{"id":31510,"date":"2013-04-10T20:29:52","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T19:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=31510"},"modified":"2013-04-10T20:39:56","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T19:39:56","slug":"leak-proves-us-drones-strikes-targeted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/leak-proves-us-drones-strikes-targeted\/","title":{"rendered":"Leak Shows US Hid The Truth About Drone Strikes"},"content":{"rendered":"

RINF Alternative News<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"drone1\"<\/p>\n

New evidence has emerged that proves the US\u00a0intentionally lied about the true nature of its controversial drone strike operations.<\/p>\n

The leaked intelligence documents reveal that the US has been\u00a0targeting individuals who pose no\u00a0immediate\u00a0threat, with half of the slaughtered people being labeled simply as\u00a0\u00a0‘unknown extremists’.<\/p>\n

While the files obtained by the McClatchy news agency show half of the deceased as innocent, other\u00a0calculations\u00a0show that a more accurate percentage of innocents killed in Pakistan is as high as 80%<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The files also show that Pakistan\u2019s intelligence agency was working with the US while its government was condemning the use of drone strikes.<\/p>\n

\"mcc\"<\/p>\n

The mainstream media likes to play down the use of drone strikes, frequently reporting that the global death toll attributed to drone strikes is around\u00a02,500, while the true figure could be almost double that according to Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham.<\/p>\n

Whatever the true number of innocents killed, many of whom are children, the US has received constant international criticism\u00a0for the use of these killer drones.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Gibson, \u00a0a lawyer working with the British human rights charity Reprieve, has also accused the US of hiding the truth:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is now mounting evidence that the Obama administration is misleading the American public \u2014 and the world at large \u2014 about the drone war it is waging in Pakistan,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reports show a significant number of the strikes have nothing to do with al-Qa\u2019ida. Instead, they may have been a quid pro quo exchange between two countries\u2019 spy agencies. The result is that the US often doesn\u2019t know who it is killing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Obama administration, like the Bush Administration before it, has always claimed that use of drones are only to target those involved with the 9\/11 terrorist attacks, senior members of\u00a0al-Qa\u2019ida and those plotting to attack the US.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
In a 2012 interview with CNN, Obama said:<\/div>\n
\n
\u201cIt has to be a threat that is serious and not speculative. It has to be a situation in which we can\u2019t capture the individual before they move forward on some sort of operational plot against the United States.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
However,\u00a0McClatchy has found that<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2014 At least 265 of up to 482 people who the U.S. intelligence reports estimated the CIA killed during a 12-month period ending in September 2011 were not senior al Qaida leaders but instead were \u201cassessed\u201d as Afghan, Pakistani and unknown extremists. Drones killed only six top al Qaida leaders in those months, according to news media accounts.<\/p>\n

Forty-three of 95 drone strikes reviewed for that period hit groups other than al Qaida, including the Haqqani network, several Pakistani Taliban factions and the unidentified individuals described only as \u201cforeign fighters\u201d and \u201cother militants.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the same period, the reports estimated there was a single civilian casualty, an individual killed in an April 22, 2011, strike in North Waziristan, the main sanctuary for militant groups in Pakistan\u2019s tribal areas.<\/p>\n

\u2014 At other times, the CIA killed people who only were suspected, associated with, or who probably belonged to militant groups.<\/p>\n

<\/strong>To date, the Obama administration has not disclosed the secret legal opinions and the detailed procedures buttressing drone killings, and it has never acknowledged the use of so-called \u201csignature strikes,\u201d in which unidentified individuals are killed after surveillance shows behavior the U.S. government associates with terrorists, such as visiting compounds linked to al Qaida leaders or carrying weapons. Nor has it disclosed an explicit list of al Qaida\u2019s \u201cassociated forces\u201d beyond the Afghan Taliban.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The leaked intelligence documents reveal that the US has been targeting individuals who pose no immediate threat, with half of the slaughtered people being labeled simply as ‘unknown extremists’. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,18,1616,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-31510","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-latest-news","9":"category-usa-news","10":"category-war-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}