Jonathan Landay, national security reporter at McClatchy Newspapers, has provided the first analysis of drone-strike victims that is based upon internal, top-secret U.S intelligence reports ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/129176.
It is the most important reporting on U.S. drone strikes to date because Landay, using U.S. government assessments, plainly demonstrates that the claim repeatedly made by President Obama and his senior aides — that targeted killings are limited only to officials, members, and affiliates of al Qaeda who pose an imminent threat of attack on the U.S. homeland — is false.
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It is important to note that the claim of a single civilian casualty is based on the CIA’s interpretation that any military-age males who are behaving suspiciously can be lawfully targeted . No U.S. government official has ever openly acknowledged the practice of such “signature strikes” because it is so clearly at odds with the bedrock principle of distinction required for using force within the laws of armed conflict. According to the documents reviewed by Landay, even the U.S. intelligence community does not necessarily know who it has killed; it is forced to use fuzzy categories like “other militants” and “foreign fighters.”
Some of the drone strikes that Landay describes, such as a May 22, 2007 attack requested by Pakistan’s intelligence service to support Pakistani troops in combat, do not appear in the databases maintained by the New America Foundation, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, or Long Wars Journal . This should strengthen the concerns of many analysts about the accuracy of reporting from Pakistan’s tribal areas. It also suggests that there may be a few additional targeted killing efforts of which we know nothing.
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...based on the Obama administration’s patterns of behavior, the Department of Justice will assuredly target Landay and his sources for leaking classified information. While the DOJ has refrained from plugging the many selective leaks by anonymous administration officials that praise the precision and efficacy of drone strikes, it has sought more criminal prosecutions of leaks in Obama’s first term than during all previous presidential administrations combined. (...) Absolutely nothing in Landay’s reporting reveals the CIA’s sources and methods for determining who had been killed.
(1) The Obama administration often has no idea who they are killing.
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(2) Whisteblowers are vital for transparency and accountability, which is precisely why the Obama administration is waging a war on them.
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(3) Secrecy ensures both government lies and abuses of power.
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