Death by drone

Institute for Public Accuracy

Al Jazeera is reporting: “U.S. President Barack Obama’s former top military intelligence official has launched a scathing attack on the White House’s counter-terrorism strategy, including the administration’s handling of the ISIL threat in Iraq and Syria and the U.S. military’s drone war. In a forthcoming interview with Al Jazeera English’s Head to Head, retired U.S. Lt. General Michael Flynn, who quit as head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency in August 2014, said ‘there should be a different approach, absolutely’ on drones. “‘When you drop a bomb from a drone… you are going to cause more damage than you are going to cause good,’ Flynn said.”

Pratap Chatterjee wrote a piece in the New York Times titled “Our Drone War Burnout,” which states: “As public support for foreign wars has fallen, following years-long occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Obama administration has favored this form of remote-control warfare. In the president’s first five years in office, the C.I.A. made 330 drone strikes in Pakistan alone, compared with 51 strikes in four years of George W. Bush’s presidency.

“The issue of drones’ civilian body count is well documented. The C.I.A., in classified submissions to Congress, claims civilian death rates ‘typically in the single digits’ per year, according to Senator Dianne Feinstein in 2013, who then chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“Independent sources differ sharply from the official account. In 646 probable drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen recorded by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as many as 1,128 civilians, including 225 children, were killed — 22 percent of deaths.”

 “The drone wars are also taking a toll at home. Air Force psychological studies have found widespread stress among pilots, analysts and operators. … Working up to 12 hours a day, sometimes six days a week, analysts watch their targets up close for months on end. They often witness their subjects’ final moments. In follow-up surveillance, they may even view their funerals.”