Andrew Vachss Quotes

I'ma call my guns jumpers, cause my bullets just leapin to 'em.

Philosophers and theologians have argued for centuries over the morality of targeted assassinations - a technique that the Israelis use with some frequency - without ever reaching anything approaching consensus.

In a war without aim, you tend not to aim. You close your eyes, close your heart. The consequences become hit or miss in the most literal sense.

I cannot grasp the difference between killing people with drones or rifles and knives. The objective in war is to kill the enemy before he kills you. I can't fathom the almost religious zeal with which the use of drones is being opposed.

Well we had nine top forensic pathologists from across the country, who operated as a panel, who looked at all the ballistic evidence and they came out saying that those bullets did exactly what the Warren Commission said they did.

It is true that when there's a drone attack, those - that the - the terrorists are killed, it's true. But 500 and 5,000 more people rises against it, and more terrorism occurs, and more - more bomb blasts occurs.

Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen - even one intent on murdering Americans and who has become an operational leader of al-Qaida in a foreign land - is among the gravest that government leaders can face.

The only defence is in offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.

Our calculus with the Drone Program is very simple. Kill them before they kill you!

The legal foundation for the targeted killing campaign is not simply shaky, but rotten.

Ground combat almost always kills more civilians than drone strikes do.

International laws do not prohibit an intelligence agency like the CIA from carrying out targeted killings, provided it complies with the relevant international rules. These rules require … when it’s a matter of being able to kill someone in a foreign country, that all such killings be legally justified, that we know the justification, and that there are effective mechanisms for investigation, prosecution, and punishment if laws are violated.

Outside the context of armed conflict, the use of drones for targeted killings is almost never likely to be legal.

A drone isn't any different than a bomb; it's not any different than other weapons that are used, where there is always a capacity for people to be killed who you wished were not.

A drone isn't any different than a bomb; it's not any different than other weapons that are used, where there is always a capacity for people to be killed who you wished were not. It's just the weapons platform.

In my view, targeted lethal force is at its least controversial when it is on its strongest, most traditional legal foundation. The essential mission of the U.S. military is to capture or kill an enemy. Armies have been doing this for thousands of years. As part of a congressionally authorized armed conflict, the foundation is even stronger.

Under well-settled legal principles, lethal force against a valid military objective, in an armed conflict, is consistent with the law of war and does not, by definition, constitute an 'assassination.'

I've got no problem with drone strikes.

Armed drones have become Barack Obama's way to engage in terrorist-infested hellholes without putting 'boots on the ground.' For years, the CIA has been running a secrecy-shrouded program of targeted killings in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, and more recently in Somalia, Syria and Iraq.

I don't think anybody feels safe in Chicago. Bullets ain't got no name on them.

On vague wording of drone strike criteria: “Are you going to just drop a hellfire missile on Jane Fonda? Are you going to drop a missile on Kent State? That’s gobbledygook.

Well, you know what they say. A bullet always tells the truth.

A roar cut through the melee: a booming growl, a noise that might come out of a she-bear protecting a cub. It was Alec- and suddenly bodies were flying everywhere.

When lightning strikes, the mouse is sometimes burned with the farm.

It is progress when weapons are improved to kill more people at a longer range.