[Hoot Gibson]

How is this relevant, the drone program is new when it comes to deploying it in American skies, and is not even in full effect.

Personally I don't think it's worth the money to keep hundreds/thousands of drones in the skies at all times.

What exactly is it you think these drones will prevent/solve, that can't be done with other law enforcement assets?

The drone program is going to be the "enforcement" arm for the Patriot Act/NDAA. Two pieces of legislation that completely shred the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments. That gives the Fed. govt the authority to brand someone a terrorist and carry out a kill order, completely ignoring the rights of that American citizen.

As I stated our intelligence agencies do a lot of great things, but they are not perfect, far from it in fact.

Even Hoot, in a post above, shows me exactly what is wrong with these types of programs when he stated something along the lines of "if an American citizen is overseas and walking along with a group of "suspected" terrorists and is killed"

Being suspected of crime does not make you guilty, we imprison people all the time for extremely long periods of time for things that turn out eventually to be innocent of, let alone the people who are accused of crimes because the evidence looks substantial, but in the end it turns out they did nothing wrong.

Also, our definition of terrorists, and the govt's definition of a terrorist is very different. We view groups like Al Qaeda, Hamas, etc.. as terrorists.

The govt, views the following as terrorist

-Individuals who are reverent of individual liberty
-Suspicious of centralized Fed. authority
-those who believe there is a grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty
-Those who believe their way of life is under attack
-anti-global

Thank you for a couple of excellent posts on this subject, Beetle. However, IMO, Americans on foreign soil have no constitutional rights and that is a distinction that I believe matters. It is often not possible to apprehend traitors who are actively and openly working for our enemies against this countries national security interests and bring them to justice. That is a proper application of drone attacks, IMO.

That said, targeting American citizens with drones on foreign soil could turn into a very slippery slope if the current trend of refusing to hold politicians in Washington accountable for crimes continues unabated. The deployment of drones against American citizens, even attacks in which Americans are suspected of being in the company of our worst enemies, should be subject to review by civilians in Congress.

Just because Americans living and travelling abroad do not enjoy full constitutional rights does not mean that the deaths of American civilians on foreign soil should be taken lightly.

Beetle, the reality is that whether or not the U.S. uses drones for targeted assassinations during war, other nations will. National security is all about maintaining a competitive edge over our enemies and that requires our government to use drones over foreign soil.