freedom manifesto, where free markets are moral and a government isn't it will be talking with her co-author, steve forbes as well about this book. argues targeted killings did not make us safer. this is about an hour and a half. [cheers and applause] >> thank you. it's wonderful to be here in buffalo and to be talking about an issue that is obvious they vary near and dear to my heart, drone warfare. i want to give you a little background first about why i wrote a book on drone warfare. it really dates back now to over 10 years when the u.s., after 9/11 invaded afghanistan. i do know some of you are to run to remember, but others have asked might remember looking at our tv screens and seeing the pictures of these very serious the new weapons that we had in this idea that we now have these precision weapons would only target people they wanted to get. i would not result in capital or damage. it was almost a way to say to people, calm down, don't be worried. we won't be killing innocent people. so i was worried because i don't have a sense the latest and greatest new weapon is going to attack innocent people. and went to afghanistan three weeks after the invasion with several other colleagues and others before we even got into afghanistan that we found already people who would be considered collateral damage. the first young woman i met someone who sticks with me. she was 13 or so to my dad at that time was 13 or so it and i felt an affinity with her and asked her if i could learn about her story and she took it back to her home in with the help of an interpreter, i learned she had recently come from a pool when the u.s. started on main, her family had lived on the outskirts of a taliban compound in her home was bombed by mistake. she was not at her father was not home in the house where her mother and three sisters and brothers. when they came home that evening, they found the whole house had been destroyed and the only thing they found were pieces of flesh on the streets. that was all that was left of the family. and of course he started crying as she retold the story and also retold the story of her father who was a big, strapping man, they cannot commit to a man, praying and they are working a day in again. at that moment her teens she found yourselves the height of the household with a new father and two little brothers. and had to start walking. i'll go into pakistan where she was living hand to mouth from a dragon on the streets of the very, very poor city. no matter how precise our bombs are, they are still killing innocent people and leaving a lot of people suffering. so that is really the reason that i researched the drones and the reason i do this work is because i think as americans we have to be thinking about the lives of people everywhere, not just her own children. the children in pakistan or afghanistan or anywhere are as precious as our own. the other reason i wanted to do this book is because i realized that now that we are 10 years into more, that the american people are tired of war and this has come out poll after poll. in fact, the most recent polls show it's not just democrats or independents or green party members. it's republicans as well. in fact for the first time that we have majority of republicans in the war in afghanistan is not worth fighting, which is something very significant because it's often hard for people when a war is going on and you still have american troops there to say this just is not worth fighting. and also we have to recognize that with this country in a financial crisis, more and more people are recognizing these are now the trillion dollar wars and because our economy is in the shape it's in now. we can't afford these expensive wars. i think the government understand that credit for going to keep the war is going, it's got to be through other means, not with this on the grounds where americans are killed. not the extensive old way old way of doing more, but a new way of doing more that isn't drone strikes. and drone strikes are shown to the american people with their own soldiers at risk because there is no pilot in the cup pit. and as an alternative to boots on the ground. i used a whole book to counter those arguments. let me step back for a minute and talk about what our terms. for anybody who doesn't know, drones, and all shapes and sizes. there are little bitty drones the size of an ex, drones the size of yours. in fact, drones are mimicking the hummingbird, different types of birds, dragonfly drones. there are drone soldiers is to put in their that pack and could launch them individually and these go out and survey the terrain before the soldiers go. there are the larger trends come and the mall airplane. the reaper and predator drones had the ones being used and is lethal attacks. it is general topics based in southern california. a member of very, big surveillance drones, once called the global hawk that are the size of a commercial airplane. these can play 60,000 feet altitude and give you the site of an entire city at once. so there's all kinds of drones. most of them are surveillance drones come up with the surveillance drones can easily be equipped to be lethal drones as well. so who is piloting these drones? well, some of you in this audience actually have been protesting at the handcart air force base, one of the places where drones are piloted. and other places outside vegas, nevada, to create air force base in many places around the united states were drone pilots everything being trained for drones are being tested or piloted. so this is a new kind of warfare, where you don't even have to be in the area of the battle. you can be thousands and thousands of miles away thinking that the battlefield to a video screen. in fact, the manufacturers admit that the screens are really -- design is taken taken from the video games that teenagers have grown up playing and it's easier for them when they are recruited and become drone pilot. they are used to using these kinds of playstation. enjoy. in fact, the u.n. has u.s. has created a playstation mentality through war. it is a very surreal thing to think about pilot been in an air force base in the united states over the drones are being run by the cia they are, they can be outside of virginia and they are in an air-conditioned room. they are sitting in an ergonomic chair and they are looking for hours and hours on end at a scene in a place that they may never have been to. don't sleep the language, don't know the closer. and they are hovering over people's homes for days at a time, sometimes weeks at a time and they are the ones that price the kill button. studies have been done that show that these pilot are oftentimes having the same kind of trauma that soldiers on the battlefield have because they've been asked to do something but i think our brains are nowhere to do and that is to kill people remotely during the day and then go home in the evening to their families, where they are supposed to be loving fathers, and loving husbands come integrated members of their community, a part of their church group. this is very hard for some of these pilots to do. there's another problem the pilots talk about and that is poured in. they are sitting in front of the screen for hours and hours and hours on end. in fact, some of them say they would rather be in the battlefield, that they signed up with the military to be in the battlefield if they want to be with their buddies on the ground. so sitting in front of the screen, they're actually looking for some action, meaning looking for some kind of suspicious behavior. well, the drone strikes are happening in two different ways. one is that there is a show last, where you're actually going after an individual whose name you know. you, for example we have you on a kill list them will go after you and will try and try and try again until they get you. you are a high-value target. there is another type of list and that is called the personality straight or the other is a signature stripe. and that is based on suspicious fee for. as i give this talk about those remote pilot who were sitting thousands of miles away and looking for suspicious behavior, what they might surmise his suspicious behavior when it is really just perhaps a community meeting. the kill list. let's take a minute to talk about how the catalyst is determined. when i was writing the book, was trying hard to get all kinds of contradictory series about a. and it wasn't until "the new york times" came out with this long story on may 29th about how intimately involved president obama is in this kill list. and to me this is a jaw-dropping piece of journalism because it was so detailed and it came from people who are presently in the administration or had been recently in the administration. and what was shocking to me was to learn that president obama brings him his advisers once a week on what they call terror tuesday is and sort through these profiles of people that they have information and a photo and save these look like baseball cards and they decide who's going to live and who is going to die. they played the role of prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner all at once. some might say they play the role of god. some of them are shocking things in that article were that they admitted that the administration defines all men of military age in the zones where we are using those drone as militants. that to me was just astounding, to think that by definition, a young man living in the wrong place at the wrong time is a militant and can only be present in a sense post-human life, after they are killed. it's quite astounding. well, when that article came out, there were a couple of different reactions. one from congress was sent where they doing these kill list and killing so many innocent people in defining militants like that. instead, they said why are they linking information to the press from which actually is a good question because these are supposed to be secret programs congress was even supposed to talk about. but he would be nice if more people in congress were shot to death the catalyst itself. but it seems that the speculation is that the obama team thought it would be a good election strategy to have this piece come out and show how to president is sent terror, that in case there were like independent voters who are trying to win over them might think this president is soft on security, that this could be an example to show them he was a tough guy. in fact, they quoted people saying it is easy for him to put people on the list. not a lot of hand wringing that came this. but i think this article kind of backfired because as i travel around and talked to people, i think people who are suddenly aware of this program and who are really shocked by it. so let me talk about some of the examples of who is being killed. if pakistan is the place where the drones have been used the mouse. we have also used the drones a lot in iraq and afghanistan as part of the larger wars. the u.s. has also used trial and in yemen, somalia. it appears they have used terms in the philippines and in libya as well. now, libya is an interesting case because when there were discussions among the public about the pros and cons of the u.s. intervening in libya, there is one thing that was really left out of the equation and that was whether or not it was a good thing to get involved militarily to overthrow gadhafi. the way in which it was done is to cut congress altogether and the administration's just vacation or not even bringing this up for a discussion in congress is when it's just an air war that we are using drugs and new of u.s. lives are at risk of a congress should have no say and not. so think of the kind of usurpation of power by the executive ranch, taken this away from the legislative ranch and what kind of precedent is set for future people in the white house. we have also been a case of a rat, when the u.s. troops left, left drones behind and put them in the hands not of the military, but the state department. so we have the diplomatic branch of our government in iraq having its own fleet of jones and we left drones across the border in turkey, where they have been used to give information to the turkish government and its conflict with the kurds. in fact, the u.s. supplied information in an attack that was wrong and left a lot of innocent kurds killed. it puts the u.s. in the middle of another conflict we shouldn't be in. in the case of pakistan, there were drone strikes under the bush administration, but there were a total of 46 dragster in the entire time of the bush administration, which works out to one strike about every 40 days once they started using these. in the case of the obama administration, they became one strike every four days. there have been over at rielle hunter 20 drone strikes, the vast majority under the obama administration and some would say people in the obama administration decided they wouldn't use the bush tactic, which was to capture people and put them in guantánamo because that turned out to be very messy. it was then a big debate whether they should have civilian trials or military trials are we to do with the people you found innocent and they've got nowhere to go that it was neither cleaner to just kill people. and the outcry that many people in this country had towards indefinite detention, guantánamo, the torture, extraordinary rendition, we don't hear that kind of outcry against an obama administration policy of simply killing people. in the case of pakistan, it seems that there are no good statistics because our government doesn't tell us about these programs, but there are several different organizations that try to compile the statistics. it's difficult because journalists are not allowed into the northern part of pakistan were drones are being used, but some of the best figures say there's perhaps 3000 people killed in pakistan. 175 of them children. now another astounding thing is you probably have never seen a picture of a child who has been killed by a drone strike. you probably never seen a picture of anybody who s. been killed by a drone strike. our media doesn't seek out the stories, does it show us the photo. i'll show you a couple today because again this is not what you see on your tv screens. this for example is an 8-year-old child who was killed in a drone strike, february 14. happens to be valentine's day. this is two boys who were killed in a drone strike in pakistan. we have many of these pictures which you can see on the website drugs watchdog work. this is quite a gruesome looking picture and i know it's hard to look at, but this is what happens in drone strikes. in fact, most of the time that it then searches pulverized and you won't even see this kind of grisly picture because there will be almost no remains. i wanted to read a little bit from the book about a case of somebody killed in a drone strike, just to try to humanize this a little bit for you. this is the case that the family of a man called korean: and the drone strike at his family compound in northern pakistan on december 31, new year's day for us -- well come in new year's eve 2009. status come with a drone didn't just have her overhead that night. watching the movement of the villagers bola as it had done on so many other occasions. no, this time to let loose a missile into the heart of kareem khan's family compound. in the chaos of the explosion dissipated, his brother and son had been blown to bits. news reports cited in podgy omar, a taliban commander, but the villagers insisted that podgy omar had been nowhere in sight. the tragedy that forever scarred the lies of kareem collins family appear to be the product of a mistake. a mistake by a fiery aggressor who would face no punishment for pressing the fire button without looking long enough, without checking, without double checking. his son had just graduated from high school. his brother was not a militant or even a militant sympathizer, but a schoolteacher with a master's degree in english literature. for eight years he been teaching at the small village school with whatever meager resources he could muster. he left behind a young wife, now a widow, so distraught she could not speak for weeks after the attack and a 2-year-old boy who would never remember his father. he said the drones were constantly buzzing around his village and they were terrifying to people, especially the children who would go to bed at night, not knowing if they would wake up in the morning or not. but little did the people at this conference in islamabad now that the first drone strike every document it was two days later and it was a drone strike that killed this young man, to wreak as he is himself. now the lawyers at that conference were outraged and they went to the u.s. embassy. they went to the u.s. government, the pakistani government and said why did she tell this young man? and the u.s. government said he was a militant and the lawyer said, well, we would like to see the proof that he was a militant, but in any case, if you have any proof, why didn't you just come into the hotel where he was staying with a meeting where he was for four days and arrest him and give them a chance for a trial like you are supposed to do. there was no answers to that question. so what have the people of pakistan done? well, we know from wikileaks documents that are visually the government of pakistan, the prime minister said okay, you did a drone strikes and we will express our outrage to the public about them. and that went on for a while until the government realized that so many innocent people were being killed and that this drone strike program was counterproductive, to do is driving people into the arms of the talent in an al qaeda, that he was turning them against themselves and turning them against the american people. the government of pakistan which the u.s. they voted once, three times unanimously not to ask, but to demand that the united states stopped the drone attacks in the u.s. government refused to do that. the pakistani people have been going out in huge numbers by hundreds of thousands, protesting the drone strikes. most of the pakistani people hate the taliban and coming hate al qaeda and hit the drone strikes. in fact, there was a poll done just very recently that showed that the pakistani people who had heard of the drone strikes because there's not a lot of information in the media care as well, and 97% of them said they were against these strikes. 97% of the population. you would think that would tell something to the obama administration, to the pentagon, to the cia then maybe this is not a good program, but unfortunately it hasn't. unfortunately, with the u.s. government has done his transfer this to another country and that is to yemen. the drone strikes in yemen under the obama did ministration began in 2009. the first drone strike was a mistake, hit the wrong target, less 14 women and 21 children dead. only one person of the dozens killed was identified as having strong ties to al qaeda. if you want to get a sense of how successful the drone strike has been in yemen, when it first started in 2009, there were maybe 200 members of something called al qaeda and the raping and peninsula and they controlled the territory. today there's maybe over a thousand people identified as members of this group and they control a substantial territory. there was a very good op-ed piece that came out in "the new york times" on june 3rd team, written by a 23-year-old yemeni act to this end he was really a plea to the united states government. the title of it was how drugs help al qaeda. as a drone strikes cause more people to join radical militants not driven by ideology, but by revenge and despair. he said the short-term gains from killing milita