In a series of articles for Al Jazeera I had questioned the improbably low casualty figures being cited by the US and Pakistani authorities and endorsed in the bogus statistics produced by the New America Foundation. Gen. Petraeus’s former counterinsurgency advisors David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum had already suggested that up to 98 percent of those killed in the drone strikes may be civilians. Recently, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism had conclusively debunked the CIA’s claims about success of its policy. Today none other than the former Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair has called for an end to the drone strikes because he believes the tactic is dangerous and a complete failure which only kills some mid-level militants [in other words it kills a whole lot of civilians since over 2,500 Pakistanis have been killed so far].
Naseema Noor of IPS reports on the recent Bureau of Investigative Journalism study:
Led by British investigative journalist Chris Woods and Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai, the study found that at least 45 civilians, including six children, have been killed in 10 drone strikes since August 2010 alone, while another 15 attacks between then and June 2011 likely killed many more.
According to the study, civilians die in one out of every five Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-operated drone attacks in the tribal region, located on the border with Afghanistan, a statistic that the Bureau says can no longer be denied by the U.S. government.
Continue reading “Romancing the Drone: The Unravelling”
P U L S E 