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Anti Federalist
01-07-2020, 12:46 AM
If Obama apologized for 1 civilian drone victim every day, it would take him 3 years

https://www.pri.org/stories/if-obama-apologized-1-civilian-drone-victim-every-day-it-would-take-him-3-years

By Allison Jackson

This week, President Obama expressed regret for two western hostages held by Al Qaeda and accidentally killed in an "anti-terrorist operation."

The deaths of these two men — American consultant Warren Weinstein and Italian aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto, both of whom had been held by Al Qaeda for several years — were indeed tragic.

It would be bad enough if they were the only innocent victims killed by the US in the "War on Terror."

But they aren’t.

Over a thousand civilians — including dozens of Westerners — are among the thousands of people who have died in US drone strikes conducted outside its declared war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to independent estimates.

While US policy clearly states that attacks by unmanned aerial vehicles are only carried out when there is “near certainty” that “non-combatants” — i.e. innocent civilians — will not be killed or injured, this latest incident in western Pakistan shows the US often really doesn't have a clue who it's killing.

Figures tallied by groups such as The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) and Open Society Foundation also suggest as much.

More from GlobalPost: Drone Wars: Is it legal?

TBIJ data show the US has launched more than 500 drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia since 2002 as part of counter-terrorism operations launched in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks against the United States.


Those covert operations, directed by the CIA and military, have resulted in the deaths of as many as 5,160 people, including 1,124 civilians, according to TBIJ.

“Our villages are poor — no education, no hospitals, no roads, nor any services. Of all the progress and advances in the modern world, only these deadly missiles reached us,” said a Yemeni citizen interviewed by Open Society Foundations for its report Death by Drone, which documents nine drone strikes that killed 26 civilians, including at least one pregnant woman and children.

In Pakistan, where the US has carried out an estimated 415 drone strikes targeting Al Qaeda and Taliban militants since 2004, as many as 3,949 people have been killed, including up to 962 civilians, TBIJ estimates.

More from GlobalPost: Life under drones — in victims' own words

Yemen, an Al Qaeda stronghold, has seen more than 200 confirmed and suspected drone strikes since 2002, TBIJ notes, with up to 1,106 people killed, including as many as 157 civilians — contradicting comments made by the country’s embattled President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi in 2012 that drone attacks had a “zero margin of error.”

“The electronic brain’s precision is unmatched by the human brain,” he told the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.


In Somalia, where the US has been going after members of the Al Qaeda-linked Muslim extremist group Al Shabaab, 13 drone strikes since 2007 have killed an estimate 105 people, including up to five civilians.

It’s important to remember that these are just estimates and the numbers do vary among the various groups keeping tabs. And they don't include the hundreds, or more likely thousands, of drone strikes carried out in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Given the lack of transparency surrounding the US drone program, it’s impossible to know exactly how many people have been killed, let alone the number of innocent civilians whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

No apology from President Barack Obama, as sincere as it might be, can make up for their deaths.

enhanced_deficit
01-07-2020, 12:26 PM
If Obama apologized for 1 civilian drone victim every day, it would take him 3 years

https://www.pri.org/stories/if-obama-apologized-1-civilian-drone-victim-every-day-it-would-take-him-3-years

By Allison Jackson

...

No apology from President Barack Obama, as sincere as it might be, can make up for their deaths.


^this.
He could still return his Nobel Peace Prize though as common decency.





If Obama apologized for 1 civilian drone victim every day, it would take him 3 years

Given the lack of transparency surrounding the US drone program, it’s impossible to know exactly how many people have been killed, let alone the number of innocent civilians whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.



Under Donald Trump, drone strikes far exceed Obama's ...
chicago.suntimes
May 8, 2019 - Trump has escalated the number of U.S. drone strikes overseas, and made the program even more secretive.


Trump revokes Obama rule on reporting drone strike deaths
bbc
Mar 7, 2019 - The US will not have to publish how many civilians are killed in drone strikes outside of war zones.

Zippyjuan
01-07-2020, 01:17 PM
Trump banned the reporting of drone deaths, but his number of drone attacks greatly exceed those of Obama. To help with secrecy, he turned the drone program over to the CIA which also means less oversight.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47480207


Trump revokes Obama rule on reporting drone strike deaths

President Donald Trump has revoked a policy set by his predecessor requiring US intelligence officials to publish the number of civilians killed in drone strikes outside of war zones.

The 2016 executive order was brought in by then-President Barack Obama, who was under pressure to be more transparent.

Since the 9/11 terror attack, drone strikes have been increasingly used against terror and military targets.

The Trump administration said the rule was "superfluous" and distracting.

The order applied to the CIA, which has carried out drone strikes in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia.

"This action eliminates superfluous reporting requirements, requirements that do not improve government transparency, but rather distract our intelligence professionals from their primary mission," an official said.

What was the rule?
It required the head of the CIA to release annual summaries of US drone strikes and assess how many died as a result.

Mr Trump's executive order does not overturn reporting requirements on civilian deaths set for the military by Congress.

There have been 2,243 drone strikes in the first two years of the Trump presidency, compared with 1,878 in Mr Obama's eight years in office, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a UK-based think tank.

Anti Globalist
01-07-2020, 06:00 PM
Obama would never apologize for killing civilians. He enjoys every single one of those deaths.