Despite months of repeated promises, the White House has yet to release its estimate of civilian casualties from the administration’s drone program – a delayed disclosure the New York Times Editorial Board described as “too little, too late.”
In March, Lisa Monaco, President Barack Obama chief counterterrorism adviser, announced that the White House would “in the coming weeks” release an “assessment of combatant and non-combatant casualties” from U.S. drone strikes since 2009. Monaco doubled down on the commitment in a second speech a few weeks later.
The figures are likely to show aggregate numbers of people killed by country in nations not recognized as battlefields – like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya – according to the Washington Post. Death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be included.
The President is also expected to sign an executive order requiring the release of annual casualty figures going forward.
The list of civilian casualties figures could be as low as 100 people – nearly one tenth of what reports on the ground estimate, according to The Daily Beast.
Documents released by The Intercept last year provide one possible explanation for the discrepancy. The military posthumously labels its unknown drone victims as “Enemies Killed In Action,” unless there is evidence that proves the victim was not a “combatant.”
A spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council told The Intercept he had “no update on timing to offer.”
In the past year, the Obama administration has also started to publicly acknowledge strikes from its covert program. In March, the U.S. military was quick to take credit for killing 150 people in an airstrike in Somalia – claiming that they were all fighters with the Somali insurgent group, Al Shabaab. U.S. Central Command has also started issuing press releases about its strikes in Yemen, often months after they take place.
These disclosures come after a decade of silence on the U.S. drone program overseas in countries where the United States is not officially fighting. Since the first strike in Yemen in 2002, through the dramatic escalation of the drone program under President Obama, the White House has refused to acknowledge its hundreds of strikes away from recognized battlefields.
After it was reported that the White House put U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki on its kill list, the ACLU sued the Obama administration, challenging the administration’s right to kill Awlaki without due process. The Department of Justice responded by invoking the state secrets privilege, and the lawsuit was dismissed in 2012.
Even after Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged in 2013 that the U.S. had “specifically targeted and killed” Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, and had killed three other American citizens – including Awlaki’s 16 year old son – the CIA still refused to “confirm or deny” that it had basic information about the program.
In 2013, in order to “facilitate transparency and debate on this issue,” President Obama released new guidelines for the use of lethal force outside the of recognized zones of armed conflict. The guidelines require “near certainty that the terrorist target is present,” and “near certainty that non-combatants will not be injured or killed.” But a 2015 report from the Open Society Foundation documents numerous civilian deaths in Yemen after the guidelines were issued, raising questions about the implementation of the guidelines, which remain secret.
In February, as part of a year-and-a-half long ACLU lawsuit, a federal judge ordered the government to release redacted versions of six documents that outline the legal basis for the drone program. Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director for the ACLU, in a blog post Monday, speculated that White House might be waiting to release the casualty statistics alongside those documents.
Jaffer also pointed out that the next President could rescind Obama’s new commitments to transparency at little political cost. “The next president will be able to manage the political fallout,” Jaffer wrote, “by noting that President Obama issued the executive order in his last months in office after having defended near-categorical secrecy for seven years.”
Top Photo: A U.S. Air Force MQ-1B Predator drone carrying a Hellfire missile lands at a secret air base in the Persian Gulf region.
If you haven’t figured it out by now this clown promises a lot of things that never happen
116 and the Obama administration strongly defends their “estimates?”
Smells exactly like manure.
We have to leave out the count of the thousands of questionably innocent folks whom we droned on the certification of Paki intel. I know it was a terrible mistake, but were deceitfully misled to commit such sins.
We also must get credit for not droning the bin Laden family in Abbotshire, which we could have easily done.
By the way, where are they? I was hoping Murtaza could go over and get a scoop interview from one of the members of harem.
If I were a big time jihadi I’d never go out of the house without at least a dozen women and children around me.
Asking the wrong people, aren’t you? People that dropped the bombs don’t land to see whether they killed so and so. It is a stupid question. Ask someone on the ground there, then you will have to see if what you heard is correct. And who would want to go somewhere bombs are falling. Another dead end. War is cruel and makes no distinction of civilians or soldies. Bomb are not made to distiquish that yet.
Maybe the bombers need some attention. It shouldn’t be hard to get some empirical data about bombs certain individuals dropped during their careers. They’re honest patriots after all, chock full of honor and integrity. It’s easy to distinguish them from civilians after they’re flushed out of hiding places. (Some make it easy. They want others to know what they’ve done.)
Then we could count and name civilians who encouraged bombers. This would benefit that minority of US civilians who did not support the killers who served up their country for reasons which can only be explained by soldiers and politicians.
Important lessons were learned from the US military’s experience in Vietnam.
Among them are:
(1) scare the shit out voters as often as you can — low hanging fruit
(2) dumb them down as far as possible — also not difficult
(3) consolidate ownership of media outlets to achieve goals (1) and (2)
(4) keep the cash flowing by achieving goals (1) (2) (3)
(5) don’t do body counts
(6) never win — goto (4)
They must all be removed from power!
robertsrevolution.net
They were being delivered by drone but it got shot down.
One can’t believe the U.S. Government’s contrived drone-program casualty statistics, those not so shockingly at odds with reality that media sycophants might notice, are somehow easily extracted from its propaganda-producing ass. Why the number of meetings and man-hour expenditures alone, applying lipstick to the wrong end of this overfed pig, must be staggering.
Gulity until proven innocent! Yes, Obama has picked up where Bush has left off, and Clinton is just itching to continue the militarist agenda, as is Trump.
The whole drone program is a nothing but political cover for Obama – as many have noted, every drone assassination only assists recruitment of more people into terrorist groups. Instead of rendition and torture in black sites (the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld model) or Gitmo, Obama just kills – it’s cleaner, there are no concerns about innocent detainees who later have to be released (which is embarrassing) – anyone on the kill list is guilty by decree. Collateral damage is part of the price of doing business.
This is a blanket position across the U.S. political spectrum – Hillary Clinton has been a cheerleader for the drone assassination program, and disputes whether there are civilian casualities:
Likewise, Bernie Sanders said he would use drone strikes “when appropriate.” Trump apparently wants to go back to Bush-era renditions and waterboarding, although he’s also called for more air strikes; Clinton oddly attacked Trump for “killing families of terrorists” even though that’s what the drone strikes she supports often do.
The correct way to deal with the criminal terrorists is via the legal process, capture and trial in open court (not by a military tribunal); that’s how every terrorist bombing in the U.S. was prosecuted before Bush started his rendition-and-torture program in late 2001 – and that, recall, was all about trying to torture captured Al Qaeda members into saying Saddam had ties to 9/11, when he had none.
Why not ask Trump where the documentation showing that he has forgiven the $50 million in loans to his campaign?
Using drones is prosecuting asymmetrical war in an advantageous way to us.
Typical Hillary supporter. “Pay no attention to the person behind the curtain!!!”
There are too many civilian casualties in this never-ending war. Civilians in the areas being bombed by our country’s drones are afraid to go outside, they look up at the sky in fear. Both of our ruling parties have responded to terrorism with more terrorism, and so turns the sad cycle. THAT is why TI is giving this issue more coverage
I’m not a fan of our endless military involvement all over the globe. But …. this is the future for the air military. Before long the entire arsonal of military planes will be flown by pilots sitting in bunkers hundreds or thousands of miles away. Unless some Geneva type rules can be agreed upon eleminating drones is a pointless arguement.
They won’t release those figures until after the election in November, if ever. If they release them any sooner then voters will have a casualty figure to associate with Clinton’s now-famous “look at me texting in drone strikes from my blackberry while wearing sunglasses indoors” picture circulating everywhere…
“…“Enemies Killed In Action,” unless there is evidence that proves the victim was not a “combatant.””
That label also applies to the people killed in Orlando, San Bernadino, 911, etc.
People were promised a casualty report regarding drone strikes specifically.
“..endless red tape to keep the truth confined”
The difficulty for the democrats and republicans is that
they have to tolerate all of the negativity over what
they believe is a “win win” program.
The best they can do is to string people along, they can’t
make the rest of us enlightened. We are obviously
monetarily, er, I mean, spiritually and intellectually retarded.
Thank you for reminding us of yet another in a long litany of lies from the White House.
Obama rails at Trump for his nativist, populist bullshit, never for a moment realizing that he and his party are just as much responsible for Trump’s rise as the obstructionist republicans.
An arrogant, elitist asshole surrounded by toadies.
I am one of those former Dems who feels comfortable remaining an Independent unless or until I find a party to support. I am angry as many of us are about the same issues. I can’t stand watching cable anymore, but I need a little mindless news-ertainment at the end of a very long day.
All to preface the link with the statement that I don’t care about the PPP that Rachel Maddow cited last night – but it should be the perfect rejoinder to your remark: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/donald-trump/
So you don’t have to click on it at all (why bother?), I didn’t need the poll to tell me that Mr Obama and the Dems are not even close to being responsible for the rise of DJT. If they ALL were, we would be facing a Sanders/Trump election. I just don’t buy it. The Republicans own Mr Trump lock, stock, and barrel. They know it. They didn’t take him seriously when he debuted. When they finally decided to do something about it, not only was it too late, but they had nobody in the world who could create excitement and a switch. Then they supported him publically in spite of his being (mostly) a deep embarrassment and shame. Now that the convention is nearing, I hear there’s another attempt to mount a coup. This candidate is brought to you by the Republican party. Take him away, please. I’m tired.
Where?
Put on your best Henry K. accent and repeat after me:
you haf to vait a moment, zere busy in der subtraction room
memo from GOD…
“If i bring Jesus back for the second time, i am told he is going to be dismissed as a conspiracy nut and blacklisted by the mass media. Then i was told he would be arrested for protesting and placed on the no-fly list. Then, not being able to gain employment, arrested for begging and loitering. Seeing as how you have messed up a really nice place that i cannot fix in a thousand years given the extent of the damage and the interference your elites cause, i have decided to leave. You all are on your own.”
It is indeed very hard to predict whether we will be able to first exterminate all the Islamic murderers by droning them or they will suicide-bomb themselves out of existence before that.
In any case they can definitely help their cause by stopping this suicide-bombing nonsense. Then maybe our drones can stay on the ground.
Considering that the Obama administration calls any male of “military age” in the target area a “militant” deserving of death (unless it can be can legally proven otherwise afterwards – by the powerless, poor and besieged people being bombed*), the estimate of civilian casualties (if they ever produce such a thing) will without a doubt be a complete lie anyway.
*Colbert once had a great bit on this, saying that if it could be posthumously determined that innocent bystanders were slaughtered by airstrikes, presumably the US government would “un-kill them.”
Hi Maisie, in the spirit of humor I’m reminded of Bill Hicks who looked at the ‘smart’ missiles being used in Iraq and wondered if that same technology could be used to shoot food at hungry people.
From the article “The military posthumously labels its unknown drone victims as “Enemies Killed In Action,” unless there is evidence that proves the victim was not a “combatant.”
Can anyone answer if this is guilty until proven innocent? Then again, if it is…
“Can anyone answer if this is guilty until proven innocent? ” My answer to you is “Duh”
Obama’s spoon Richard Olsen to Pakistan and Afghanistan said a few week ago that the drone-strikes will continue
Give them as much time as they need as it takes awhile to scrub the evidence and truth. Eventually, when pushed enough they will give you false data which everyone will parade as the true numbers and all will be good. Always believe government numbers and propaganda as they would never lie to the citizens.