Link of the day, Jan 1 2014: Woman details in Guardian article the drastic effects on operators of running the U.S. drone programme

061028-N-2651J-013 (Photo credit: Marion Doss)

FORWARD OPERATING BASE FALCON, Iraq ñ Sgt. 1st Class Tahir Hasan, aviation operations specialist assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, Multi-National Division ñ Baghdad, attaches a nose piece to the body of a RQ11-B Raven Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Jan. 8 at Forward Operating Base Falcon in southern Baghdad. Hasan hails from Los Angeles. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. David Hodge, 1st BCT PAO, 4th Inf. Div., MND-B) See more at Army.mil (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Armed Predator drone firing Hellfire missile (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle prepares to land after a mission in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. The Reaper has the ability to carry both precision-guided bombs and air-to-ground missiles. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A soldier launches a Desert Hawk, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). (Photo credit: Defence Images)

Men perform pre-flight checks on an unmanned aerial vehicle before launch. (Photo credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery)

A woman called Heather Linebaugh, in an article published in The Guardian newspaper this week, details the drastic effect suffered on the nerves and emotions of the people (called analysts) who run the U.S. drone programme, cause of so many killings around the world. Her article is entitled, I Worked on the U.S. drone programme. The public should know what really goes on.

This article is the answer to those politicians who claim the programme is precise in its targetting, and free of civilian  casualties. On the contrary,argues Linebaugh, many analysts have been so wracked with guilt and doubts about their targetting, and with worry about the drastic injuries and deathscaused by their work, that they have committed suicide. Read the article here.

(“The US and British militaries insist claim that this is an expert program, but it's curious that they feel the need to deliver faulty information, few or no statistics about civilian deaths and twisted technology reports on the capabilities of our UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). These specific incidents are not isolated, and the civilian casualty rate has not changed, despite what our defense representatives might like to tell us…..What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is not usually clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited cloud and perfect light. This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure.”)