Obama Administration Lied About Drone Targets By Natasha Lennard, Salon 17 April 13http://www.salon.com/2013/04/10/obama_administration_lied_about_drone_targets/
[Excerpted] Investigative reports and on-the-ground testimonies have made it public knowledge that far more people than al-Qaida leaders are killed by drone strikes. The U.K.’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) estimates that in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia over 1,o00 civilians may have been killed by U.S. drone strikes. The Obama administration has long maintained, however, that strikes are only ever authorized to target “specific senior operational leaders of al-Qaida and associated forces.” Documents obtained by McClatchy newspapers suggest that these claims are false.
The top-secret intelligence reports reveal, as one expert with the Council on Foreign Relations told McClatchy, that the administration is “misleading the public about the scope of who can legitimately be targeted.” It is not clear who leaked the documents to McClatchy for review....
Obama’s drone war kills ‘others,’ not just al Qaida leaders McClatchy By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/09/188062/obamas-drone-war-kills-others.html
[Excerpted]
Contrary to assurances it has deployed U.S. drones only against known
senior leaders of al Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration
has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan,
Pakistani and unidentified “other” militants in scores of strikes in
Pakistan’s rugged tribal area, classified U.S. intelligence reports
show.
...The documents also show that drone operators weren’t always certain who they were killing despite the administration’s guarantees of the accuracy of the CIA’s targeting intelligence and its assertions that civilian casualties have been “exceedingly rare.”
...The documents also show that drone operators weren’t always certain who they were killing despite the administration’s guarantees of the accuracy of the CIA’s targeting intelligence and its assertions that civilian casualties have been “exceedingly rare.”
...The analysis takes on additional significance because of the domestic and international debate over the legality of drone strikes in Pakistan amid reports that the administration is planning to broaden its use of targeted killings in Afghanistan and North Africa....
...to date, the Obama administration has not disclosed the secret legal opinions and the detailed procedures buttressing drone killings, and it has never acknowledged the use of so-called “signature strikes,” in which unidentified individuals are killed after surveillance shows behavior the U.S. government associates with terrorists, such as visiting compounds linked to al Qaida leaders or carrying weapons.
...The documents McClatchy has reviewed do not reflect the entirety of the killings associated with U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan, which independent reports estimate at between 1,990 and 3,581...
MAJIA here: McClatchy is clearly doing the public a service in obtaining and reporting upon these documents.
The escalation of drone warfare and the extension of drone surveillance in the domestic arena are both extremely problematic trends:
1. They violate habeas corpus and due process of law
2. They automate killing in new and disturbing ways abroad with a total absence of transparency and accountability
3. They extend surveillance capabilities in ways that are simply unconstitutional in the US
4. The convergence of drone-based surveillance, policing, and deathly predation is fundamentally FASCISTIC
We have surely lost our way.
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