BartCop's most recent rants - drone-talk-atty-tom.htm

Subject: your drone thinking is flawed

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Bart,

There are two fundamental and related flaws in your reasoning.
These flaws are ones that I believe you often make.

Cool, I hope you can straighten me out.

First, you make a factual assertion that "there is a guy in Yemen building bombs to go on US airplanes."
The problem is that, rarely ever, does the government know with any kind of certainty that such a thing is happening.
They are making assumptions based on "evidence" that may or may not be reliable. Just this alone makes the rest of
your argument invalid. As I'm sure you know there are all sorts of reasons why such an assumption could be invalid.

The sources of this evidence have agendas of their own. Look at the evidence that was used to put some of the
people into Guantanamo. Even if they had "beyond a reasonable doubt" evidence in one case, what about the next one.
You have all sorts of guys in the military who have their own reasons for why they want to blow up bad guys and they
are not always going to be careful to make sure. Not to mention, who gets to decide that any kind of evidence is good
enough. It's like letting the prosecution be the judge in the case they are trying. You are always talking about being a
member of the fact based community, but you are basing your entire argument on something that is only conjecture
and treating it as if it is a fact.

One of us is talking wild poppycock.

Your first paragraph assumes there's no such thing as good intelligence.
Did I say we should blow up a school every time someone hears a rumor?
No, I'm talking about knowing where the bad guy lives and works.

The guy building bombs in Yemen isn't taking bin Laden-type precautions.
If he's a known bomb-builder and we know where he lives, we can have an operative on the ground
tweet, "Grandmas's cookies are ready" when he gets home and the drone elimates him as a threat.

Talking about agendas, I'd guess we better not give a gun to the soldier in the field
because what if he has an agenda and misuses his weapon?

There is a second, and even more important reason, why this is not a good idea. I've written this to you before
in another context,but you either didn't get my message or chose to ignore it.

You don't have any arguments that scare me so much that I have to run away from them.
You should assume I didn't see that note.

The rules and procedures we have put in place have been developed over literally thousands of years,
and there are very good reasons for them. It's hard to explain in a few words, so let me use an analogy.
Sometimes in a criminal trial a court will not allow evidence that was illegally obtained, even though the
result of that is that an actual guilty person will go free. The reason is that if you allow illegal evidence
then you remove all restraint from law enforcement. The next thing you know you have cops violating
citizens civil rights right and left. (We already have too much of that.) In other words, the only way to
keep cops from getting evidence illegally is by making it inadmissible. If you went for the emotionally
satisfying result, and let the evidence in, you would end up creating a situation that is a thousand times
worse than the one you are trying to address. To put it simply, yes it would be a terrible thing for a
terrorist to blow up a plane, but it would be incalculably worse to have a world where a president can
unilaterally decide who he gets to kill without any kind of due process.

We came this close and a heart beat away from President Palin.
Would you want to give her that kind of power?

I didn't think so.
Tom an attorney from Oregon

I find attorneys are often the very worst debaters.

You say you'd rather see a plane explode than "cheat" when dealing with terrorists?
Not me, I say kill the bastards before they blow up the plane.

Your Palin argument makes no sense.
   Every beat cop with a gun can unilaterally decide to take someone's life without due process.
   If a guy starts shooting random people on the street, do you want that cop to find a judge and get a warrant?
   Of course not - you want him to drop the bastard and then we'll determine if it was a good shoot or a bad shoot.

But let's say your points were flawless - what's your answer?
Wait until after the plane explodes and then try to build a case against a certain bomber?
Then what?

You still have the option to do nothing or invade, meanwhile you have 300 dead Americams.

I like my way better.
Even if I'm wrong, we have 300 familes who are NOT going to funerals next week.



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