In yet another US drone attack in Pakistan, US drones fired ten missiles at different targets in the country's northwestern tribal area of South Waziristan, on Sunday. According to local media, the aerial attacks left at least seven others injured.

Pakistan’s tribal regions are attacked by US assassination drones almost regularly, with Washington claiming that militants are the targets. However, casualty figures clearly indicate that Pakistani civilians are the main victims.

The killing of Pakistani civilians, including women and children, has strained relations between Islamabad and Washington. Last month, Pakistan’s Jama’at ud-Da’wah political group took legal action against the ongoing drone attacks. The group said … the drone strikes continue to claim the lives of civilians.

Civilians are being "terrorised" 24 hours a day by CIA drone attacks that target mainly low-level militants in north-west Pakistan, a US report (Living Under Drones) says. Rescuers treating the casualties are also being killed and wounded by follow-up strikes, says the report by Stanford and New York Universities.
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In one of the most notorious attacks of recent years, tribal elders and local traders were among more than 40 people killed when two drones attacked a car carrying … four militants.
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A controversial aspect of the US policy is that drone attacks are carried out not by the military but by the Central Intelligence Agency. Pakistan is not a zone of armed conflict, unlike neighbouring Afghanistan.
The report … says top commanders only account for an estimated 2% of drone victims.
The report also details hundreds of civilian casualties and the effects of drone strikes on the local population. It cites data from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimating that between 474 and 881 civilians have been killed in strikes between 2004 and 2012.
"In the United States, the dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling 'targeted killings' of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts. This narrative is false," according to the report, (Living Under Drones.
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According to the report, 42 people were killed, mostly civilians, when they gathered at a bus depot on 17 March 2011 for a "jirga" (community meeting) to settle a dispute over a nearby mine. … . Several missiles were fired. Nearly all those who died were heads of large households.

Despite claims from the administration that drone strikes have killed very few civilians, multiple independent reports confirm that Obama is severely downplaying the wreckage that these drone strikes inflict. It is ultimately impossible to get exact numbers, but a new study from Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute finds that the number of Pakistani civilians killed in drone strikes are “significantly and consistently underestimated” by tracking organizations which are trying to take the place of government estimates on casualties.
There are estimates as high as 98% of drone strike casualties being civilians (50 for every one "suspected terrorist"). The Bureau of Investigative Journalism issued a report detailing how the CIA is deliberately targeting those who show up after the sight of an attack, rescuers, and mourners at funerals as a part of a "double-tap" strategy eerily reminiscent of methods used by terrorist groups like Hamas.

The absolute majority of the people killed by American UAVs in Pakistan are innocent civilians, claims Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik.
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There are no exact statistics on the number of people killed in drone strikes in Pakistan. Estimates vary from about 2,500 to over 3,000 victims. As many as 174 of them were reportedly children.

If I lived in a country where terrorist were being hunted by drones.One of the last things I would do would be to associate or have me or my family anywhere near them.

If I was a terrorist,the last thing I would want would be to have my family of friends anywhere near me with a target on my back.

It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
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The very first strike under his watch in Yemen, on Dec. 17, 2009, offered a stark example of the difficulties of operating in what General Jones described as an “embryonic theater that we weren’t really familiar with.”
It killed not only its intended target, but also two neighboring families, and left behind a trail of cluster bombs that subsequently killed more innocents.
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State Department officials have complained to the White House that the criteria used by the C.I.A. for identifying a terrorist “signature” were too lax. The joke was that when the C.I.A. sees “three guys doing jumping jacks,” the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp, said one senior official. Men loading a truck with fertilizer could be bombmakers — but they might also be farmers, skeptics argued.

Originally posted by jdub297
reply to post by rockymcgilicutty

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If I lived in a country where terrorist were being hunted by drones.One of the last things I would do would be to associate or have me or my family anywhere near them.

If I was a terrorist,the last thing I would want would be to have my family of friends anywhere near me with a target on my back.

The problem here is the definition of "terrorist." According to the O-bomb-a admnistration, proximity and suspicion control over acts and ideolgy.

It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
…
The very first strike under his watch in Yemen, on Dec. 17, 2009, offered a stark example of the difficulties of operating in what General Jones described as an “embryonic theater that we weren’t really familiar with.”
It killed not only its intended target, but also two neighboring families, and left behind a trail of cluster bombs that subsequently killed more innocents.
…
State Department officials have complained to the White House that the criteria used by the C.I.A. for identifying a terrorist “signature” were too lax. The joke was that when the C.I.A. sees “three guys doing jumping jacks,” the agency thinks it is a terrorist training camp, said one senior official. Men loading a truck with fertilizer could be bombmakers — but they might also be farmers, skeptics argued.

Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will

Of course, we should not forget that Obama’s “Homeland Security” department has defined “terrorist” to include “Single Issue: groups or individuals that obsessively focus on very specific or narrowly-defined causes,” as well as “Right-Wing” groups, those “that believe that one’s personal and/or national "way of life" is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent (for some the threat is from a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group), and believe in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism. Groups may also be fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation), anti-global, suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty, and believe in conspiracy theories that involve grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty.”
www.start.umd.edu...

.Bottom line the majority of srikes are against legitimate targets and if the terrorist didn't hide among innocent people there would be far fewer innocent deaths

Originally posted by rockymcgilicutty
reply to post by munkey66

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So the U.S has never killed a terrorist with a drone strike?Only suspects?

Originally posted by jdub297
reply to post by rockymcgilicutty

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.Bottom line the majority of srikes are against legitimate targets and if the terrorist didn't hide among innocent people there would be far fewer innocent deaths

Maybe you missed the part of the post that cited an international study that showed 2% of targets are actually Qaeda leadership. or, that of the 300+ drone strikes betw. 2008 and 2012, between 3,000 and 6,000 of the victims have been innocents; first-responders and children!

"The majority of strikes" have killed about 50X more civilians than "targets."
Some say it's even higher, 80 to 1 and more.

Originally posted by rockymcgilicutty
reply to post by munkey66

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So the U.S has never killed a terrorist with a drone strike?Only suspects?

By the way, where is the outrage on the Right regarding drone warfare?

But none of that matters I guess-cause Obama is black ... .