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.
From McClatchy, which apparently got a boatload of leaked documents:
In a response to questions from McClatchy, the White House defended its targeting policies, pointing to previous public statements by senior administration officials that the missile strikes are aimed at al Qaida and associated forces.
… 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.”
… At least 265 of up to 482 people who the U.S. intelligence reports estimated the CIA killed during a 12-month period ending in September 2011 were not senior al Qaida leaders but instead were “assessed” as Afghan, Pakistani and unknown extremists. Drones killed only six top al Qaida leaders in those months, according to news media accounts. Forty-three of 95 drone strikes reviewed for that period hit groups other than al Qaida,
An obliquely related quote from David Graeber’s new book The Democracy Project:
In 2008, young Americans preferred Obama to John McCain by a rate of 68 percent to 30 percent—again, an approximate two-thirds margin. It seems at the very least reasonable to assume that most young Americans who cast their votes for Obama expected a little more than what they got.
As parents have been saying to their children since time immemorial—it’s bad enough that you did it, but what’s really bad is that you lied about it.
