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I was surprised it used half of the slides of "obama drone strikes" about the willful neglect for the human toll of civilian deaths [0], in some cases ~90%, (fi
by andirk 4y ago
I was surprised it used half of the slides of "obama drone strikes" about the willful neglect for the human toll of civilian deaths [0], in some cases ~90%, (find the bad guy, bomb the entire block). I was expecting more of a synopsis of what happened rather than the issues with it.
The creators should take a look the only cool TechCrunch Disrupt winner, Qwiki, which turned searches in to audio and visual slides [1]. But Yahoo bought it for $50 million, turned down Google's offer thereafter of $150 million, then buried it forever a year later.
[0] https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data https://www.cfr.org/blog/obamas-final-drone-strike-data
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-ZxO4e6Oak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-ZxO4e6Oak
Edit: The 90% refers to a specific date range of "air strikes": "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." [2]
[2] https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-comp...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- spawarotti 4y agoAccording to [0] the toll of civilian deaths is 9% not ~90%: > The 542 drone strikes that Obama authorized killed an estimated 3,797 people, including 324 civilians.
- andirk 4y agoThank you. Edited to be very specific instead of a blanket percentage.
- HALtheWise 4y agoI don't know how significant this is, but "not the intended target" and "civilian" could mean very different things. In particular, it seems likely that a strike targeted at a terrorist leader has a high chance of killing their aides or others in the car, who are probably members of the terror cell, even though they weren't the actual target of the strike.