http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/11/three-lessons-obama-drone-lies
Three key lessons from the Obama administration's drone lies
(1) The Obama administration often has no idea who they are killing.
This has long been the most amazing aspect of the drone debate to me. Not even the CIA, let alone ordinary citizens, has any idea of the identity of many of the people they are targeting for death. Despite this central ignorance, huge numbers of people walk around in some sort of zombie-like state repeatedly spouting the mantra that "Drones are Good because We are Killing the Terrorists" - even though the CIA itself, let alone citizens defending its killings, have no clue who is even being targeted.
2) Whisteblowers are vital for transparency and accountability, which is precisely why the Obama administration is waging a war on them.
Here is yet another example where we obtained proof of the falsity of the government's claims, and possibly illegal actions, for only one reason: a whistleblower leaked top secret documents to a journalist, who then published them. When you combine an impotent Congress, a supine media, and a subservient federal judiciary - the institutions ostensibly designed to check excessive executive branch secrecy - government leakers have really have become the only reliable means for learning about the lies and bad acts of political officials.
(3) Secrecy ensures both government lies and abuses of power.
That the Obama administrations' claims about its drone program have proven to be false should be viewed as anything but surprising. Aside from the potent impulse for governments to lie to their citizenry about what they do, secrecy in particular renders inevitable - not possible, not probable, but inevitable - both abuses of power and systematic lying. And secrecy has been the hallmark of the Obama administration generally and its drone killings in particular. A recent Washington Post article - headlined: "Drone use remains cloaked despite Obama's pledge for more transparency" - discussed Obama's repeatedly unfulfilled promises for more openness and explained:
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