As U.S. Drone Strikes Escalate in Pakistan, "Kill List" Stirs Fears of High Civilian Toll

[The Northerner]

DemocracyNow.org - At least 27 people have been killed in three consecutive days of U.S. drone strikes inside Pakistan, part of a new wave of attacks over the past weeks. The surge in drone strikes comes just a week after the New York Times revealed that President Obama personally oversees a "secret kill list" containing the names and photos of individuals targeted for assassination in the U.S. drone war.

We go to London to speak with Chris Woods, award-winning reporter with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, who heads the Bureau's drones investigation team. Under the Obama administration's rules, "Any adult male killed effectively in a defined 'kill zone' is a terrorist, unless posthumously proven otherwise," Woods says. "This revelation really is extraordinary ... We think this goes along with to explaining the gulf between our reporting of civilian casualties in Pakistan and Yemen and the reporting of credible international news organizations — and the CIA's repeated claims that it isn't killing [civilians], or rather killing small numbers. ... If you keep assuring yourself you're not killing civilians, by redrafting of the term 'civilian,' than that starts to influence the policy and encourage you to carry out more drone strikes." Woods adds that the latest attacks "indicate not just a significant rise in the number of CIA strikes in Pakistan, but an aggression for those strikes that we really haven't seen for over a year."

[Robb]

1. Surely you get why, apart from the obvious reasons, Pakistan wants to highlight US drone attacks.

Nothing about anything the government has done there in the past six or seven years would lead a reasonable person to assume they could give two shits about their civilians dying. Quite the contrary, when you see the slaughter perpetuated by the various "Lashkar-e" groups -- some of whom swear allegiance alternately to Pakistan and al Qaeda -- it would be astounding to imagine "at least 27 people" even registering a blip on the radar of a population calibrated to withstand the enduring annual death tolls in cities like Peshawar and Lahore.

But appearing on television from time to time and wringing one's hands -- even righteously -- about a dozen people killed, some of whom might not have even had it coming, is a fantastic way to shift the debate when appealing to a naturally xenophobic electorate. Much easier than addressing near-daily carnage from foxes in one's own henhouse is convincing the poultry that there's an even deadlier threat from a weasel that episodically visits.

None of which excuses the weasel. But it's fucking hilarious that a body with such obvious contempt for putting any value on human life has convinced a hopeful portion of the media that they really feel outrage at US drone attacks. That the "Bureau of Investigative Journalism" has been so dutiful in advancing this agenda means it has either been wholly coopted or was never legitimate in the first place.

[woo me with science]

2. DU Rec. nt