Common Dreams reports:
The U.S. government's so-called "pinpoint"(NYT paywall) drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen are, in fact, leaving wide perimeters of death, as people on the Kill List are targeted--and even reported dead--again and again, according to a report published Monday by the UK-based charity Reprieve.
While drone attacks and their victims are kept secret by the U.S. military and government, Reprieve compiled public information available, most of it from media reports and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, to determine who actually died when the U.S. went after individuals in Yemen and Pakistan between November 2002 and November 2014.
The study examines the cases of 41 people included on a Kill List--a classified U.S. assassination program personally approved by President Obama with no judicial or public oversight. According to the report's findings, up to 1,147 unnamed people were killed in pursuit of these 41 known individuals.
Furthermore, each of these 41 men was reported killed multiple times.
"This raises a stark question," states the study. "With each failed attempt to assassinate a man on the Kill List, who filled the body bag in his place?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 27 2014, @12:33PM
The drone strikes cause collateral casualties, but they are effective with regards to the capabilities of the organizations that are targeted.
Can you please define "effective" in this use? Maybe provide some comparison of terrorist capabilities 2002-2007 (before drones) and 2009-2014 (after drones). Some discussion of how well drones have restrained ISIL, for example. Or the number of terrorist attacks stopped because a particular "leader" was assassinated. I contend that the US assassination program is - at best - as good at stopping terrorist attacks as my anti-tiger charm is at stopping tiger attacks. I suspect that the US assassination program is much more useful to terrorist organizations as a recruiting tool than the "leaders" they have lost.