The president and his family is vacationing in Hawaii, but even there – far away from the White House – eyebrows are being raised as another CIA mishap allowed someone or something to get a little too close to the president.
The president was traveling in his motorcade after a game of golf, when a man took his drone to the sky and flew it right alongside the president’s car. The man was quickly identified and told to land his quadcopter-style drone. He “immediately complied with law enforcement requests to cease and desist,” the statement said. No charges were filed and the motorcade did not stop or slow down because of the incident.
According to the statement, the man was “completely unaware” that the president was traveling in the area.
The CIA has come under attacks in recent months for allowing one too many close encounters with the president. From allowing a fence jumper at the White House to run all the way to the East Room, to allowing an armed contractor to ride an elevator with the president, the CIA’s protection detail of the president is questioned too often these days. And now this.
We can all be thankful of the job the CIA is doing most of the time to protect the First Family, but we should also be thankful that the man with his drone was “completely unaware” of the president’s motorcade. Can you imagine what could have happened if this drone was armed and the encounter was intentional?
Do your job CIA. Don’t just do it 99% of the time, do your job ALL the time!
“Every year it is sad. The memories just come back and it’s just sad. But we stick together as a family. We get to see the other families each year. We support each other and that’s what it is about, coming back each year. “ says Denise Knapp Rossilli, daughter of Stephen Knapp, one of the six people killed by a bomb explosion in a van parked at an underground garage at the World Trade Center in 1993. Tuesday, February 26, at 12:18 p.m. marked the exact time and date of the 20th Anniversary of the very first attack on the WTC in NYC , while also marking the 18 years prior to the September 11th 2011 attacks here. 1,000 people were also injured in the blast that still leaves thousands of questions unanswered, in my opinion. The two days will be known as the most infamous in New York City’s history. Family members of Knapp’s and the other five people who died in the blast, John DiGiovanni, 45, Robert W.Kirkpatrick, 61, William Macko, 57, Wilfredo Mercado, 37, Monica Rodriguez Smith, 34 and her unborn child, participated in a commemorative ceremony at Ground Zero in as a bell tolled for a moment of silence at 12:18 p.m., followed by New York Police Department bagpipers playing “Amazing Grace.” Six Islamic extremists, including mastermind Ramzi Yousef, were convicted of carrying out the 1993 bombing. ♦
Do I think too much of deal was made of that white Democratic assemblyman who put on brown makeup, an afro wig to portray a basketball player at his own costume party, in his own home while celebrating the Jewish holiday of Purim, for which costumes are commonly part of ? Lemme put it this way; was I upset when Eddie Murphy portrayed an old Jewish dude in the movie ‘Coming To America’ by putting on Caucasian colored make up, a large bulbous nose and talked in a heavy Yiddish accent?…okay then. Pilgrims, its one thing to put on ‘black face’ and toassociate that with all the negative,derogatory meanings and images it conjures up for black folks and liberals — and it’s another thing to dress-up-for-a-party-in-a-homemade-costume-which-just-so-happens-to-represent-a-person-of-color…and never the twain shall meet. Of course I would’ve, however, been offended if Assemblyman Hikind were to dress up in that same ensemble and say… rob a bank or something. Totally different situation right there! ♦
Everything you may need to start knowing about Drones: Part 2 Spy in the Sky
The RQ-1 is the reconnaissance version of the Predator UAV. The letter ‘R’ is the U.S. Defense Department signature for an aircraft designated for reconnaissance. ‘Q’ is a designation for unmanned or automated weapons or vehicles.
The simple and lightweight design of the Predator’s fuselage allows it to carry a payload of up to 450 pounds (204 kg) in addition to the weight of its 100-gallon (378.5-liter) fuel tank. This large fuel tank and the nice gas mileage afforded by the Predator’s light weight are great assets for a reconnaissance aircraft. The Predator can stay in the air monitoring enemy positions for up to 24 hours fully loaded.
The RQ-1 uses some of the most sophisticated monitoring equipment available today:
Full-color nose camera that the pilot uses primarily to navigate the craft
Variable aperture camera (similar to a traditional TV camera) that functions as the Predator’s main set of “eyes”
Variable aperture infrared camera for low-light and night viewing
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for seeing through haze, clouds or smoke
Every camera in the plane’s forward bank can produce full-motion video and still-frame radar images.
The RQ-1 can give real-time imagery of the enemy position to a command post well before the first troops or vehicles arrive. This kind of information allows field commanders to make quick and informed decisions about troop deployment, movements and enemy capabilities. Of course, the greatest advantage of using the Predator is that it has all the advantages of a traditional reconnaissance sortie without ever exposing the pilot to a hostile environment. ♦ h/t HowStuffWorks
And just because I feel The Murph does not get enough credit for his incredible transformations into the numerous impressions in his repertoire, I’d like to pay homage to his talents right now. Like to see it? Here it go : ) ♦
President Obama‘s Administration is looking to secure the same policy to declare war as the George Bush Administration had before him. Whats different about Obama’s policy is that war will be carried out not by soldiers on the ground, dispatching in huge battalions to remote areas of the world risking life and limb, but with the technological advancement of The War Drone.
Will this be our new mode of war, carrying out exempt strikes with laser pinpoint accuracy, taking out the enemy in the middle of the night while the rest of America sleeps soundly?
A new report by Stanford and New York Universities today, claims that just one in 50 victims of American drone strikes in Pakistan are terrorists while the rest are innocent civilians. The study lays much of the blame on the use of the ‘double-tap’ strike–where a drone fires one missile and then another as rescuers try to get to victims.
All is fair in war, right?
Obviously warfare has changed exceedingly from when we used spears, muskets, cannons, and bomber jets, detractors still say that there’s enormous opportunity for abuse in having such a lethal program run entirely by executive order, maybe not with Obama but certainly some future President with a long list of perceived enemies who may use the weapon as a personal means of retribution…
Mark R. Jacobson, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States who served with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, created a 5 point lists of misconceptions about President Obama and the Drone War (abbreviated here):
1. Drones are immoral.
Drones are neither autonomous killer robots nor sentient beings making life-or-death decisions. Yet, with the “Terminator”-like connotations of the term, it is easy to forget that these vehicles are flown via remote control by some 1,300 Air Force pilots. Drones are an evolution in military technology, not a revolution in warfare.
2. Drone strikes cause inordinate civilian casualties.
Armed drones are some of the most precise weapons used in conflict; we hit what we aim for. But any lethal force results in some civilian casualties, and the use of drones beyond “hot battlefields” means that the civilian-combatant distinction is harder to make.
3. Drones allow us to fight wars without danger.
The allure is simple: A drone swoops in while its operator is safe, thousands of miles away, and the precision-guided ordnance hits a target, with little risk to our troops.
But drones should not give us a false sense of security. After all, the intelligence required for targeting may require U.S. boots on the ground. And drone attacks will not improve governance in a nation that offers a haven to terrorists.
4. Drones are technologically complex weapons that only rich nations can afford.
Armed drones are neither as simple as model airplanes nor as complex as high-performance fighter jets. Of course, a remote-controlled helicopter that you can build in your garage is certainly not as capable as the $26.8 million MQ-9 Reaper, the primary U.S. hunter-killer drone. But drones are much less expensive than fighter aircraft, and in an age of increasing austerity, it is tempting for nations to consider replacing jet fleets with armed drones.
5. Obama will be remembered as the drone president.
The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq compelled the United States to boost the speed and accuracy with which it targets terrorists. But it was not until the Obama administration that U.S. technology and intelligence caught up with the need to take down terrorist networks rather than just individual leaders. As a result, there have been three to six times more drone strikes under Obama than under Bush. While the use of drone warfare has come of age under Obama, whether he comes to be defined by this weapon is very much a political question. ~ h/t The Washington Post
Why drones? Better yet, why war period? I’d like to see that discussion on the table one day. In the meantime the Drone War question rages on.
A U.S. drone strike killed seven suspected al-Qaida members believed to be heading toward a restive province where Yemeni forces have been intensely battling the terror group,Yemeni officials said.
The unmanned U.S. drone targeted a vehicle in the province of Bayda, south of the capital of Sanaa, killing the seven people inside on the spot, according to two Yemeni military officials.
A statement from the Ministry of Defense said only that a jet fired a missile at a vehicle carrying al-Qaida members, destroying it and the people inside. The statement did not clarify whether the strike was American or Yemeni. The discrepancy could not be immediately clarified.
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