BATTLEFIELD AMERICA: THE DRONE ON DRONES

The big news obviously was the epic, thirteen hour filibuster by Rand Paul where he attacked the policies of Attorney General Eric Holder that justify the use unmanned drones to hunt down and kill US citizens who are potential terror suspects.


Rand Paul, of course, is aware of the possibility of America becoming the new battlefield and illustrated quite well that people like John McCain and Bob Graham are out of touch with what Americans are truly thinking about the use of new technology to carry out the task of law enforcement and in some cases war like battles at home.


Quite frankly, any Senator that condones the use of drones as a method of carrying out a new form of mechanized executions should resign.

Paul, a critic of Obama’s unmanned drone policy, started his self-described filibuster by demanding the president or Attorney General Eric Holder issue a statement assuring that unmanned aircraft would not be used in the United States to kill terrorism suspects who are U.S. citizens.

However, his wonderful filibuster calling attention to the dangers of drones and to the encroachment of the constitutional right of due process ran into a snag when he appeared on The Rush Limbaugh Show the morning after.

Rather than espousing a zero tolerance policy on drone use all over the world, he rationalized that the use of drones overseas is justified, however they should not be used in the United States.

“We currently do drone strikes overseas, and I am all for them when people are shooting at American soldiers,” he told Limbaugh on his talk show. “I think they are great tool, they are a great weapon, we should use to defend American soldiers and American lives but we are also killing a lot of people who aren’t actively involved.”

Rand Paul continued by saying, “They may be bad people, they may have been involved yesterday or going to be tomorrow, but we kill them at home asleep in café’s etc. Now that standard may be okay overseas I think it’s debatable but at home that standard is not good enough.”

Once again the politician duplicity of life and death and the standards we have about who dies and who lives is in my opinion suspect with regards to drone strikes and should be called out. I believe that Rand Paul would be served well to demand zero tolerance on the issue of drone strikes.

source -- http://www.groundzeromedia.org/battlefield-america-the-drone-on-drones/