I'm a loyal member of the Democratic Party and I don't have a problem with Drones

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

220. Here's a suggestion...

You should probably actually read the stuff you're referencing. The Human Rights Watch report, for example, is about the use of fully-autonomous robotic weapons platforms that are not controlled by a human handler (as are drones). While far from endorsing the use of drones, this report details the next generations of UAV (and ground-based) platforms that would not have any human control.

These hysterical rants (and epic cut-and-paste responses) are really not terribly interesting to me. It appears to me that your ability to think for yourself is somewhat limited and so you resort to indiscriminately posting and bolding information that may or may not be related to the point.

People are almost literally pissing their pants about drones. A drone does very little that could not be accomplished by a conventional aircraft -- the principle difference is that a drone does it without risking the life of an aircrew. If Bill Clinton had the technology available in 1994, we would have certainly used drones in Bosnia. In the years after the end of the Gulf War, the United States ran more than 200,000 sorties into the Iraq No Fly Zone. Certainly drones would have been useful then.

The question to be answered -- and this really needs to be answered -- is whether the use of drones is considered a military operation subject to review by Congress under the War Powers Act or whether its a matter of national security, which makes reporting and transparency more difficult. Now most of the time, I would say that transparency is always the preferred option -- except when there are matters of national security on the table, in which case some information should not be out there in the light of day.

It's not an easy question to answer.