Over the past decade, the United States has claimed broad authority to carry out drone strikes across the world, even in places far from the battlefield. Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. acknowledged killing between 2,867 and 3,138 people in strikes that took place in countries like Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan.
Although in the waning days of his presidency, Obama took some steps to improve transparency about drone strikes, including providing the total estimated death toll, a new report by the Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic and the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies says that the U.S. is still lagging in providing a full accounting of its drone program. Among other failures, the report, titled “Out of the Shadows: Recommendations to Advance Transparency in the Use of Lethal Force,” says that the U.S. has only acknowledged approximately 20 precent of its reported drone strikes — failing to claim responsibility or provide details in the vast majority of cases.
Meanwhile, the drone program is intensifying. Since President Donald Trump took office earlier this year, the rate of drone strikes per month has increased by almost four times Obama’s average. Yemen in particular has been a target of many of these operations, with between nine and 11 strikes hitting the country this year, along with 81 other covert attacks by U.S. forces, according to statistics compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
The authors of the new report say that the government’s failure to provide information or legal rationales for its strikes is making it impossible to understand the full scope of the government’s targeted killing program, as well as its impact on civilians.
“For years, the only way we knew anything about individual strikes was from media reports or individual statements about strikes from government officials,” said Alex Moorehead, of the Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute, highlighting the failure of the government to provide details about cases in which drones have been used for targeted killings. “When we talk about official acknowledgment, we are talking about specific information about individual strikes, which is what matters to people who have had loved ones killed.”
The estimated number of civilians killed in U.S. drone strikes varies widely, with some independent estimates recording hundreds of civilian deaths, while the U.S. government often claims that figures run only into the dozens. The U.S. military has also been criticized for policies like “signature strikes,” in which individuals have been killed based on their status as “military-age males” in areas where U.S. drones are operating. These policies are alleged to be responsible for cases in which weddings, funerals, and other communal gatherings have been bombed in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia.
“There is a difference in how Western civilians are treated versus non-Western civilians,” Moorehead said. “Of all the civilians who have been killed in these strikes, only the two Westerners who were killed in a 2016 strike have ever received any formal acknowledgement, apology, and compensation from the government.”
Locals in Yemen have alleged that, in recent months, drone strikes carried out by the Trump administration killed civilians on numerous occasions. One strike reported last month in Yemen’s Shabwah Province allegedly targeted a car full of men with no existing links to terrorist groups, as well as several innocent bystanders. Despite such incidents, Trump has promised measures that would further loosen targeting standards for drone operators, likely putting civilians in even greater danger. Many Yemenis say that the anger and grief inflicted by these strikes is outweighing any perceived counterterrorism benefit — and even driving some local people into the arms of Al Qaeda.
“The drone program in Yemen has inflicted a lot of civilian deaths that have not been investigated, acknowledged, or even taken into consideration by the U.S. government,” said Waleed Alhariri, director of the Sana’a Center’s U.S. office and one of the co-authors of the report. “In some cases weddings have been targeted, which has resulted in a lot of public anger from ordinary people towards the United States and has helped recruitment for al Qaeda.”
The secrecy of the drone program has made it difficult for civil liberties organizations in the U.S. to provide a full accounting of its impact. More importantly, this secrecy has also made it harder for civilians directly impacted by drones to even understand why they have been targeted. Lacking any ability to find out the details about cases in which they or their loved ones were harmed, Yemeni civilians are generally unable to even obtain recognition, let alone compensation, for the life-changing consequences of these attacks. That those targeted often come from poor and remote regions of the country only makes it harder for them to obtain justice.
“The U.S. public is not aware what is happening in this program. They need more transparency and they need to know the truth,” said Alhariri. “But Yemenis who have been impacted also need to know why they’ve been targeted. People have died, lost the ability to work and lost family members they relied on. They’ve been ignored and they feel helpless in the face of U.S. military policy in Yemen.”
Top photo: Unmanned aerial vehicle MQ-9 Reaper at the Holloman U.S. Air Force Base in New Mexico on June 25, 2013.
What a bizarre spectacle progressive “comments” sections like this have become. We are now treated to an endless stream of government trolls responding to each others inane posts while demeaning and insulting the intelligence of anyone with an honest comment to make.
The trolls are not difficult to identify. They typically operate by some simple principles the Snowden documents exposed. Common appears to be – “The 4 D’s: Deny / Disrupt / Degrade / Deceive.” If someone ‘posts’ like a troll, it doesn’t really matter if they are a government troll or just a moron. Either way they disrupt intelligent discourse and so it is best to ignore them and move on.
https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
You are so right about this. Thanks for your comment.
Thanks for for the continuing reports in cooperation with the Bureau of Investigation.
Why do the Islamic blokes keep blaming us when they are themselves engaged in killing and raping each other? Don’t you guys have any shame?
What can be more of an act of terrorism than having something drop out of the sky and kill without any discrimination. In my opinion, it is not that much different than someone getting on a bus with bombs in their back pack and setting them off. Will humans use anything at their disposal to kill, maim and terrify other humans?
Are you for real, or are you just spraying the board with troll bait?
O.K. I will take the bait.
On the one hand a terrorist gets onto a bus with a suicide vest packed with shrapnel and self-detonates with the intention of killing or maiming and disfiguring as many civilian men women and children as possible who are going about their day to day business. Location is irrelevant and the sole aim is to cause as many casualties as possible. That is the nature of terror.
On the other hand a drone delivers a Maverick missile or precision laser guided bomb onto a precisely designated target which has been legally approved through the civilian lead targeting board process as being a legitimate target on the basis of extensive analysis and fusion of HUMINT, SIGINT and IMINT intelligence. Typically the terrorist targeted to receive the good news will be sufficiently high value (i.e. threat) to justify the expenditure of that much time, effort and money and will have been tracked for days before. The location selected for the strike will also be patiently waited for to absolutely minimise any potential for collateral damage. The weapon selected will be as small as possible to achieve the aim of killing the bastard without affecting so much as a goat in the adjacent field.
Trust me. Done that. Been there. It is vastly difficult to gain approval for a strike, simply because of the legal oversight required and the emphasis placed on killing the right person with absolutely the minimum risk of so much as blowing a window out on civilian property in the vicinity.
So I am really genuinely curious. Even from the point of view of an uninformed US Libtard, please enlighten us me as to where you see the moral, legal or tactical equivalence between a terrorist bombing of a bus and a drone strike on a terrorist.
Are you dumb?
Did you write all that trash without understanding what’s at stake? If your inocent family was killed by a signature strike ( the kind of strike that actually contradicts your lies about the “extensive studying of the targets, the humanint,blablabla…”) would you be satisfied by your stupid answer and just “carry on with your life”? I guess you would say: “well, shit happens, i will just continue to try to be a good citizen and contribute to this beautiful world we have”…Are you trying to convince yourself that maybe some shit you did was justified? Dont you understand that this strategy is only making the world unsafer? Don’t you see this only strengthens terrorists and turns more people into terrorists?…And above all, cant you understand that this is exactly the ultimate goal for the people who profit from all this business?
I hope the silly bureaucrats on the Nobel committee fell a bit foolish.
The elected dumb&dumbers that run the US gov, or pretend to, are not really smart enuf to accomplish anything – but they are whored enuf to take orders from more powerful supporters that are smart enuf to figure ways to clear the planet of too many people and keep power with their plans of destruction and repair with their FAKE CURRENCY scheme.
This GLOBAL WAR POLICY is a game of process of elimination, last man standing. This game is a continuation of EMPIRE THINKING which ways and means were in place prior to nations and borders. The inheritors of this power bask in luxury and wouldn’e change it for the world.
Did your tin foil hat slip down over your eyes when you wrote that, or is it just the long term effects of too many narcotic substances fed to you as part of a CIA mind control program?
At least you have the patience to read him and answer. I move away as soon as I see his name. I don’t think he even understands his own comments.
Too bad the drone manufacturers encrypted their video stream. ;-)
The underlying cause of this immoral and internationally illegal mass murder and destruction of Yemen is Americans’ massive consumption of oil. If you oppose these wars, stop driving, at least on a regular basis.
If you drive, you contribute to the problem, regardless of whether you demonstrate against the war or call & write your congressperson in opposition to it. Unless Americans drastically lower their rates of consumption, which are currently gluttonous, these wars will continue apace. People driving to anti-war demonstrations is the ultimate hypocrisy.
Does it really matter if we know the full scale of drone killings? The American people have demonstrated through our actions that we could not care less how many people our government murders by remote control, as long as we receive some vague assurance that they deserved it…or, failing that, we at least have a reason to believe they were sufficiently brown-skinned.
For such a disturbing subject…I almost choked on my tea, with a much needed laugh!
I’m not laughing
That comment is so direct and dark, the choice was a laugh…or a cry and my tears have run dry..
Excellent comment. 10/10.
Thank you.
So what sort of assurance would you like that they deserved it?
Perhaps you would like a personal brief by POTUS each and every time the targeting board approves a target?
Or may be you should get the education required to join the armed forces or the CIA as an Intelligence Officer, and then work your way up over about 15 to 20 years through the orgainisation in the service of your country to the point that you have the experience necessary to present the intelligence yourself to the targeting board and make the judgement calls required.
At that point you may actually have some sort of understanding of what you are talking about. At the moment, in fairness, you don’t.
But I would pay good money to see you pitch up outside Langley and demand to be briefed on tomorrows operations.
The assurance, to start, might be something like: ” we don’t kill people because they look like terrorists or because our bullshit algorithm or whatever says there’s a high chance that someone with a gun on the mountains of pakistan is a terrorist
There was only one reported drone strike in Yemen by the Bush regime, and that was just to assassinate a US citizen. Obama killed several US citizens in Yemen, and a whole lot of other people, so that war is his baby, though of course Trump has now adopted it, and if he does get impeached, it will definitely not be for that.
“just to assassinate a US citizen”
Do you mean ‘kill a known terrorist operating in a foreign country who by his own actions has chosen to relinquish the protections afforded to the law abiding in a domestic criminal context’.
Is that what you mean?
When Benjamin Franklin said,
“we must all hang together or, assuredly, we will hang separately,”
he had no way of knowing that the religion of the lie
of free-market capitalism would guarantee that everyone
would be pushed to create their own nooses and that we will
hang ourselves together AND separately
in the name of private corporate profits and through the support of
the democrat and republican agents.
“Free market capitalism” hasn’t existed for decades, except craigslist and eBay and garage sales.
Trump’s proven himself no less a willing war criminal than his several immediate predecessors, unquestionably enabled by their successive neutering of the UN, the ICC and U.S. Department of Justice.
GWB thought torturing prisoners was okay exactly because Bill Clinton had started extraordinary renditions, sending prisoners to other (darker) countries to be to tortured. GWB began drone assassinations and also committed the first true cyber-war attack in Bush Doctrine fashion with Olympic Games/stuxnet, something that should also be a war crime. And while Obama’s undoubtedly carried water for global domination goals through greatly expanding world-wide drone assassination, to his credit he recognized the thermonuclear potential of an already unleashed cyber-war and came to believe every such attack also needed presidential approval.
Trump’s now happening to us and the world specifically because of the escalating crimes of previous administrations, combined with a completely corrupt legislature and a compromised/complicit media that calls all of them on nothing.
It’s a too-secretive-power’s relentless march toward some nebulous new world order that’s putting drone bases and Special Forces in every country possible. Those aren’t emissaries of peace.
Hussain,
1) This is not based on a new study or research:
“that the U.S. has only acknowledged approximately 20 percent of its reported drone strikes — failing to claim responsibility or provide details in the vast majority of cases.”
They just compare what the US government reported with what the Bureau of Investigative Journalists reported. That means they assume what the BIJ reported is the true value and cannot be wrong. Journalists are not allowed in the FATA regions in Pakistan. The BIJ has relied heavily on what a few Pakistani journalists told them or what a few inhabitants in the area reported. It is almost impossible for the BIJ to be certain those casualties were not from Pakistani bombers, but from US drones.
2) The following statement is false:
“Of all the civilians who have been killed in these strikes, only the two Westerners who were killed in a 2016 strike have ever received any acknowledgement, apology, or compensation from the government.”
There is evidence that the US has provided monetary compensation to Yemeni citizens victims of US drone strikes. Moreover, where do you guys think the compensation given by the Pakistani government is coming from?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/world/compensation-to-yemeni-families-of-those-killed-or-wounded-in-drone-strike/1261/
3) And this statement :
“Many Yemenis say that the anger and grief inflicted by these strikes is outweighing any perceived counterterrorism benefit — and even driving some local people into the arms of al Qaeda.”
The only survey regarding that matter that I know came from Christopher Swift. This is what he concluded after his study in Yemen:
“Al Qaeda exploits U.S. errors, to be sure. As the Yemen scholar Gregory Johnsen correctly observes, the death of some 40 civilians in the December 2009 cruise missile strike on Majala infuriated ordinary Yemenis and gave AQAP an unexpected propaganda coup. But the fury produced by such tragedies is not systemic, not sustained, and, ultimately, not sufficient. As much as al Qaeda might play up civilian casualties and U.S. intervention in its recruiting videos, the Yemeni tribal leaders I spoke to reported that the factors driving young men into the insurgency are overwhelmingly economic.”
The religion of (the lie of) Free-market-capitalism is the
same religion as is feudalism and fascism.
It REQUIRES militarized horrors to keep its devotees in a constant
state of insecurity and to reinforce the belief that only viciousness
will protect them from the integrity of integration and connectedness
with their victims.
The devotees abhor equal justice even as they pretend otherwise.
They believe privatized economic domination is proof of
their exceptional superiority and that they are free of any
restraints which might limit their access to their god = money.
The message of Karl Marx was the last accurate assessment of
what might save the human species, but godlessness is too
dangerous for such a desperately craven species as we.
This is why man-made religions are at the center of this horror.
You rightly say ..’the message of Karl Matx…’ because the man Karl Marx did exactly the contrary he was preaching.
To claim that Marx’s ideas have been shown to be a failure through
the corruption of the USSR is a misunderstanding of the fact that
the USSR failed because it was NOT what Marx outlined.
The Soviet system was an oligarchy and had much more in common
with a feudal religion than with what Marx described. The oppression
and militarism of the USSR was actually more like the lie of
free market capitalism in its hypocrisy and paranoia.
The possibility of egalitarianism and social justice shrinks in
every instance of oligarchic-supporting military ascendancy in a society,
no matter how we might pretend to be something else.
The domination of the planet by capitalists depends upon injustice,
just as the fake communist attempts did.
Private profiteering depends upon resource extraction and the
consumption of resources – including “human resources” –
is now in overdrive.
The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Can you give us an example of a capitalist country that is poorer now than it was under a communist system?
PS: You do not need to answer. The question has absolutely nothing to do with the article.
Your question has everything to do with the article.
The reason for all of the militarized horror hinted at in this article is
that the preferred system of global capitalist domination depends upon
an insatiably growing domination of global resources and most
of the so-called governments involved have no intention of
reducing their dependence upon and consumption of global
resources. The prioritizing of militarized economics is a suicidal
religion and there is very little chance that the majority of voters
in the ultra-consuming faking U$A have the intelligence, much less
the integrity, to repudiate the church of private profiteering in
a call for social (global) justice.
Heightened feelings of insecurity are promoted by the democrats
and the republicans to guarantee the growth of the cancerous
life-sucking religion of corporatized private profits.
All of the states in the faking U$A and its allies are eating away at their
own citizens’ lives and the lives of “others” in a devotion to and for
a militarized economic oligarchy.
“Your question has everything to do with the article.”
but you did not answer it.
Again, Can you give us an example of a capitalist country that is poorer now than it was under a communist system?
It is sad that you cannot comprehend what you read.
There has never been a real communist country.
Just as there is no reality to the idea that equal justice is possible
through the lie of free-market capitalism.
The world is overflowing with Oligarchy and it depends upon
rampant consumption and injustice for militarized private profits.
The killings around the globe are a necessary component of
the lie of capitalist superiority and the fact that you disconnect
the horrors from the economics is merely typical of the
delusional sense of exceptional nationalism which is a form
of willful ignorance.
The only question worth considering is,
Is humanity capable of repudiating its craven economic religiosity or
is it inherently doomed to keep repeating its craven debauchery until
it decimates itself?
“There has never been a real communist country.”
And there has never been a real capitalist country. We designate a country as “capitalist” or “communist” based on the degree the system is applied. So, let me rephrase the question to accommodate your concern:
Can you give us an example of a country, which is to a large extent capitalist that is poorer now than it was when its economic system was communist to a large extent?
Russia for one. Poland. Latvia. Lithuania.
World Bank: GDP per capita
1989 2015
Russia. 3428 9329
Poland 1731 12,558
Latvia. 2329 13,654
Lithuania 2168 14,251
Can you elaborate?
apparently she can’t.
Blaming the failures of communism on capitalism, too funny. Look, capitalism sucks, but communism has never worked because it goes against human nature. That isnt to say capitalism dosent need restraints.
Again,
there has never been a real communist state anywhere.
Those that claimed to be or were portrayed as being communist
were oligarchies and they were reflections of the same predatory
aspects of human nature as are the ones which claim that they
can promote equal justice through predatory economic schemes
like the lie of free-market capitalism.
Real communism would be very similar to real democracy. The great
shame of humanity is that neither of them have ever really been
allowed to exist.
Is it impossible for human nature to achieve the
egalitarianism which both theories claim to be their goal?
I do not know, but I can tell you that when any nation spends
enormous resources on militaristic aggression in “defense” of
a corrupt economic system – which depends upon inequality and
rampant consumption of resources around the whole planet and
beyond – it clearly means that that system is a failure and it is
like a cancer.
If free-market capitalism was anything beyond a lie, more people would
seek it out and want more of it, but the reality is that it is dependent
upon sucking the life out of people and the planet and it will
never tolerate equal justice or democracy.
It is unsustainable and it will come crashing down worse than
it has in the past the longer it is allowed to continue in its
predatory arrogance and delusions.
1) How can you be certain communism will succeed if you admit it never existed in its real form? The societies that attempted to apply it in its real form failed!
2) The societies that were largely communists failed miserably. That is a fact that you will have to continously deny.
3) No society is 100% capitalist. Most societies that have established capitalist policies since 1989 have recorded a massive reduction in poverty.
“clearly means that that system is a failure and it is like a cancer.”
Are you referring to the USA? Since 1945 life expectancy has increased, poverty massively reduced, income increased…what failure are you talking about?
Your view is that societies should renounce free market capitalism, which although not perfect, has helped reduce poverty in a massive scale. Those societies should adopt instead communism, a system which you admit has never been applied, but you are certain will work.
So, you don’t really have an argument. You are just complaining.
The USSR was hardly the only attempt at communism. It has failed thousands of times on both large and small scales. The only scale it works on at tmes is in immeadiate families.
He will tell you USSR was not remotely communist. He cannot admit the communist system fails, so he will pretend those systems have nothing with the communist system he is promoting. He does not even notice how weak his reasoning becomes. If he does not have any historical examples to prove that his proposed system is better than capitalism, then how can he be so sure it is better in the first place?
He can’t. It’s not like it hasn’t been tried in other countries and in countless other smaller scale attempts. The fact of the matter is it always ends up failing because human nature gets in the way. Perhaps it will be viable when humans evolve as a species but for right now nyet.
Mate.
Give up. GilG 1 , Clark 0.
Clark is obviously one of these characters who never lets the blindingly obvious influence his leftist verging on anarchistic views.
I appreciate that you were enjoying yourself but the wall that Clark has built around his failed ideals is as impregnable as the Berlin Wall.
The only truly Communist country left standing is North Korea. And even Clark couldn’t argue that place is exactly a shining beacon for the system.
So true. People are capable of being kind and acting in the interests of all. We must never give up being willing to help and care. Divide and conquer can be unite and elevate. All my life I have met fine people from many back rounds. Giving makes me happy so maybe I am a little lacking in coin but no one asks me for help and doesn’t get any. I had a brother who was homeless after Nam for 12 years until he died. Robert E. Seal, US Marines. Bob had an IQ of over 200, ran computers in Saigon in 70. The war tore him up and left a shell. I thank the many people who helped him over the years. I’d rather wash a poor person’s feet than be in a phony paradise of delusion of self love. One smile of thanks from someone you help is worth a lifetime of selfish greed. Religions seem to draw the worst of the narrow minded. Sad that people forget that there are trillions of living things most of which fear us. The energy of life flows best when you connect to the biosphere without setting yourself apart from it. Yes commune with a flower, a bug, a fish. If there is a god consciousness we can find it there meeting their minds as equals. I do.
I am sincerely saddened and renewed by the truth you present.
Thank you.
In one word : flower power !
One thing I don’t understand…if your bro had an IQ of over 200, why did he join the marines ?
Ordinarily I disagree with most of what you post, but this time you are right on. People such as SwissCheese posit false arguments, because capitalism is guaranteed to fail in the long run because it requires an infinite supply of resources, and the planet’s pool of such resources is limited. Capitalism and its political expression are based on the fallacious assumptions that everything can be monetized, and that unbridled growth is necessary. As someone said, unrestricted growth is the strategy of a cancer cell, and that’s just what unregulated capitalism is. Cancer.
It is sad buy true that our species has developed its capability for destruction much more rapidly and extensively than its capabilities for empathy and forethought. That is part of the reason why there has never been a truly communistic state, and why efforts to constrain capitalistic greed have been at most only temporarily successful.
Oh please! Stop with the leftist BS, you’re besmirching Marx’s name. These are oil wars, and capitalism v. socialism v. communism is totally irrelevant. U.S. presidents use the military for oil, and the driving and resulting gluttonous consumption of oil by the vast majority of Americans is the cause. This would not change a bit if the country were socialist or communist.
Don’t get me wrong, capitalism is a disaster for our planet. But everything is not caused by capitalism.
Disconnect the economic theory from the militarism upon
which it relies all you want. It is not just about oil. Oil is the
most prominent driver today, but the system will use
any and all resources – including “human resources” –
to promote its most damning aspects due to its delusional religious
nature, not because it has a distinct taste for oil.
Yeah, monotheistic religions generally, a Calvinist tradition here in the U.S., to be more specific. Outside your ideological presumptions, I completely agree with your assessments. Although most of your ideological statements are accurate, I just think you are leaning on Marx’s errors a bit too much. Also, you may want to consider the U.S. imposition of the government’s version of Liberal Economic Theory on the global economy, as it distorts the endeavors of state and non-state actors to a measurable degree. Militarized zealotry, no doubt, it is infecting internal politics as well, militancy is becoming institutionalized. Reference, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, with particular attention to the institutionalized militancy of various ‘oppositional’ partisan organizations; Nationalists, socialists, communists, etc., their shtick was of no consequence, mortal enemies came together to form the Nazi partisan organization. U.S. politics have become a contact sport. If history prevails, it will all be blamed on the Jews…again.
The bureau of investigative journalists estimates the intensity has increased by 4 x since Trump has taken over to between 9 and 11 this year mainly on Yemen. That means that under Obama only 2 to 3 strikes took place in six months, average 5 per year x 8 years is a total of 40 strikes under Obama. Killing 3000 people in 40 strikes makes droning the most efficient weapon on earth !
I only hope that the conduct of unrestricted drone warfare, in countries we are not at war with, in which the murder of children and other noncombatants is brushed aside as “collateral damage”, will be recorded by history as the principal legacy of Barack Obama. He goes on tour touting his humanity and ostensibly progressive principles, hypocritically criticizing his successor in the false hope that it will resurrect his shabby image. But history is not fooled by smiling faces or high minded speeches; it is the acts that count. And as far as acts are concerned, Obama is a disaster.