Former drone operator says he's haunted by his part in more than 1,600 deaths

[morningfog]

A former Air Force drone operator who says he participated in missions that killed more than 1,600 people remembers watching one of the first victims bleed to death.

Brandon Bryant says he was sitting in a chair at a Nevada Air Force base operating the camera when his team fired two missiles from their drone at three men walking down a road halfway around the world in Afghanistan. The missiles hit all three targets, and Bryant says he could see the aftermath on his computer screen – including thermal images of a growing puddle of hot blood.

“The guy that was running forward, he’s missing his right leg,” he recalled. “And I watch this guy bleed out and, I mean, the blood is hot.” As the man died his body grew cold, said Bryant, and his thermal image changed until he became the same color as the ground.

“I can see every little pixel,” said Bryant, who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, “if I just close my eyes.”

http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/06/.UbCN9RJKGDM.facebook

[BlueToTheBone]

1. killing is heavy heavy karma

and I can understand why he has ptsd.

[kentauros]

13. As can I.

The people that do prison executions also have a high-turnover rate in that "field". It can even adversely affect the wardens (at least according to an article once read many years ago in the Houston Press.)

I know people here will react (and are reacting) with "Oh, boo hoo, so sorry you're a killer!" Well, they're obviously human like us, and their former and artificially repressed consciences are resurfacing. I don't know how this will affect such programs overall or in the long-run, but I do hope he gets therapy.

[onehandle]

2. Reminds me of when Leo was told that a missile run he did in Vietnam...

...was against a civilian target. Except Leo just dropped the payload with telemetry, not eye on target.

'Why did you tell me that?'

[Egalitarian Thug]

32. "every war is a crime". n/t

[whatchamacallit]

3. Reality, stark and brutal

unlike the intellectual games people on this board use to rationalize crimes against humanity.

[sibelian]

4. Oh, well.

Nevermind, eh?

[G_j]

5. sad K&R

[peace13]

6. Do no harm dude!

This is sad. Who could not have known that these guys who eat peanut butter sandwiches and shoot things across the globe would not someday be.....*ucked up. At least this is a sign that he is still human. That is the good news!

[Arctic Dave]

7. Boo hoo.

Another feel sorry for me whiner story but doesn't do a fucking thing to try and repair the damaged he caused.

Fuck him and the rest of them.

[Sequoia]

8. But video games designed to prepare us for actually killing a real person

with a machine from far away without all that guilt and despair.

[ellie]

17. Thank you

My original comment had a lot more cursing in it but I erased it. But I digress. What the fuck did he think was going to happen? This ongoing killing is insanity. We have no moral ground to stand on as a nation.

[Brickbat]

9. His description of the thermal image is haunting.

K&R for what we're making people do.

[Puzzledtraveller]

10. Arrested Development Season 4 has

an episode that plays into this, humor yes but definitely sending a message.

[marions ghost]

11. Did We Just Kill a Kid?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2249252/Brandon-Bryant-Drone-operator-followed-orders-shoot-child--decided-quit.html

Did we just kill a kid?': The moment drone operator who assassinated Afghans with the push of a button on a computer in the U.S. realized he had vaporized a child... and could not go on

By Helen Pow

PUBLISHED: 23:05 EST, 16 December 2012 | UPDATED: 14:31 EST, 17 December 2012

A former U.S. drone operator has opened up about the toll of killing scores of innocent people by pressing a button from a control room in New Mexico.

Brandon Bryant, 27, from Missoula, Montana, spent six years in the Air Force operating Predator drones from inside a dark container.

But, after following orders to shoot and kill a child in Afghanistan, he knew he couldn't keep doing what he was doing and quit the military.

'I saw men, women and children die during that time,' he told Spiegel Online. 'I never thought I would kill that many people. In fact, I thought I couldn't kill anyone at all.'

The first time he fired a missile, he killed two men instantly and cried on his way home.
'I felt disconnected from humanity for almost a week,' he said.

But it was an incident when a Predator drone was circling above a flat-roofed house made of mud in Afghanistan, more than 6,250 miles away, that really sticks in his mind. The hut had a shed used to hold goats and when he received the order to fire, he pressed a button with his left hand and marked the roof with a laser.

The pilot sitting next to him pressed the trigger on a joystick, causing the drone to launch a Hellfire missile. There were 16 seconds left until impact.

'These moments are like in slow motion,' he told the website.

As the countdown reached seven seconds, there was no sign of anyone on the ground.

Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point.

But when it was down to three seconds, a child suddenly walked around the corner.

The next thing he saw was a flash on the screen - the explosion. The building collapsed, and the child disappeared.

Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach, he told the website.

'Did we just kill a kid?' he asked the pilot next to him.

'Yeah, I guess that was a kid,' the man replied.

(story & pix at link)

[whatchamacallit]

14. The soul of the nation

is going to hell.

[marions ghost]

15. Yes

--when you can get people to blow others away halfway around the world....Houston, we have a PROBLEM>

Brandon Bryant is a good guy for speaking up & telling his story.

[sabrina 1]

30. What we are doing is monstrous, cowardly and criminal. This soldier has a conscience

which is going to make his life hell. They didn't turn him into a complete sociopath with no conscience so he will most likely suffer the rest of his life.

We can only hope that our enemies, and we must have so many by now considering all the people we have killed, never get their hands on these weapons.

But with the greed involved in selling weapons around the world, there is no guarantee that some day someone over 6,000 miles away will do what we are doing to them.

The sheer stupidity of it all aside from anything else, is astounding.

The lack of humanity, the cold blooded way it is done, as if they were shooting at inanimate objects, rather than human beings, scares me for this country.

His description of the way people die is nothing compared to the descriptions of the actual killings by witnesses who have described children blown to smithereens and their mothers fighting to retrieve body parts, not even sure if it is their own child, to at least be able to bury them. I believe Robert Fisk, or another British journalist was present when a drone strike occurred during the Bush years. His graphic description of the aftermath never left me. But those parents, I cannot imagine how it has affected them.

Monstrous is the only word I can think of, words cannot describe adequately the evil of all of this.

[marions ghost]

34. Agree with everything you said

This is an abomination.

[Orrex]

12. We play the game with the bravery of being out of range.

[spanone]

16. so the first thousand didn't bother him?

[Victor_c3]

18. I'd feel sorry for the guy, but it is different seeing it in real life with full sound and color

than via a thermal image through a computer screen thousands of miles away from the action.

Did this guys have to stuff a body bag of the person he killed? Did he have to shoo off the family as they came to reclaim their loved one's body? Did he have he have to deal with the wounded and all the "fun" associated with that? Nope, probably not. I don't want to hear his whining.

Anyways, I'm going back to being the piece of crap I am.

[zeemike]

19. Well that is why they need to be screened

To make sure they are genuine sociopaths before they let them kill thousands...
The true sociopath could care less and I am sure there are many drawn to that kind of work...especially sense it is done at a safe distance and government approved...in fact they have a medal for that.

No doubt about it, there is a sickness in this country and it will not cure itself.

[LongTomH]

20. The original link has expired

Here's a more recent link: http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/06/18787450-former-drone-operator-says-hes-haunted-by-his-part-in-more-than-1600-deaths?lite

[blkmusclmachine]

21. How could one sleep at night? 1,600 innocent souls lost.

[Lucky Luciano]

25. They are not ALL innocent. Some deserved it. nt

[Art_from_Ark]

27. And you know this, how, exactly?

[sabrina 1]

31. Really, could you give us a list of the 'guilty' because we have been trying to find out why

we are killing people by remote control for a long time with no success. We know that many children, I believe in Pakistan a record is being kept and the count in that country alone of children killed by drone was approx 168 last time I checked that record. I was wondering what those children were guilty of, some as young as two years old.

You seem to think you are informed about this so could you share your information so we all can sleep as peacefully as you apparently do regarding what is being done in our name?

I have a problem with remote control killing, with no charges filed, with no evidence presented of guilt and with not even a name supplied so we can judge to some extent whether these people are guilty of anything, being they ARE in their own countries.

I have an even worse problem with the murder of children, regardless of whose children they are. What do you think all those children in Pakistan were guilty of?

[Lucky Luciano]

35. I said "not ALL" which could mean SOME were wrong.

Anyway, should we send FBI agents to go on the ground in deep tribal areas of Pakistan and Yemen?

[morningfog]

37. To answer your question, no.

But that doesn't mean when need to terrorize the neighborhood with drones either. A generation of blowback is counterproductive to our security.

[sabrina 1]

38. No, we should bring them all home and mind our own business. What business is it of ours to go

into 'deep tribal areas of Pakistan and Yemen'? Who invited us there, what right do we have to do this? Airc Bush claimed the right to 'go anywhere in the world we wanted to go and kill people' but most rational people around the globe vehemently disagreed with that claim.

How would you feel about other countries claiming the right to come here to kill people THEY claim threaten THEIR National Security? And on what basis now could we criticize them for doing so?

The sense of entitlement to invade other nations is simply stunning with zero awareness that if we can do this so can everyone else. Or are you saying that we are superior beings in some way?

Eg, if some foreign nation bombed our children to pieces, on a regular basis over the course of years, what do you think we would do? We have now literally thousands of innocent people whose children we have slaughtered and to be honest, if we have the right to 'protect ourselves' by going to their countries and killing them, so do they, don't you agree?

[go west young man]

22. Roger Waters has a song about it.

"The Bravery of Being Out of Range" I admire the way Waters goes into the psychology of war as he points out the faults of the ignorant fools who believe themselves strong when in actuality they are no better than the ones they are killing. I do have empathy for the drone operator in this post who has consciously woken up to the nefarious things he and others have done albeit a little too late.

You have a natural tendency
To squeeze off a shot
You're good fun at parties
You wear the right masks
You're old but you still
Like a laugh in the locker room
You can't abide change
You're at home on the range
You opened your suitcase
Behind the old workings
To show off the magnum
You deafened the canyon
A comfort a friend
Only upstaged in the end
By the Uzi machine gun
Does the recoil remind you
Remind you of sex
Old man what the hell you gonna kill next
Old timer who you gonna kill next
I looked over Jordan and what did I see
Saw a U.S. Marine in a pile of debris
I swam in your pools
And lay under your palm trees
I looked in the eyes of the Indian
Who lay on the Federal Building steps
And through the range finder over the hill
I saw the front line boys popping their pills
Sick of the mess they find
On their desert stage
And the bravery of being out of range
Yeah the question is vexed
Old man what the hell you gonna kill next
Old timer who you gonna kill next
Hey bartender over here
Two more shots
And two more beers
Sir turn up the TV sound
The war has started on the ground
Just love those laser guided bombs
They're really great
For righting wrongs
You hit the target
And win the game
From bars 3,000 miles away
3,000 miles away
We play the game
With the bravery of being out of range
We zap and maim
With the bravery of being out of range
We strafe the train
With the bravery of being out of range
We gain terrain
With the bravery of being out of range
With the bravery of being out of range
We play the game

[marble falls]

23. And to think it only took 1600 'targets' to get to the point of regret.

[KansDem]

24. When is it patriotic duty and when is it mass murder?

And why do fellow mortals decide for us?

[kestrel91316]

26. A friend of mine was a USAF sniper and also did forward targeting

for smart bombs in the field during the First Gulf War. He's really not into war now.

I don't think he has PTSD from it - I've certainly never seen any evidence of it, but it can't be easy on the psyche.

[liberal_at_heart]

28. and yet the majority of Americans support this. I don't get it.

[alp227]

29. The majority of americans aren't seeing this shit in their own backyards, and even fewer are shakenq

by video of the int'l drone attacks.

[sabrina 1]

33. People without empathy. So many of them in the US. That is scary, isn't it? They cannot relate to

the pain of the mothers who pick up the pieces of their babies after someone like this pushes a button on a 'video game' and obliterates their beloved child. There is a name for people with no ability to empathize with the pain and suffering of others.

I swore when I saw the first photos of dead children in Iraq taken by Dahr Jamail, rows and rows of bodies, that I would never allow myself to become used to it. It isn't as shocking as the first time, the first child I remember even had a name. He was one of the lucky ones, he didn't die. He lost his arms and legs in the first assault on Baghdad. He also lost his parents and siblings. He was crying in pain, the hospital had no pain killers as there were so many injured, the 'lucky ones' who didn't die. So many dead. HIS name was 'Ali'. After CNN put that film on the air the first night of the invasion, we never saw footage of any of the reality of that terrible war again on our media. Ali was taken out of Iraq due to the kindness of others. I don't know what happened to him.

I will never allow them to make this 'normal' and 'acceptable'. It is not, it is monstrous.

[Rex]

36. Not a video game, no respawn points.

Dead is dead. Watching someone die is gruesome. I can't imagine what it is like to watch someone die, by my hands, half a world away.