Double Tap Drones: What Has Happened to the United States?

The NYU Student Tweeting Every Reported US Drone Strike Has Revealed A Disturbing Trend ... NYU student Josh Begley is tweeting every reported U.S. drone strike since 2002, and the feed highlights a disturbing tactic employed by the U.S. that is widely considered a war crime. Known as the "double tap," the tactic involves bombing a target multiple times in relatively quick succession, meaning that the second strike often hits first responders. A 2007 report by the Homeland Security Institute called double taps a "favorite tactic of Hamas" and the FBI considers it a tactic employed by terrorists. UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Christof Heyns said that if there are "secondary drone strikes on rescuers who are helping (the injured) after an initial drone attack, those further attacks are a war crime." The U.S. refuses to discuss the merits of its overtly covert drone program, but the reports featured on @dronestream clearly document that U.S. hellfire missiles have intentionally targeted funerals and civilian rescuers. – Business Insider

Dominant Social Themes: We need to eradicate these terrorists no matter what.

Free-Market Analysis: What we call the Internet Reformation can be seen clearly in reports like this. A young man uses 'Net technology to track every drone strike and makes a horrible discovery.

A 'Net facility called Business Insider then blows up the story by publishing it around the world with a keystroke.

Of course, we don't know for sure whether the report is true. But it sounds likely. And it is very sad.

The US, once an "exception" ... once a shining light on a hill ... is double-tapping its terrorist enemies.

That is, it is sending drones to blow up and cause death, often killing civilians alongside terrorists. Then those in charge of the program are sending ANOTHER drone on the heels of the first to blow up those who rush to the scene to try to help the survivors.

The rationale, presumably, is that these people are enemies, too. But often they may be civilians, merely, the wives, children or friends of those who were just blown up.

Perhaps they are civilians responding to the cries of other injured civilians. In any event, if this report is true, civilian casualties can be compounded by this wretched strategy.

We also note, as we often do, that the entire war on terror seems phony to us. The State Department has virtually admitted that the Al Qaeda terrorist group has served on the same side as Western powers in both Libya and now Syria. And there seems to be plenty of evidence that the CIA invented Al Qaeda in the first place.

But that doesn't stop the US military from bombing Al Qaeda terrorists now. Here's more from the article:

It has happened in Afghanistan as well, and the first instance of "explicit intelligence posthumously proving" that an innocent civilian had been killed happened in Yemen. In September the NYU and Stanford law schools released a report detailing how double taps by U.S. drones affect the Pakistani population, and noted that "high-level" militants killed only accounted for two percent of U.S. drone strike casualties.

From the above excerpt we learn that this issue is known to several US law schools, as well. But it sure hasn't made the mainstream media yet. Wonder why ...

Conclusion: Shouldn't it?