White House: Two hostages killed

Actually the headline should read: “White House Kills Hostages, 1 American and 1 Italian and also executes 2 other Americans without trial.” How do you "rescue" hostages using a drone strike????

"The White House said Thursday that two hostages -- one American, one Italian -- were killed during a rescue attempt earlier this year.

"It is with tremendous sorrow that we recently concluded that a U.S. Government counterterrorism operation in January killed two innocent hostages held by al Qaeda," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

The White House also said counter-terrorism operations killed two other Americans believed to be working with al Qeada.

President Obama is expected to address the deaths later Thursday.
Earnest said the government extends its sympathies to "the families of Dr. Warren Weinstein, an American held by al-Qaeda since 2011, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian national who had been an al-Qaeda hostage since 2012.

The deaths apparently occurred during a drone strike against al Qaeda operatives.

"The operation targeted an al-Qaeada-associated compound, where we had no reason to believe either hostage was present, located in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan," Earnest said in the statement. "No words can fully express our regret over this terrible tragedy."

http://www.pnj.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/23/obama-us-hostages-killed-al-qaeda/26232205/

Now that Obama has apologized I guess that makes it all better and drone strikes killing innocents in addition to the intended targets can continue.

Hypothetical scenario:  An out of control train is barreling down the tracks and is rapidly approaching a fork.  Each side of the fork unfortunately has a vehicle trapped on the tracks.  There is a school bus carrying 50 children on one side of the fork and there is a car carrying an elderly couple on the other.  You're standing by the lever that will decide which way path the train will take.  If you take no action, the train will break in the direction of the school bus carrying 50 children.   Basically, one of two things is certainly going to happen.  Either the 50 children will die or the elderly couple will die.  You have the power to decide which happens.  What will you do, gatorfan? What action would you take in that situation?

boards of FL wrote:Hypothetical scenario:  An out of control train is barreling down the tracks and is rapidly approaching a fork.  Each side of the fork unfortunately has a vehicle trapped on the tracks.  There is a school bus carrying 50 children on one side of the fork and there is a car carrying an elderly couple on the other.  You're standing by the lever that will decide which way path the train will take.  If you take no action, the train will break in the direction of the school bus carrying 50 children.   Basically, one of two things is certainly going to happen.  Either the 50 children will die or the elderly couple will die.  You have the power to decide which happens.  What will you do, gatorfan?  What action would you take in that situation?

Or another hypothetical scenario.

You're the commander-in-chief and an out of control train full of terrorists is barreling down the tracks through an out of control region of the world.

You have a "lever" under your control which will let you switch between two scenarios.

One,  you can send in another 100,000 ground troops to kill and get killed.  And that of course will result in tens of thousands of deaths and arms and legs being blown off and who knows what all.

OR

Two,  you can send in drones instead and pick off the terrorists and of course some innocents will be killed along with it.

But then again there is another option on that same "lever".  

You can travel to the studios of Al Jazeera in Qatar.  You then go live on television which will be seen and heard throughout that same out of control region of the world.  And you deliver this message...

"Ladies and Germs of this region of the world,

I'm now implementing a new and different policy for the United States.

Firstly,  I am sick and fed up with the policies of my predecessors regarding your horseshit region of the world.  I'm sick and fed up with my country sticking it's nose in your business for the last 60 years.  All it has accomplished is a lot of grief and dying and suffering for my countrymen (and women) and for your people as well.

SO,  this is how it's going to be from now on.  
I am going to do everything in my power to free my country from having to import oil any longer from anywhere in your region.  And trust me,  I can do this.  When our country was faced with an equally psychotic situation in 1941,  we conceived something we called the Manhattan Project.  We devoted all the resources and talent required to advance our technology in a way which would ensure that we could and would get ourselves out of that psychotic situation.  And we were successful.
And we will do that once again.  And once we have done so,  then I hope you can find a way to eat and drink all that oil because it won't be going in our fuel tanks anymore.

Once that has been accomplished,  and it will be very soon,  I will withdraw all U.S. military assets (including ground troops and drones) from your region.
You shias will then be free to keep killing sunnis and vice versa and do so without our interference.

HOWEVER,  this is how it's going to be from now on.  Once my country withdraws from your region,  you WILL NOT be permitted to even harm a hair on the head of any American.  This will now be a policy of ZERO TOLERANCE.  Should you ignore this warning and continue to want to bring any harm to America or Americans,  I will use the totality of the most powerful military machine ever created to reduce you and your region to a burned out cinder.
At that point,  I will NO LONGER give a flying shit about "collateral damage" and in fact I will intentionally inflict all the collateral damage I can muster.

That's the policy from now on.  And how you respond to it will be up to you.

Have a nice day."

The point is that there is no good outcome available at the moment.  We're either going to get full scale ground wars that kill thousands of ours and tens or hundreds of thousands of theirs (republicans), or we're going to get a push for diplomacy in tandem with precision drones strikes - which kill much less (democrats).   Neither is optimal.  But those are our realistic options at the moment.

gatorfan is bitching about the drone strikes on the grounds that two americans died.  OK.  Vote for republicans then and watch that number increase by several orders of magnitude, analysis-boy.