President Obama on Friday acknowledged the "legitimate criticism" of U.S. drone strikes in the Middle East that have caused civilian deaths. At the same time, he said the U.S. has now "constructed a fairly rigid and vigorous set of criteria" to justify continued drone strikes that kill wh...
“It is a hard fact that US strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in all wars,” said Obama. “For the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me, and those in my chain of command, these deaths will haunt us as...
Drone Strike on Seminary Safe Haven Reignites Debate; Obama Promised Efforts to Limit Civilian Casualties
The Guardian published a piece in November of 2014 with some startling figures regarding civilian casualties. According to the article, on October 15, 2010, Hellfire missiles fired from a drone killed the deputy commander of the Pakistani Taliban, but in the process of doing so, they also kille...
A lot of Americans have an impression that drone strikes are less damaging to civilian populations than conventional airstrikes. This would be false. In fact, earlier this month I highlighted an article from the Guardian that demonstrated how in reality drone strikes are10x more likely to harm ...
Lebanon, ruled by Hezbollah, has literally thousands of Iranian-supplied rockets aimed at Israel’s civilian population centers, which they will launch any time Iran gives them a green light. Hamas in Gaza is bragging that they are rearming and digging new tunnels, and they have openly ...
The Long War Journal, a blog that tracks terrorist groups, calculates a much lower civilian casualty rate, with 1,114 militants and 94 civilians killed in Pakistan since 2006. (Of course, it should go without saying that the real blame for innocent deaths will, at bottom, always lie with ...
An unmanned U.S. Predator drone flies over Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan.(Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP) Drones kept U.S. soldiers out of harm’s way and they were, arguably, more humane than other weapons because they could help find and kill specific individuals and limit civilian ca...
drone strike can, by this definition, be counted as a civilian. [133af] Another facet of the administration’s publicity campaign is the paradoxical status of the CIA drone campaign’s very existence as a state secret. The administration reveals politically beneficial information about strikes ...
The New America Foundation analysis of the drone campaign in Pakistan found that: –The civilian casualty rate has been dropping sharply since 2008. The number of civilians, plus “unknowns,” those individuals whose precise status could not be determined from media reports, reported killed by dr...