Drone attacks – death by Metadata 10-19-2015

19, October 2015           Drone attacks – death by Metadata

One of the most secretive military campaigns in U.S. history has come under intense scrutiny by investigative reporters of the Intercept who recently published its report, “The Drone Papers”

The White House assassination program commenced in 2002 with the drone strike that killed six  civilians in Yemen including one US citizen. Condoleezza Rice, a senior advisor to President George Bush alleged that the White House reserved the right to assassinate anyone in the world based on actionable intelligence “that the president could never reveal in public”. Thus, nobody could ever be held accountable - how convenient! Under the Obama administration, drone attacks in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan have intensified with hundreds of civilians, including many children, being blown apart – using highly faulty intelligence as the Intercept report revealed. The bureaucratic kill chain consisted of senior White House and Pentagon officials who would decide who would live and who would die without any judicial review starkly reminiscent of old style emperors. The target would be designated as an “imminent threat” to the U.S. giving the military 60 days to hunt down and kill the target.  Reporters at  the Intercept interviewed Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, a former head of the Defense  Intelligence Agency, who confirmed that “signal intelligence” is an extremely unreliable method of identifying a target and without doubt resulted in a significant number of innocent victims being assassinated. This was further confirmed by Ryan Devereaux’s report on "Manhunting in the Hindu Kush" which examined a JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) campaign called “Operation Haymaker” which initially claimed a high degree of success   hunting down leaders of  al-Qaeda – but later admitted that 88 percent of those killed were innocent civilians. Killing innocent victims of war no doubt emboldens the enemy and makes a complete mockery of our much touted “core values”.

A Congressional hearing should be convened calling for an immediate halt to drone attacks and demands that all those found responsible for these hideous mass killings of innocent victims be held fully accountable.