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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  2984 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The NSA’s SKYNET program may be killing thousands of innocent people

Yeah. This article discloses a very real and very important program, and completely takes it out of its very real and very important context in order to make it sensational. I've been on the receiving end of a lot of this kind of information, and you never stop asking whether or not you did the right thing or even if there is a right thing if you pull the trigger, or drop the bomb, or call in heavy hitters or whatever you do to end that person's life. It's just done.

Nobody who has ever killed in these programs would ever glibly send something to the top of a priority list based on a single input from a poorly known NSA program. Every drone strike has a human pilot behind the controls, and their ass is on the line if they don't question suspicious direction. No matter whether it's a well-supported kill or not, that human has to live with it. They have to go back to their lives and tell their children that hitting is wrong when they know they just killed a father. They watch murderers get locked up and ask how they are different because of geography and power. I see the children of men I killed in my son's face. So please don't dismiss the humanity of these men because they have done bad things. It's hard enough for them to not dismiss their humanity for themselves.