reply to post by GLaDOS
This should be somewhat big news, especially on ATS. So let me see if I can't add a thing or two to spice up this thread.
Here's the video of Obama during this online video chat talking about the drone strikes and how it hasn't killed a lot of Pakistanis. US drone strikes
have killed enough civilian to cause Pakistanis to protest the US military, calling them terrorists. So I believe Obama is totally playing this issue
down.
The Pakistiai Gov't is just like any other Gov't, same type of politiicians and all. They cater to both parties, in this case they cater to the US
Federal Gov't and their own people, playing both sides of the issue.
The truth about American drones could be very inconvenient for Pakistan
blogs.telegraph.co.uk...
But President Obama's admission of the obvious was probably not made with Pakistan in mind. The new openness is probably the result of a strike
last year that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, the US citizen who rose to fame as an online propagandist for al-Qaeda. It left Obama with an awkward legal
question about the rights and wrongs of killing Americans overseas and last night's admission may well be part of a new policy.
The question now is how the Pakistani government will respond. Islamabad has been quite content to leave the drones in a grey area, condemning each
strike, shouting angrily about infringements of sovereignty while tacitly giving the green light. A Wikileaks cable released in 2010 revealed how
Pakistan's prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, summed up his government's position:
"I don't care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We'll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it."
The militants in Pakistan's tribal areas pose a deadly threat to Islamabad. But supporting the drones in public risks further inflaming deep-seated
anti-American anger and mobilizing waves of suicide bombers against anyone seen as a stooge of the West.
Pakistanis protest latest U.S. drone strike(1/11/12)
Pakistanis protest U.S. drone attacks
old.tehrantimes.com...
Thousands of Pakistanis have staged an anti-U.S. demonstration in the port city of Karachi, calling for an end to U.S. drone attacks, and
Washington's interference in the region.
According to
Wikipedia there's been a total of 286 drone attacks in Pakistan,
minimum number of people kill is 1,731, the maximum number of people kill is 2,696.
From Wikipedia's civilian causality section,
According to Bloomberg
A January 2011 report by Bloomberg stated that civilian casualties in the strikes had apparently decreased. According to the report, the U.S.
Government believed that 1,300 militants and only 30 civilians had been killed in drone strikes since mid-2008, with no civilians killed since August
2010.[434]
But there are those who disagree with Bloomberg
On 14 July 2009, Daniel L. Byman of the Brookings Institution stated that although accurate data on the results of drone strikes is difficult to
obtain, it seemed that ten civilians had died in the drone attacks for every militant killed. He suggested that drone strikes may kill "10 or so
civilians" for every militant killed, which would represent a civilian to combatant casualty ratio of 10:1. Byman argues that civilian killings
constitute a humanitarian tragedy and create dangerous political problems, including damage to the legitimacy of the Pakistani government and
alienation of the Pakistani populace from America. He suggested that the real answer to halting al-Qaeda's activity in Pakistan will be long-term
support of Pakistan's counterinsurgency efforts.[13]
Drone attack in Pakistan: 2005-2012
Currently the Middle Eastern nation that has seen the most US drone attacks is Libya.
edit on 31-1-2012 by Swills because: (no reason
given)
