The truth about drones

The truth will out – drones are inaccurate offensive weapons.

Heather Linebaugh served in the United Stated Air Force from 2009 until March 2012. She worked in intelligence as an imagery analyst and geo-spatial analyst for the drone program during the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

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She writes today in The Guardian to blow apart the lies told by establishment politicians on both sides of the Atlantic about the drones used in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This passage was particularly telling:

“What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is a far cry from clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited clouds and perfect light. This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure. One example comes to mind: “The feed is so pixelated, what if it’s a shovel, and not a weapon?” I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people, if we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian’s life all because of a bad image or angle.”

she also made a point not lost on The Haze about quite how these drones are used

“The UAV’s in the Middle East are used as a weapon, not as protection, and as long as our public remains ignorant to this, this serious threat to the sanctity of human life – at home and abroad – will continue.”

So the next time you read someone like Philip Hammond trying to bullshit the world by saying:

Ignore the drone myths. They’re not ‘indiscriminate killers’ but assets that keep civilians and troops safe

we now know better – because people that have been in daily operational contact with them say they are inaccurate offensive weapons.

and the resurgence of Al Quida across the Middle East can be partly explained by the barbaric and cowardly use of these weapons against unarmed and innocent civilians.