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Is there any evidence of this stuff? I googled one of the examples given. This seems to be the most substantial reporting: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar
by creato 6y ago
Is there any evidence of this stuff?
I googled one of the examples given. This seems to be the most substantial reporting: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/the-newest-fight-against-the-extrajudicial-killing-of-americans/563018/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/the-newest...
> In June 2016, Mr. Kareem was at the location of four different aerial attacks. The first and fourth incidents involved strikes to the OGN office in Idlib City when Mr. Kareem was inside the office. The second attack occurred in the town of Hariyataan while Mr. Kareem was there conducting an interview. The strike hit the exact location where Mr. Kareem was setting up for the interview, but at the time of the strike he had climbed a nearby hill to “view destroyed homes a street away.”
> The third attack occurred when the vehicle in which Mr. Kareem and his staff were traveling was “struck and destroyed by a drone-launched Hellfire missile.” At the time of the strike, Mr. Kareem was sitting in a different, nearby vehicle which was “hurled into the air by the force of the blast” and “flipped upside down.” In August 2016, Mr. Kareem was again the victim of an attack when he was at the Kulliyatul Midfa‘iyyah (Artillery College) to film. He and his coworkers were in his car “when there was a huge blast only yards away from the car.” The occupants survived, but all were hit by shrapnel from the blast.
> As a result of these five near-miss experiences in a three-month period, Mr. Kareem alleges upon information and belief that he was the target and that his name is included on the United States Kill List.
I can see why he might think he's on a "kill list", but at the same time, maybe the people he was meeting were the targets?
It sucks we even need to ask this question, but the OP's link makes it sound like all of this is simple fact. As an outsider, I don't think it's possible to come to an actual concrete conclusion here, which is basically what all the courts have said.
- polytely 6y agoIt's really hard to get to the facts of these drone cases because every military aged male automatically gets classified as enemy combatant unless intelligence proves after the fact that they were innocent. Most news sources will blindly accept the definition of enemy combatant provided by the government so there is minimal uproar. I would trust Mr Kareem over the US government on this because it fits the pattern of how the drone wars work. For a good source on this issue I would recommend: The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program by Jeremy Scahill or the Drone Papers from the intercept which were the basis for the book. >"The White House and Pentagon boast that the targeted killing program is precise and that civilian deaths are minimal. However, documents detailing a special operations campaign in northeastern Afghanistan, Operation Haymaker, show that between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations airstrikes killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets. During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. In Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. has far more limited intelligence capabilities to confirm the people killed are the intended targets, the equivalent ratios may well be much worse." https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-comp...
- Fjolsvith 6y ago> Operation Haymaker, show that between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations airstrikes killed more than 200 people. During the last administration. Interesting.
- polytely 6y agoYes, the redefinition of 'enemy combatant' happened under Bush if I recall correctly, but I think nobody is disputing that Obama really intensified the drone war, a trajectory that Trump seems happy to continue[0][2][3]. This is not a partisan issue because both parties are very comfortable blowing up 10 civilians to kill one terrorist. [0]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/22/obama-drones-trump-killings-count/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/22/obama-drones-trump-kill... [1]: https://theintercept.com/2019/10/02/trump-impeachment-civilian-casualties-war/ https://theintercept.com/2019/10/02/trump-impeachment-civili... [3]: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/trump-war-terror-drones/567218/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/tr...
- celticninja 6y agoOk, so now they are following a journalist around to try and kill the people he is meeting, with no regard for the safety of others in the vicinity of their target. The targets that are also being targeted extra-judiciously. Which part of that makes their behaviour ok?