this affect anyone not involved with airplane hijacking? The terrorists in, say, Benghazi couldn't be connected with that.

I'm familiar with the Ron Paul argument here. In the specific period after 9/11 it might just have made sense and been a decent policy alternative. I don't see how glorified Dog the Bounty Hunters are better than the US military in attackign terrorists, but I'm willing to be convinced it may have worked then. But it certainly wouldn't now, even excluding the illegality of privateering.

As I said, you're really advocating for bills of attainder. Those can't be done. You're just attaching yourself to an obsolete scrap of the Constitution that sounds steam-punk and sexy and bending reality to make your argument sound plausible. It isn't.

" I suppose you'd rather have the president unilaterally/summarily executing perceived enemies with military force, which has a hell of a lot less legal precedent than privateering."

I'm against that. The solution, however, isn't resurrecting an institution that went out of vogue in the nineteenth century and applied to an entirely different situation.

Who's the idiot or troll +1ing Gunfighter06's phantasy posts on letters of marque and the false choice between supporting that idea or supporting Obama's extra-judicial executions? If a troll, he's an artist. If an idiot, he just hasn't read my posts.