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6 Unanswered Questions About Obama's Drone War
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/02/6-unanswered-questions-obama-drones
—By H.H. Bhojani| Tue Feb. 4, 2014 3:01 AM GMT
On January 23, 2009, President Barack Obama authorized his first drone strike. The attack, launched against a compound in northwestern Pakistan, killed between 7 and 15 people—but missed the Taliban hideout the Central Intelligence Agency thought it was targeting. Over the next five years, the CIA carried out more than 390 known drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. (The agency carried out 51 drone strikes between 2004 and 2009, during the Bush administration.)
Obama made a brief reference to the drone campaign in last week's State of the Union address, assuring Congress that "I've imposed prudent limits on the use of drones." This wasn't the first time the president had acknowledged the need for a clear drone policy. Last May, Obama remarked at the National Defense University, "This new technology raises profound questions—about who is targeted, and why." Yet the answers the administration has provided to these profound questions and the prudent limits it has put in place remain vague.
Here are six major questions about the US drone program that remain unanswered a decade after the first strike:
1. Who's being targeted?
<snip>
2. What constitutes an "imminent threat"?
<snip>
3. What about signature strikes?
<snip>
4. Does Congress really know what's going on?
<snip>
5. How are civilian casualties avoided—and counted?
The Presidential Policy Guidance states that lethal strikes may be carried out only with "near certainty that non-combatants will not be injured or killed." However, the Obama administration counts all military-age males killed by drones as militants. That explains why official counts of civilian deaths vary widely from independent counts. While in Sen. Feinstein stated last year that annual civilian casualties from drones fall in the "single digits", the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that total civilian casualties since 2004 in Pakistan alone have ranged from 416 to 951.
6. How does the administration justify the targeting of American citizens?
<snip>
—By H.H. Bhojani| Tue Feb. 4, 2014 3:01 AM GMT
On January 23, 2009, President Barack Obama authorized his first drone strike. The attack, launched against a compound in northwestern Pakistan, killed between 7 and 15 people—but missed the Taliban hideout the Central Intelligence Agency thought it was targeting. Over the next five years, the CIA carried out more than 390 known drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. (The agency carried out 51 drone strikes between 2004 and 2009, during the Bush administration.)
Obama made a brief reference to the drone campaign in last week's State of the Union address, assuring Congress that "I've imposed prudent limits on the use of drones." This wasn't the first time the president had acknowledged the need for a clear drone policy. Last May, Obama remarked at the National Defense University, "This new technology raises profound questions—about who is targeted, and why." Yet the answers the administration has provided to these profound questions and the prudent limits it has put in place remain vague.
Here are six major questions about the US drone program that remain unanswered a decade after the first strike:
1. Who's being targeted?
<snip>
2. What constitutes an "imminent threat"?
<snip>
3. What about signature strikes?
<snip>
4. Does Congress really know what's going on?
<snip>
5. How are civilian casualties avoided—and counted?
The Presidential Policy Guidance states that lethal strikes may be carried out only with "near certainty that non-combatants will not be injured or killed." However, the Obama administration counts all military-age males killed by drones as militants. That explains why official counts of civilian deaths vary widely from independent counts. While in Sen. Feinstein stated last year that annual civilian casualties from drones fall in the "single digits", the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that total civilian casualties since 2004 in Pakistan alone have ranged from 416 to 951.
6. How does the administration justify the targeting of American citizens?
<snip>
49 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/10/what-we-dont-know-about-drones
The Drone Unknowns
—By Adam Serwer| Mon Oct. 1, 2012 7:15 AM GMT
We don't know how many civilians are killed in drone strikes, but we do know the US government is almost certainly wrong about it.
That's one conclusion you could draw from a report on the impact of the use of drones in targeted killing by the the Human Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School and the Center for Civilians in Conflict*, released Sunday, a year to the day that radical American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in Yemen. While the US government has maintained that few if any non-militants are killed in drone strikes, reports about how targeting decisions are made, the realities of airborne warfare, and the basic fallibility of humankind call the Obama administration's claims of precision into question. There's also the problem that some behaviors which might seem to indicate "guilt" out of context, like carrying a gun, are common in the areas being targeted. "A civilian carrying a gun, which is a cultural norm in parts of Pakistan, does not know if such behavior will get him killed by a drone," the report notes. While "personality" strikes are aimed at specific individuals, the government also conducts "signature strikes" which hit anonymous individuals on the basis of a "pattern of behavior."
Because the government has yet to even officially acknowledge the existence of the CIA's targeted killing program or its military counterpart in the Joint Special Operations Command however, it's hard to evaluate the Obama administration's claims about avoiding civilian harm. The report notes that the dearth of first-hand information from the areas most frequently targeted by drone strikes means that determining who is a "militant" and who is not, particularly after the fact, is very difficult. That's why third-party estimates, which cast serious doubt on the government's assessments, vary so widely, and why the Obama administration itself may not even know how many civilians are being killed. Here's a chart from the report:
[URL=
.html][IMG]
[/IMG][/URL]
The Drone Unknowns
—By Adam Serwer| Mon Oct. 1, 2012 7:15 AM GMT
We don't know how many civilians are killed in drone strikes, but we do know the US government is almost certainly wrong about it.
That's one conclusion you could draw from a report on the impact of the use of drones in targeted killing by the the Human Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School and the Center for Civilians in Conflict*, released Sunday, a year to the day that radical American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in Yemen. While the US government has maintained that few if any non-militants are killed in drone strikes, reports about how targeting decisions are made, the realities of airborne warfare, and the basic fallibility of humankind call the Obama administration's claims of precision into question. There's also the problem that some behaviors which might seem to indicate "guilt" out of context, like carrying a gun, are common in the areas being targeted. "A civilian carrying a gun, which is a cultural norm in parts of Pakistan, does not know if such behavior will get him killed by a drone," the report notes. While "personality" strikes are aimed at specific individuals, the government also conducts "signature strikes" which hit anonymous individuals on the basis of a "pattern of behavior."
Because the government has yet to even officially acknowledge the existence of the CIA's targeted killing program or its military counterpart in the Joint Special Operations Command however, it's hard to evaluate the Obama administration's claims about avoiding civilian harm. The report notes that the dearth of first-hand information from the areas most frequently targeted by drone strikes means that determining who is a "militant" and who is not, particularly after the fact, is very difficult. That's why third-party estimates, which cast serious doubt on the government's assessments, vary so widely, and why the Obama administration itself may not even know how many civilians are being killed. Here's a chart from the report:
[URL=
.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]and everything that the government says can be believed without question, pro.
"and everything that the government says can be believed without question, pro. "
Today, it's all laughs and silly assertions. Did someone expose the lame faux outrage?
How does it feel, to be on your own...
We all really need to learn to love killer robots from the sky. 
Must maintain those techie jobs!!!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4409511
