Drone attacks in Afghanistan kill far fewer civilians than believed:
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aziz
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thabet
“Protecting civilians”, “responsibility to protect”:
The story, which is clearly the result of months of reporting and Freedom of Information Act requests, highlights not only the phenomenon of the U.S. military killing civilians, but also how little information about such killings is typically made available to the public.
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thabet
“Protecting civilians”:
“A British military vehicle killed two women in a road accident and when people tried stop them [leaving], they shot and killed another man,” said Hashmat Stanekzai. A child was also wounded in the shooting.
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thabet
Liberated by NATO:
The governor of Helmand province said the two men, two women and three children died when the car they were travelling in was hit by NATO fire late Friday.
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thabet
The ‘responsibility to protect’ fraud:
Most of the victims were believed to be civilians attending a tribal meeting near the regional capital, Miranshah.
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Dan
FYI, I’ve been tracking drone attacks on the weekend posts at my site for over a year now.
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thabet
Thanks, Dan.
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thabet
Via Spencer Ackerman and Joshua Foust (also see Steve Hynd). It is worth clicking through to this piece of horrible and stupid piece of colonial apologia regarding the village razing by someone called Paula Broadwell, a friend of Thomas Ricks. Foust is particularly scathing:
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aziz
“Sure they are pissed about the loss of their mud huts,” Broadwell wrote on Facebook, “but that is why the BUILD story is important here.”
what the f. omfg.
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thabet
The war crimes of the Obama administration:
[...]
The legality of drone strikes in Pakistan and the alleged role of the CIA has been brought into sharp focus after it was reported that Jonathan Banks, the CIA’s station chief in Islamabad, was pulled out of Pakistan after his cover was blown by tribesmen from North Waziristan who are taking legal action, blaming him for the deaths of their relatives in drone strikes.
In recent days sources say that the US drone policy in Pakistan has apparently spread from Waziristan to the northwestern Khyber region, where three US drone missiles killed a reported 24 “militants” on Saturday.
The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions Christof Heyns told Channel 4 News, if these allegations are true, the personnel who operate the deadly drones and their superiors could potentially face prosecution for war crimes, if international humanitarian laws are violated.
Obama, the world’s biggest concern troll, was clearly aware that this is a problem, which is why he had the rules which govern the kangaroo show trials for Guantanamo detainees re-written (proving that he is at least more intelligent than his predecessor):
According to that New York Times article, the new rules still leave the CIA open to prosecution in a Pakistani courtroom. Which probably explains this:
The officer, named in Pakistan as Jonathan Banks, left the country yesterday, after a tribesman publicly accused him of being responsible for the death of his brother and son in a CIA drone strike in December 2009. Karim Khan, a journalist from North Waziristan, called for Banks to be charged with murder and executed.
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thabet
The hard numbers:
Regarding these 617 fatalities, BʹTselem demanded an MPIU [Military Police Investigation Unit] investigation into the deaths of 288 of them, who were killed in 148 incidents. Ninety‐five of these incidents occurred in the Gaza Strip, accounting for 230 of the deaths. The other 53 incidents took place in the West Bank and resulted in the killing of 58 Palestinians. One hundred and four of the fatalities were minors under age 18, 23 were persons 50 and above, and 52 were women. One hundred of the Palestinians whose deaths B’Tselem demanded to investigate were killed in 2006, 86 in 2007, 93 in 2008, and 9 in 2009.
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thabet
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shams
it is very correct indeed.
according to SNT (social network theory) one dead terrorist creates AT MINIMUM two more terrorists because of influence propagation along both social and consanguineous network connections.
we are not running in place– we are running backwards.
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thabet
Ministry of Defence refuses to disclose any details of its investigations into the shooting of innocent Afghan civilians by British troops:
In one case, on 21 October 2007, US soldiers in Kabul reported that a gunner on top of an unidentified UK vehicle wounded three civilian interpreters in a private security company vehicle. The notes stated: “Investigation is controlled by the British. We are not able to get the complete story.”
On another occasion, on 12 March 2008, British troops in Helmand province called in an airstrike, which resulted in the deaths of two women and two children, and injured another child.
MoD officials responded to a freedom of information request by the Guardian yesterday by admitting that they possessed information on the civilian casualties, but claimed it would involve too much work to search their electronic archive.
thabet, 
shams is discussing. 
M.D. 4:40 pm on February 27, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
The AP reporter’s study has a very small sample size, but it is interesting. Assuming that the same results would hold up if the sample were expanded, and assuming that there are no methodological problems skewing the results… I wonder what this means? Does it mean that the US would tolerate Chinese air strikes on US territory, as long as China only killed US citizens deemed to be threatening to China?
aziz 10:08 pm on February 27, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
since you insist on the absurd analogy, yes, assuming that the US sheltered a global terrorist network which launched an attack on Shanghai which killed 20,000 Chinese people (scaling for relative population of US vs China and body count of 9-11), after which the US refused to help cooperate and prosecute the group and instead offered to extradite them to Taiwan.
thabet 2:22 pm on February 28, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
So 30% of those killed are not ‘terrorists’ or ‘militants’?
That’s ok then.
aziz 6:37 am on February 29, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I didn’t say it was “ok”. And I continue to stand by my position that American muslims should adopt the abolition of aerial bombardment and renounce collateral damage as a doctrine of war as our political position. I’m also quite firmly on record as against the drone policy in Pakistan (though I did support the killing of Awlaki).
thabet 2:02 pm on March 4, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/27/fresh-evidence-of-cia-civilian-deaths-in-pakistan-revealed/
aziz 8:07 am on March 9, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
follow up here:
http://blog.beliefnet.com/cityofbrass/2012/03/extrajudicial-killing-batman-and-the-joker.html