Exclusive: Air Force Whistleblowers Risk Prosecution to Warn Drone War Kills Civilians, Fuels Terror
NOVEMBER 20, 2015STORYWATCH FULL SHOW
NOVEMBER 20, 2015STORYWATCH FULL SHOW
MICHAEL HAAS: You never know who you’re killing, because you never actually see a face. You just have a silhouette. They don’t have to take a shot. They don’t have to bear that burden. I’m the one that has to bear that burden.
UNIDENTIFIED: United States is violating one of the most fundamental rights of all: the right to life.
UNIDENTIFIED: There’s a large number of innocent civilians who are being killed, and that has to be reported.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Michael Haas, I wanted to ask you, in terms of your experience in the drone program and the culture that the military basically allowed to flourish in the drone program, you’ve talked about how your fellow servicemembers talked about the children that they were targeting, as well.
MICHAEL HAAS: Yes, the term "fun-sized terrorists" was used to just sort of denote children that we’d see on screen.
AMY GOODMAN: What was it?
MICHAEL HAAS: "Fun-sized terrorists."
AMY GOODMAN: "Fun-sized terrorists"?
MICHAEL HAAS: Yes. Other terms we’d use would be "cutting the grass before it grows too long," just doing whatever you can to try to make it easier to kill whatever’s on screen. And the culture is—that mentality is very much nurtured within the drone community, because these—every Hellfire shot is sort of lauded and applauded, and we don’t really examine who exactly was killed, but just that it was an effective shot and the missile hit its target.
"Numbing & Horrible": Former Drone Operator Brandon Bryant on His Haunting First Kill
NOVEMBER 20, 2015STORYWATCH FULL SHOW
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Brandon Bryant in the film Drone, that’s opening tonight in New York and Toronto. And Brandon Bryant is with us now. Do you know who you killed?
BRANDON BRYANT: No. I killed 13 people with a total of five Hellfire missile shots, and only three of them were actual combatants.
AMY GOODMAN: That you don’t know if you might be picked up for war crimes, but you’re willing to risk this now.
BRANDON BRYANT: Correct. I think that it’s completely unfair that we helped prosecute German Nazis in World War II who were just following orders, and we can’t put ourselves under that same umbrella. We helped create this current system, the international court system, and we are unable to hold ourselves accountable for our own actions. I think that’s completely unfair to the rest of the world.
Exclusive: 2 Air Force Vets Speak Out for First Time on Why They Want the Drone War to Stop
NOVEMBER 20, 2015STORYWATCH FULL SHOW
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: This is—you were given clearance to fire at the wounded guy on the ground.
STEPHEN LEWIS: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Nabila and, before that, Zubair, her brother, the Rehmans, talking about the drone strike that killed their grandma in Pakistan. They also testified with their dad, who wasn’t there when they were picking okra with their grandmother. They testified in the U.S. Congress. Now, that happened in Pakistan. Your target was in Afghanistan.
STEPHEN LEWIS: I don’t think a matter of 500 miles makes a difference. The culture is very, very similar. And you’re creating an atmosphere of fear. And there’s an old saying in Texas: You don’t back a scared animal up against the wall. And if you do that, he’s going to come out fighting. And that’s exactly, I think, what’s happening now.
CIAN WESTMORELAND: It was in 2009. And whenever—whenever we got back, we got a piece of paper. It was the enlisted performance report. And it said on it that we had supported 2,400 close air support missions and assisted in 200-plus enemy kills, which I knew was wrong, because anybody in the Air Force knows that an airstrike has collateral damage, you know, a significant amount of the time.
AMY GOODMAN: So you’re saying you knew it was much more.
CIAN WESTMORELAND: Well, I’m saying that it wasn’t all enemies. It was civilians, as well. And when I looked at the UNAMA report that came out early the next year, it was saying somewhere upward of 350 civilian kills. So, it’s kind of—it’s made me sort of re-evaluate what I was doing there, and try and figure out, you know, exactly how we—we got that on our piece of paper.
無人機で市民も戦闘員もなく関係なく、意図的に、無差別攻撃しているわけで、誤爆なんてものではない。
後に反省して、戦争犯罪の裁判まで受ける気もある、ということについては評価したい。
しかし、地元の人間にとっては、無差別殺人することで、人々の生活を恐怖に落として入れるテロリストと思えないはずはない。
