Ted Rall
SHAFAQNA PAKISTAN (Shia News Agency)
Even for the few of us who have been paying close attention to what the US government is doing in Pakistan and other targets of “targeted killing” campaigns carried out by the CIA and Air Force, a new study by the human rights organization Reprieve contains new revelations about drones that are shocking and appalling. As the UKnewspaper The Guardian reports, targeted killings are anything but: “Even when operators target specific individuals — the most focused effort of what US President Barack Obama calls “targeted killing” — they kill vastly more people than their targets, often needing to strike multiple times.”
One example is Qari Hussain, who was a deputy commander of the Pakistani Taliban. A Hellfire missile fired by one of Obama’s Predator drones blew up Hussain on Oct. 15, 2010. To the president, this was a success. What the White House doesn’t say, however, is there were five previous drone attacks against Hussain. All five failed, killing scores of innocent people. “For the death of a man whom practically no American can name, the US killed 128 people, 13 of them children, none of whom it meant to harm.”
The 128 civilians-to-one-militant death ratio doesn’t even address the legality of targeting Hussain himself, in violation of a 30-year-old executive order banning political assassinations, not to mention the long-standing US political tradition prohibiting such actions. All drone assassinations are illegal, but the sloppiness of this program is insane. Al-Qaida leader Ayman Zawahiri, for example, has survived two drone attacks that killed 76 children and 29 adults. According to Reprieve’s analysis as of Nov. 24th, 1,147 people were killed in attempts to kill 41 men.
“Drone strikes have been sold to the American public on the claim that they’re ‘precise,” Jennifer Gibson of Reprieve toldThe Guardian. “But they are only as precise as the intelligence that feeds them. There is nothing precise about intelligence that results in the deaths of 28 unknown people, including women and children, for every “bad guy” the US goes after.”
Reading the Guardian report, it’s difficult to know whether to cry for the dead or laugh at the incompetence of American drone operators: “Some 24 men specifically targeted in Pakistan resulted in the death of 874 people. All were reported in the press as ‘killed’ on multiple occasions, meaning that numerous strikes were aimed at each of them. The vast majority of those strikes were unsuccessful. An estimated 142 children were killed in the course of pursuing those 24 men, only six of whom died in the course of drone strikes that killed their intended targets.
“In Yemen, 17 named men were targeted multiple times. Strikes on them killed 273 people, at least seven of them children. At least four of the targets are still alive. “Available data for the 41 men targeted for drone strikes across both countries indicate that each of them was reported killed multiple times. Seven of them are believed to still be alive. The status of another, Haji Omar, is unknown. Abu Ubaidah al-Masri, whom drones targeted three times, later died of natural causes, believed to be hepatitis.”
Obama’s remote-control drone murderers are the embodiment of evil in the 21st century: careless, alienated, remote, bloodless. They also symbolize contemporary political culture: arrogant, corrupt and stupid. Check this out: “A Reprieve team investigating on the ground in Pakistan turned up what it believes to be a confirmed case of mistaken identity. Someone with the same name as a terror suspect on the Obama administration’s ‘kill list’ was killed on the third attempt by US drones. His brother was captured, interrogated and encouraged to ‘tell the Americans what they want to hear’: that they had in fact killed the right person.”
Every single day — even as you read this — American drones are stalking and killing innocent people in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. They’re doing this in your name, using weapons systems you paid for. Yet you’re still allowed to walk the Earth, totally unsmitten. The writer is author of “After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back As Honoured Guests: Unembedded in Afghanistan.”
pakistan.shafaqna.com
