WMD: Made in Washington State

The Sunday (July 26) issue of the Seattle Times carried an article entitle "Soaring success: Drones lift Gorge economy," an ode to the latest US-made weapon of mass destruction: unmanned, aerial drones. Remember when Colin Powell stood before the UN and condemned Saddam Hussein for building unmanned aerial drones? That's a weapon of mass destruction, boys! Let's bomb the shit out of him!

Meanwhile, US companies were busy building the first generation of aerial drones. Today, the Predator drone is routinely used to bomb villages where Taliban militants are thought to be hiding, or to assassinate suspected Al Qaeda leaders and their "sympathizers" (the latest terminology to connote innocent bystanders). As of mid-July of this year, the US military had launched 40 drone strikes in Western Pakistan alone, which caused the Pakistani government to issue a formal protest with the US State Department. The Predator is also used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A company called Insitu, based in Klickitat County here in Washington State, recently churned out its 1,000th aerial drone. Insitu was founded in 1994 and has 15 separate offices in the Columbia Gorge area where 630 workers make drones for Boeing, which purchased Insitu in 2008. In fact, Insitu is one of Boeing's most profitable divisions...and a non-unionized one, too.

Insitu also says that its main product is not a missile wielding weapon; no, they build the ScanEagle, an aerial surveillance drone that isn't big enough to carry missiles. Instead, the ScanEagle carries high-resolution and/or infrared cameras that help pinpoint where people live so the Predator drone can bomb them to kingdom come. Big difference.