{"id":386206,"date":"2018-11-23T06:33:06","date_gmt":"2018-11-23T05:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/killers-drinkers-traumatized-for-life\/"},"modified":"2018-11-23T06:33:06","modified_gmt":"2018-11-23T05:33:06","slug":"killers-drinkers-traumatized-for-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/killers-drinkers-traumatized-for-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Killers, Drinkers, & Traumatized for Life"},"content":{"rendered":"
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They sit in rooms resembling hi-tech shipping containers. Joysticks in hand, they spend hours watching grainy screens, displaying people in faraway lands going about their daily lives \u2014 and they hold life and death in their hands.<\/p>\n

They are the men and women who operate the United States\u2019 controversial drone warfare program \u2014 and they frequently get it disastrously wrong.<\/p>\n

A newly-released report by the Associated Press claims that one third of people killed by US drones in Yemen this year\u00a0were civilians<\/a>\u00a0with no association to terror groups like Al-Qaeda, the intended targets.<\/p>\n

But intention and reality often diverge sharply when it comes to death by US drones \u2014 and the horror is not confined to Yemen. From Pakistan to Afghanistan, to Iraq, Syria and Somalia, US drone strikes \u2014 which are often hailed by the US military and government as\u00a0\u201cprecise\u201d<\/em>\u00a0and even\u00a0\u201csurgical\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 have killed scores of innocent civilians.<\/p>\n

In recent years, multiple whistleblowers \u2014 former drone technicians, camera operators and image analysts \u2014 \u00a0have\u00a0come forward<\/a>\u00a0to shed light on the horror and reality of what US drone bombing really entails. Perhaps an indicator of the level of stress involved, the people who do these jobs also quit them in\u00a0record numbers<\/a>. In 2015, an internal Air Force\u00a0memo<\/a>\u00a0published by the Daily Beast revealed that there was a serious\u00a0\u201coutflow\u201d<\/em>\u00a0problem with drone pilots due to the\u00a0\u201cunrelenting pace of operations.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Even when the Air Force began to offer six-figure salaries, it did not stem the outflow from the program.
\n\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span>
\nAgainst the State: An …<\/a><\/span><\/span>
\nLlewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.<\/span>
\nBest Price: <\/span>$23.92<\/span><\/span>
\nBuy New <\/span>$9.95<\/span><\/span>
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\n<\/span><\/p>\n

But long, arduous shifts and high pressure are just…<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They sit in rooms resembling hi-tech shipping containers. Joysticks in hand, they spend hours watching grainy screens, displaying people in faraway lands going about their daily lives \u2014 and they hold life and death in their hands. They are the men and women who operate the United States\u2019 controversial drone warfare program \u2014 and they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-386206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}