Mr. Noah needs to show some respect. You can disagree with what the President says without categorizing what he says as "total baloney". You embarrass yourself and apparently need to say these disrespectful things in order to get your point across.

Aww! Mitt Romney wants us to be the hope of the earth? And here I thought he wasn't a good environmental candidate!

Drones kill the little children in the building next door from enemies too, it is immoral to not mention this when mentioning how drones kill targeted enemies.

How can we listen to the military broadcast? The audio at the top is on-air, i think (talking about Broadway).

Is the show archived somewhere?

Taher from Croton on Hudson

"The result is a bully on the planet".

You think the 14 year old girl in Pakistan and her girlfriend who were shot by the Taliban because they wanted to get an education, think the US is a bully?

There is a reason why every airport in the world needs to screen cargo and passengers for weapons and bombs.

I whole-heartedly agree!
1) IF there's to be ANY increase to the DOD, (i.e. Romoney's 4% of GDP) will that increase go to the Military Personnel or to the "Military Industrial Complex" Ike warned about?
2) IF the increase goes to the "M.I.C." - will it be spent for those products the DOD & Pentagon request, OR for those expensive, experimental machines the M.I.C. want to build (& the Pentagon repeatedly say they don't want nor need)?
3) Our Military is under paid, under serviced, and over used. Married GI's under 4: do not get military housing; & too often, gets ripped off by local renters! They get a pittance travel $ when transferred; & have to move their household goods - at their own cost! Medical care is inconsistent, military Hospitals were closed down. (more $ for the M.I.C.?) Families use "Champus" now, at local facilities, so every time they're transferred, they have to find new Doctors. Thats a big problem, if one member is sick or has an ongoing condition. & our Single GI's aren't much better off, with many of these same problems.
We had a friend, with 18 years in. The military hospital mixed up his X-rays when he was transferred. At the new base, was called a "malingerer." But he was gravely ill, was discharged, w/o retirement or medical care, & died shortly after. THIS is how to treat those who would serve & die for us? & This may be happening more now, without military hospitals!
We need to treat our MIlitary Personnel with respect & honor, from giving them a "living wage" and decent medical etc care: to those people communities they must live within treating them fairly, & not see them as money bags.

Chris M. from Boston, MA, there it is. The policy makers have no other ideas as to how to deal
with the issue.I am thankful that some of the nut job listeners are not in decision-making positions.

All warfare is immoral. The only justifiable use of military force is in defense of innocents and human rights. There would be no "war on terror" if US foreign policy had reflected this simple, undeniable truth. We've been supportive of all kinds of despotic regimes which have carried out all kinds of inhumane atrocities for 50 years or more, and now we're desperately trying to manage the inevitable fallout. Our foreign policy actions created the opportunities for Islamic extremism to rise and flourish. War is nothing but a racket, as a few other comments point out.

If drones are so effective, why is the Taliban and Al Qaeda still standing?

@Maggie - So drones are only ok when the blood being shed is that of the children in these countries that we are attacking?

jgarbuz from Queens
Are drones politically effective? For every one “terrorist” that is killed thousands more join, one way or another in Asia and Africa. So what, you say?
The result may be that America’s cultural, political and economic influence may be reduced to zero.
The result is a bully on the planet.
Hay, who knows some other country, might use a drone on your Queens neighborhood.

jgarbuz... Drone strikes terrorize terrorists, but they also terrorize innocent civilians - particularly children. Drones maybe more cost effective, but they don't discriminate against combatants versus civilians.

If there's a house with a terrorist, his wife and his children the drone will bomb the entire building and kill everyone. What good does it do to the war on terror if his wife and kids are killed? Instead it just makes everyone that lived around the home who knew the family angry and resentful towards the strikes. This is a situation when traditional troops are more effective.

Osama bin Laden wasn't neutralized by a drone - but by the Seal Team 6.

Aside from the “moral” issue, is drones use politically effective? A military, as I understand it, is an instrument of foreign policy.
Dose the targeted killings simply kill? What is the purpose of the killing? Dose it lead to the United States having effective influence in Africa, Asia?
I simply cannot understand the reasoning behind this instrument other then the policy makers don’t have anything else to go by.

Americans need to realise that the world is changing and so is the way we do WAR! I'm ok with drones especially since our children won't be on the ground in these counties, shedding their blood for nothing! Change is often hard so we need to get use to it.

Drones are a GODSEND and terrorize the terrorists, which is the only way you can really fight terrorists, is by terrorizing them. To say that drones cause more civilian deaths than the use of conventional methods is ludicrous and totally false. Drones bring to the homes of terrorists the same terror they bring to the homes of the innocents they randomly blow up.
Those who sympathize with terrorist causes naturally hate drones.

Your app is unusable to anything but the fastest connection/most modern browser. Please work to stop this discrimination.

All for Drones as long as our boys and girls are not be
shot at I'm all for it.

The drone program and the kill list are completely shocking and a violation of the most basic international human right, the right to life.

Who would have thought that Obama would have claimed the RIGHT TO KILL people--citizens or no, it doesn't matter--on his own say so?? Yes there is due process--his own Department of Justice! What if Bush had claimed that? Even Nixon didn't claim that, though he came close when he said that if the president does it, it's not illegal.

See Amnesty International on drones.

Whether it's drone strikes or ground forces... our military involvement PERIOD what gives people negative sentiment towards the US.

I believe that Drone strikes are likely more cost-effective. Big deal. Can I relate to you a story of how to deal with Jews cost effectively in Nazi Germany? Please mention the NYU/Stanford study that mentions targeting of "good samaritans".

We need the contractors our contracts with them needs to be re written - healthcare is the last thing servicemen and women should have to worry about when they return home and there should be a decompression transition program created to work them back into their civilian life.

Can the guest comment on the looming military problem that is personnel costs? We will be paying for the healthcare and pensions of these people who have served us. Military men and women can retire after 25 years. Therefore many will require these benefits for 30-40 more years of life.
These people need to be taken of (and better than today). Large weapons programs, etc will have be scaled waaaay back to cover this looming crisis.

I think it is pretty well expected that the republican/conservative platform is in favor of increasing the military and the democratic/liberal platform is in favor of decreasing the military. Nothing new here.

What is a problem is that funding for the military should be based on need rather than posturing. In addition, the military budget should never cripple the rest of the economy.

With regard to how the military treats its veterans, I think they were treated very well for a long while, but society has changed in so many ways that what the DOD needs to do is update its requirements. My father was a 100% disabled WWII veteran and all of his health care was covered by the VA (except for some relatively minor things). He got a GI loan for my parents' first home, and even though my father was disabled, once he mostly recovered from his injuries (he received a purple heart for being injured in battle and spent several years after his honorable discharge having regular surgeries to remove shrapnel from his face), he worked hard for the rest of his life until my mother forced him to retire.

Nowadays, we have soldiers who are suffering not merely from service-related injuries, but from drug addiction and other issues that don't seem to have been such a problem for soldiers from my father's generation. The military (VA) needs to adapt and make certain that ALL discharged military personnel are of sound mind and body upon discharge and are able to integrate into society and get work so they don't wind up homeless.

Last night, CNN did a piece on congress spending billions of dollars on refurbishing tanks the Army doesn't want. It just so happens that the contractor doing the work, gave tens of thousands in campaign contributions to both democrats and republicans alike - that sit on the defense committee.

We all know how the system works.

EJ has nailed it. The problem with military spending is contractors. While the actual soldiers and sailors are finding themselves paying more for necessities and getting pay deducted for food during deployments, contractors are getting rich for charging top dollar and providing mediocre products and services to the military.

I do not understand all the trend of cuts.. It all seems highly suspect especially considering that DOD spending has been the highest it has ever been in Real dollars, in all of US history, even including WWII. Even though we have a much smaller standing army and much less of the economy is supported by this money. Lets talk about the super rich elite of DOD contracting..