White House ignores executive order requiring count of civilian casualties in counterterrorism...

Ignore the headline and address the actual statement by a White House official stating they are looking at that requirement to determine if it should be modified or eliminated completely. Thus, tells us they are redefining transparency when it comes to certain aspects of military operations after years of criticism towards civilian casualties as a result of drone operations.
Is the lack of transparency in the best interests of American people? Obviously our country was doing just fine for decades before Obama's EO.
As for cancelling a predecessor's EO is unconstitutional, we've watched 15 months of the Trump administration issue EOs that either rollback or reverse guidance from Obama's EOs to some degree; so what's the problem?

MAJ James Woods - A judge ruled that President Trump could not roll back DACA that was not legislated, but rather created by an EO issued by President Obama (remember that pen and phone?)

CPT Jack Durish - Oh your comment was about DACA which more than one judge ruled it unconstitutional not because it was about cancelling an EO but because the three distinct orders were interpreted as a violation of the constitution when it comes immigration and the intent of the administration. Yeah I do remember.

MAJ James Woods - I believe that most insurgents/terrorists/revolutionaries are well enough schooled to realize that in asymmetrical war, the measures to kill the flea become less and less popular with the dog. Civilians rarely get angry with the insurgents for making them human shields.

Maj John Bell - Now that's a false statement. Civilians do care about and get angry when being used as human shields in a combat environment especially when it comes to their children. What it comes down to is whether they have the ability to do something about it or not. Insurgents and terrorists use fear to control the populace. Revolutionaries will consider any of the populace loyal to the government as expendable. The last thing any civilian populace wants to be concerned about is being considered expendable or collateral by the government and the military. So when the enemy hides in religious buildings, hospitals, and schools, we do our due diligence to ensure any civilians being used as human shields can be mitigated before striking the enemy.

MAJ James Woods - I'm not saying we don't do everything to mitigate the casualties. But when we fail, the flea wins the propaganda war.

I would say I already covered how the enemy wins the propaganda war anytime our government and military chooses not to be transparent. And again, your argument that civilians don't get upset about being used as human shields by an unconventional enemy is absurd as you imply the populace is always on the side of the insurgent/terrorist/revolutionary forces which is not an accurate statement.

One of the lessons learned from Vietnam was the inability to control the information of civilian casualties being released by domestic and foreign media. With the rise of insurgency and the activities of Al Qaeda, we saw propaganda information operations to spread disinformation about the number of civilians being killed by US, UN, or NATO forces by air strikes. If you let the enemy control the narrative during the war, it won't matter if you win or lose, the poison pill has been swallowed by the sphere of public opinion; so again, a nation requires public support in order to win a war.

The question you should have is whether the release of information is still needed in order to maintain public support for conducting the types of military operations being conducted today?