our investigation begins at the focal point of this conflict creech air force base located close to las vegas. drones are these spooky looking unmanned flying objects. each of these robots are powerful spies able to observe but also to strike which is pretty devastating for al qaeda operatives. a predator type drone can shoot at any point around the globe. it's pilot remains concealed in a bunker deep beneath the nevada desert. he can shoot

a target in afghanistan or pakistan. in the nearby secluded town of indian springs and habitants observe the waltzing drones with the neighbors benevolent i. i'm sure that we are constantly checked out i would be surprised if the drones aren't keeping tabs on us here. ok but you know richard it writes television for a little bit. oh no i have never felt that there was any danger from anyone here. in pakistan have a hemis. way from creech victims of strikes are piling up. discarded

to discredit. you bitch and drove them to meet the new we begin. this really is. to get elected beazley not about who fought over a year but. who are these children these decimated families it's impossible to know precisely. dead wounded all because a pilot hidden in creech pressed a trigger for a missile strike look at the numbers more than thirty three hundred people have been killed in drone strikes in eight years and. only forty one. people killed in drone strikes only forty one the drone war is a silent war led by invisible soldiers killing nameless victims civilians in an isolated area or suspected terrorists with unpronounceable names at the entrance to

the base two americas observe each other without exchanging words veterans left their mobile homes to spend the afternoon cheering for their troops. on the other side of the road a protester displays his solitary dissidents. so it's not that we're only standing out in the desert doing this but this gives the military people a chance to see you know to hear our side of the thing if anybody wants to talk they can come and talk to us you know and i don't think we're going to change the world by tomorrow morning at breakfast but if we stick with it i think people's minds will change at least be open to a discussion you know. under

its smooth body the predator foretells the dream of a clean war. we are about to discover how this dream is turning into a nightmare. this is it old style war. traps confusion lethal risks for the foot soldiers ascent to the front line. set up for him the mother of all seen was on it you all go i know me i need a regime or i mean also saw me sawdust with his arm. once a fatty i bought poor course of world vision eos you want to do the whole book for the impossible dreams of all his army and they are

a bit crippled soldier could up after down so that the darkness your knowledge. keep you cool. look for under a legitimate deduction all acceptability like you want to there are don't talk and they'd also quit they all told him oh sure nail that up your six hundred. even for a couple see. bucky the macon is a strong. ill founded is humans us from tacoma. there are no losses of drone pilots another outa when they are done fighting creech pilots drive back home to the air conditioned suburbs of las vegas. let's enter the world of robots in las vegas where we drink champagne any finger food toasting the new generation of weapons.

the a u v s i convention which gathers two thousand companies that make up the industry of robotic systems takes place in the convention center of the mandalay bay casino. so let's say. yeah. in the aisles of this trade fair we cross the path of barely. weighted science prodigies. giants of the defense industry or superstars of the new order of warfare such as general atomics the manufacturer of predator. these sometimes clumsy looking toys can cost ten to hundreds of thousands of dollars but to purchase the predator itself you will need to spend a bit more than four million dollars and for this superstar of the fair sales are

going well one must admit this propeller powered glider with an icy outlook is quite a handy weapon when it comes to waging war without taking any risks. predators are remotely controlled from creech air force base through an elegant technical prowess from the cockpit and optic cable crosses the united states then runs under the atlantic and finally reaches germany. from germany a satellite signal is broadcast and relayed to afghanistan pakistan yemen or somalia. in mandalay bay everyone demonstrates flying across and robots performing myriad tasks more or less successfully. you want me to. be sort of. doing things like areas where i'm going to sort of keep this up and.

choices. but above all robots obstinately observe check compare data and calculate the best shot at. how entertaining this war seems played like a video game while you are comfortably installed in an armchair less than ten miles away from your home home sweet. enemies are turned into insects a few pixels wide and their hapless efforts can be observed with the amused eye of an entomologist. quite.

hard. to believe. you can even post images of a successful attack on you tube and brag about your drone achievements.

as in civilian life the internet overhaul the organization of the military the battlefield has become a completely digitized space vehicle. each fighter each weapon carrying platform or sensor device is connected like parts of a big war producing factory. militaries dubbed this new operational bubble the global information grid. also it said this bus. will keep. the serial shit. from the home and so it's clear. to put body. to do it because the

new. one reality blends with virtuality the chief the operation commander can simulate in real time the effect that each of his instructions could potentially have on the ground. the operations room becomes the center of the intervention. every resource made available for the officer is only a few clicks away. and each of the men present on the ground receive an optimal level of information to coordinate the attack. here an observation drone the global hawk performs a first reconnaissance followed by the passage of a satellite. each piece of the opposing force is identified and an angle of attack is calculated for maximum efficiency.

predators then enter the game and clean the ground before man jets finish the job by destroying the anti-aircraft battery. men and robots see eye to eye humans and machines share a common view of the battle on the global grid. inserted harmoniously into this new digital space.

crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want. there's a media leave us so we leave that maybe. by the same motion suit your. play your party there's a bill. for shoes that no one is that skin with the guests that you deserve answers from it's all politics only on our t.v. . they just want to keep building the allowing saudi arabia qatar and iran to fund millions and millions of pounds worth

of the building of mosques in this country where they have them addresses where currently we have one hundred thousand and four to sixteen year old children who have been schooled in these mistresses which is encouraging complete non integration within the society. a. clean more zero casualties war this is the great fantasy of warmongering politicians. let's try to understand what happens when this clean war becomes real thanks to technological prowess. peter singer analyzes the way the drones are changing the perception of war and the relationship between the military and politicians for a washington based research center the brookings institution. which is a fundamentally different experience in going to war for someone who physically

goes into a place of danger. versus someone who each morning wakes up as the commander of the first predator squadron put it to me you drive into work for twelve hours you're putting missiles and maybe targets you're killing enemy combatants and then you get back in the car you drive home and twenty minutes later you're talking to your kids about their homework at the dinner table. it's gaining a new kind of power via this technology that is very tempting and it's tempting in ways that they've not faced before. i want to make sure that people understand actually drones have not caused a huge number of civilian cash. it is that for the most part they have been very precise rescission strikes against al qaeda and their affiliates and we are

very careful in terms of how it's been applied so i think there's this perception somehow that we're just setting up a whole bunch of streitz willy nilly this is a targeted focused effort at people who are on a list barack obama made an extensive use of drone strikes during his first presidency. according to the new american foundation the number of predator strikes on the pakistani territory rose significantly with the arrival of barack obama in the white house the number of victims is estimated to range between two and three thousand the number of strikes went down in two thousand and twelve a presidential election year in the united states the. british suspect the beaty. that's what they can.

shout big. luis for. movies for more. than you've reported. your next door neighbor if nato participates in operations in afghanistan with a united nations mandate the atlantic alliance organization keeps its hands off what americans dubbed the war on terror in effect the executive power in america doesn't need militaries to wage war anymore it is the terrible benefit of clean war in pakistan the bombing campaign is performed by a civilian chain of command. to understand the importance of these disturbing shifts let's get into the details of the procedure that leads to the killing of a terrorist.

the kill chain is the process by which decisions are made to execute a target. two institutions are entitled to prepare their own kill list on the one hand the chase off from the defense department is a joint command of all the special operations forces these are militaries. on the other hand the cia in charge of counter spying is a civilian institution your inscription on the kill list makes you a legitimate target. the cia and j. sock don't always agree on the names written on either of the two lists but above all cia targets are located in pakistan yemen and somalia countries with whom the american military is not at war. who are the operators in charge of pulling the trigger. for the j.-star kill list they will be military for the cia kill list

it's a mystery but it is highly probable that these are private sub contracted employees . you know bottled water right now we've carried out more than three hundred air strikes and a place like pakistan. that is a what we would call an air war campaign doesn't involve troops on the ground literally hundreds of bombing runs it's not led by the us air force started u.s. air force general in charge of it instead it's being handled by a civilian intelligence agency doesn't mean i'm not disagreeing with their operation i'm not saying these are bad people involved in the operation just saying something that a couple of years ago we would have treated in the domain of war we're not treating it as in the domain of war.

rosa brooks is a law professor at georgetown university. she worked for three years as a legal advisor for the department of defense. a staunch democrat and a significant figure in the human rights movement she finds it hard to support the strike campaign waged by the white house thanks to drones i think that the increasing involvement of cia officials and civilian contractors in the use of drones is something that has given cause some real anxiety for for the professional military but if you want to know how the air force approves drone strikes in afghanistan they were they will be happy to tell you if you want to know how the cia approves drone strikes in yemen good luck they're not going to tell you anything so i think i think that members of the military are are in many cases somewhat uneasy at seeing the the military with its various checks and

balances bypassed in favor of a far less accountable chain of command. war creates a legitimate right for soldiers to kill. this right was reinforced by democracies around the world through cautious rules set after world war two. self-defense in front of imminent danger proportionality of your retaliation clear discrimination between fighters or civilians when weapons are you. with a drone strikes and acted by the cia these rules are put down. because the use of force is now put it to the hands of private companies acting secretly and escaping any meaningful legal control. in two thousand and ten major general timothy mchale was asked to investigate

a strike that caused the death of fifteen afghan civilians. he was shaken to discover that the decision to shoot was made under the recommendation of an employee from s.a.i.c. a private defense subcontractor. s.a.i.c. has a fifty million dollars contract to provide the services of operators interpret ng images filmed by predators. twenty thousand employees from the private sector had been integrated into the kill chain working with predators on their secret operations. maintenance agents visual analysts but also pilots and executioners. carrying on our investigation in las vegas we even learned how much a private pilot is paid to pull the trigger. two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year for up for someone that goes to the war and lives in that environment that's

what you make for sellers i do think that the people involved in the so-called kill chain bear some legal risk if i were one of them i would not be too too keen to travel in most of europe for instance i think that there is a legal exposure. privatized. or makes a lot of money but escaping the hierarchy of the military these new mercenaries could very well find themselves on the wrong side of the law because the missions ordered by the executive branch are becoming more and more controversy all. over this morning. along. the leader of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula was killed in yemen. the day. does a head of state have the right to prosecute judge and execute a death sentence over a citizen of his own country. and where al walkie is not your every day

terrorist he is one of al qaeda leaders he admitted his support of operations that killed dozens. and while a walky is also a u.s. citizen. a billionaire i. feel. from this i will file. for howard. and. not to come out of the on. his passionate speech is broadcast online and on television let americans to write down al a walkie on the kill list. when

his family learns about it through leaks in the press they prosecute the president of the united states. ok supporters can you introduce yourself i marty's cabaret and attorney for the center of constitutional rights and new york city based ngo has been mandated to represent the interests of the our walkie family in court this program is an executive killing policy it is nothing that has been reviewed by a court it's nothing that's been approved by the congress the authority the legal authority that the united states the president and the defense department in the cia rely on to say what we're doing is legal is an authorization that was passed after september eleventh of two thousand and one. that was ten over ten years

ago what the united states is doing now with this policy is saying that authorization that was passed in response to nine eleven authorizes the use of lethal force now against anyone not just members of al qaeda but against al-qaeda the taliban and undefined associated forces anywhere they may be found. on december fifth two thousand and ten judge john d. bates rejects the demands of the walky family with an eighty three page long decision still the court recognizes that it is troubling to execute an american citizen without due process and a fair trial. was cool. but today i let. him have the. following nine eleven one year later and war is tracked down and a series of predator strikes puts an end to the manhunt. was in september thirtieth

of two thousand and eleven the united states carried out the strike killed and killed another u.s. citizen samir khan killed two other people at least in that strike two weeks later they carried out another strike in yemen killing the son of and while lucky a sixteen year old u.s. citizen abdel rahman. his seventeen year old yemeni cousin and at least five other people who were sitting outside having dinner and there has been absolutely no accountability so far for either of those killings of anyone who was killed but particularly of the u.s. citizens who were killed by their own government it's a very very frightening world when we have heads of state saying we we reserve the right to kill any person anywhere any time for reasons that we will keep secret and you can't examine it beforehand you can examine it after

that's a pretty scary world to live in and you can bet that it will not be long before other other governments follow suit and it seems to me that that's a slippery slope that we're already we're already speeding down. in fish farms waters today you have the bomb to me because. i saw it spread all over norway this is the most toxic food you have in the whole. drowns out in the tissue inquiry furthermore tells restrictions. if you. really know what's inside the philadelphia.

i'm abby martin the stories we cover here are not going to hear anyone having started answering advice center there's a reason they don't want you to know about manners more recently something completely free now let's break the set. schools such tried to clear. up people are going to be going into your life for just a short period to get a primitive. company no no law no weapons of my own life would have. most of. these cases you have to meet women.

sometimes for nothing. to see that as a simple street. it's not just you give up the story you'll be judged if you see a stage eight lupita but speech was. in december two thousand and ten. more likely to be raped in college than in the real world. i don't think people did that to each other when they knew each other i thought rape was a stranger in the bushes. girl complaining about the son of an alumni gives millions of dollars to the school why listen to somebody who's going to lose money at the school of schools that make money based decisions are much more common than

they would ever admit publicly. on a mission to surround easton ukraine's largest city. on the shelves ahead residential buildings a hospital and a school in. western firms won though they could lose the billions of dollars those moscow response to sanctions with a food import ban saying it's taking its business elsewhere. part of our military to take targeted strikes against eisel terrorists convoys should they move toward the city. the u.s. prepares to get involved in iraq again know where they have managed to occupy a large swathes of territory looting the country's largest christian city.