https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/201...-drone-strikes
UN to investigate civilian deaths from US drone strikes
Special rapporteur on counter-terror operations condemns Barack Obama's failure to establish effective monitoring process
...The investigation unit will also look at "other forms of targeted killing conducted in counter-terrorism operations, in which it is alleged that civilian casualties have been inflicted". Emmerson maintained that the US stance that it can conduct counter-terrorism operations against al-Qaida or other groups anywhere in the world because it is deemed to be an international conflict was indefensible.
"The global war paradigm has done immense damage to a previously shared international consensus on the legal framework underlying both international human rights law and international humanitarian law," he said. "It has also given a spurious justification to a range of serious human rights and humanitarian law violations.
"The [global] war paradigm was always based on the flimsiest of reasoning, and was not supported even by close allies of the US. The first-term Obama administration initially retreated from this approach, but over the past 18 months it has begun to rear its head once again, in briefings by administration officials seeking to provide a legal justification for the drone programme of targeted killing in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia …
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...n_1607030.html
Obama Administration's Drone Death Figures Don't Add Up
ProPublica | By
Justin Elliott Posted: 06/18/2012 4:59 pm
Last month, a "senior administration official" said the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under President Obama is in the "single digits." But last year "U.S. officials" said drones in Pakistan killed about 30 civilians in just a yearlong stretch under Obama.
Both claims can't be true.
A centerpiece of President Obama's national security strategy, drones strikes in Pakistan are credited by the administration with crippling Al Qaeda but criticized by human rights groups and others for being conducted in secret and killing civilians
. The underlying facts are often in dispute and claims about how many people died and who they were vary widely...
There have been 307 American drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, according to a New America Foundation
count. Just 44 occurred during the Bush administration. President Obama has greatly expanded the use of drones to attack suspected members of Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, and other groups in Pakistan's remote northwest region. ...
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-dr...-drone-attacks
Do Americans Care About Civilian Deaths in Drone Attacks?
—By
Kevin Drum
...The startling results are on the right: the prospect of civilian deaths reduced support more than the prospect of American casualties. "This is a real surprise," Walsh says, "since it means that respondents attach as much or more value on the lives of foreign civilians as they do on US military personnel."...
