{"id":27866,"date":"2016-10-13T07:55:34","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T15:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=27866"},"modified":"2016-10-13T07:55:34","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T15:55:34","slug":"how-soon-before-armed-drones-are-overhead-in-america-time-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/13\/how-soon-before-armed-drones-are-overhead-in-america-time-now\/","title":{"rendered":"How Soon Before Armed Drones Are Overhead in America? Time Now."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Protocols exist allowing the president to select American citizens, without a whit of due process, for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/post\/175807\/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren,_the_divine_right_of_president_obama\/\">drone killing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Only overseas, he says, but you can almost see the fingers crossed behind his back. Wouldn\u2019t an awful lot of well-meaning Americans have supported an aerial drone killing in San Bernardino, or at the Pulse club in Orlando? Didn\u2019t many support using a robot to <a href=\"http:\/\/wemeantwell.com\/blog\/2016\/07\/09\/the-dallas-police-used-a-drone-for-the-first-time-to-kill-someone-in-america\/\">blow up a suspect in Dallas<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>How soon before armed drones are over our heads?<\/p>\n<p>Time Now.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>North Dakota just legalized its police departments to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/tech\/2015\/08\/28\/police-taser-drones-authorized--north-dakota\/71319668\/\">equip drones with Tasers<\/a>, tear gas and rubber bullets. The state legislature will push for the removal of the non-lethal force provision in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>House Bill 1328 went into effect August 1. The original piece of legislation sought to ensure police obtained a search warrant to use a drone to gather criminal evidence. However, when a lobbyist with police ties was allowed to amend the bill, it was rewritten to specify that drones could carry anything except (&#8217;til next year) weapons capable of lethal force.<\/p>\n<p>Of course plenty of people have died at the hands of police using so-called non-lethal weapons, Tasers in particular. But even if that is not a concern, just wait until 2017, when the police will be able to fly weaponized drones. <\/p>\n<p>Over America. Or is it: Over, America?<\/p>\n<p><i>Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during Iraqi reconstruction in his first book, <\/i><a HREF=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0805096817\/ref=nosim\/?tag=antiwarbookstore\">We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People<\/a><i>. His latest book is <\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Ghosts-Tom-Joad-Story-Percent\/dp\/1935462911\/antiwarbookstore\">Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99 Percent<\/a><i>. Reprinted from the <a href=\"http:\/\/wemeantwell.com\/blog\/\">his blog<\/a> with permission.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Protocols exist allowing the president to select American citizens, without a whit of due process, for drone killing. Only overseas, he says, but you can almost see the fingers crossed behind his back. Wouldn\u2019t an awful lot of well-meaning Americans have supported an aerial drone killing in San Bernardino, or at the Pulse club in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-27866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27866"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27868,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27866\/revisions\/27868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27866"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=27866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}