U.S. drones have killed up to 116 civilians

Posted by | July 1, 2016 20:00 | Filed under: Politics War & Peace

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The Obama administration has released the figures.

The long-promised assessment acknowledged that the government itself does not always know how many civilians it kills and that it may revise its death tolls over time.

Between 2009 and 31 December 2015, the administration claimed that it launched 473 strikes, mostly with drones, that killed between what it said were 2,372 and 2,581 terrorist “combatants”.

The assessment presents the White House’s account of the death toll from a method of warfare that defines Obama’s legacy in many parts of the world. The White House released its long-awaited drones report the afternoon before the Fourth of July holiday weekend, having pledged transparency on the drones issue for years.

Yet the count is also incomplete, leaving out the civilian toll from drone strikes in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Nor did the administration go into detail about where the strikes occur, citing what an official told reporters on Friday were “diplomatic sensitivities”, even as it presented the assessment as a significant advance in transparency. The Guardian has filed a freedom of information act request for the civilian-death assessment in the US bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria.

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Copyright 2016 Liberaland
By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.

3 responses to U.S. drones have killed up to 116 civilians

  1. anothertoothpick July 1st, 2016 at 20:58

    Col. Katherine Powell, a military officer in command of an operation to capture terrorists in Kenya, sees her mission escalate when a girl enters the kill zone triggering an international dispute over the implications of modern warfare.

    Eye in the sky. Good movie about the Brits and their drone program.

  2. bpollen July 2nd, 2016 at 02:16

    I think there’s some number-fudging going on. For instance, during Vietnam, it was not unusual to count all casualties as enemy casualties. If they were dead, they were obviously VC.

    • Susanjallen July 2nd, 2016 at 05:18

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