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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, I'm not quite following the argument here. We're in a comment thread about it being illegal to reveal the amount of corruption in the US military, how they are not being particularly discriminating in who they are droning over in the Middle East.

You're putting up evidence that they are also hiring vetted thugs and sending them over to massacre people - also indiscriminately. Again, it is probably illegal at some level to report on how many massacres actually happen so presumably this case is more common than people think.

And the take away here is that the government is protecting us from private sector malfeasance? The private sector would never get funding for this sort of insanity! The only reason money is going to this is because paying taxes is mandatory. A tiny minority of people support this bloodshed. They just happen to have plum positions in DC. And even then, only because it isn't their money being used to vaporise brown people.

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> and sending them over to massacre people - also indiscriminately.

That doesn’t follow, if the private sector decides to do something of it’s own volition then that’s on the private sector.

You might just as well say that the drone strikes are the fault of the individual operators. If a private operator does something in their capacity as a government contractor, then that's the government's responsibility.

If a fedex employee runs someone over while drunk, that employee is responsible. The company might also be responsible if they know the employee was drinking on the job.

It’s the same deal here, the company is 100% at fault, the government might also share some responsibility or not depending on the specifics. As to drone operators, “I was only following orders” isn’t a free pass though I was given bad information might be, the government can also be responsible at the same time.

Which isn’t to say these drone operators are going to end up at The Hague, but they and their superiors should at least be invested.

It's probably naive to think parts of the government and government contractors aren't deeply connected.

But somebody's paying them to do it. They weren't hired by McDonald's in this case, they were hired by the US government.

> On December 22, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump granted full presidential pardons to Slatten, Slough, Liberty, and Heard.

Did Trump pardon them in his capacity has a private sector businessman?

It doesn't look like these are rogue agents. It looks a lot like the government (and, specifically, the military) is supporting their actions at the highest levels.

They where also tried and convicted by the US government, Trump pardoning them was a political stunt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_granted_executi...

They were sent to Iraq by the US military, presumably protected from Iraqi justice by the presence of the US military, and then they were pardoned for their horrific crimes by the head of the US military.

The 'oh they're private contractors, nothing to do with the US military here!' line doesn't really fit.

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