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9 posts
1 Jul, 2016
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Why White House civilian casualty figures on civilian are a wild underestimate

Chris Woods set up the Bureau’s award-winning Drones Project in 2011, and is the author of Sudden Justice: America’s Secret Drone Wars. He now runs Airwars, which monitors international airstrikes and civilian casualties in Iraq and Syria. Targeted killings or assassinations beyond the battlefield remain a highly charged subject. Most controversial of all is the number of […]
3 Feb, 2015
Update
Somalia, Yemen

The CIA appears to have cut civilian deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan: why can’t the US do the same in Yemen, asks Owen Bennett-Jones

Pakistani tribesmen offer funeral prayer -Thir Khan/AFP/Getty Images In May 2013, faced with persistent reports of drones killing civilians, President Obama announced that no strike would be authorised unless there was: “near certainty that no civilians would be killed or injured.” It was, he said, “the highest standard we can set.” The new rule seemed […]
1 Aug, 2013
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Is Congressional oversight tough enough on drones?

Dianne Feinstein (centre) and members of the Senate intelligence committee grill John Brennan (Photo: SenRockefeller via Flickr) In the Bureau’s latest investigation into the tactic of ‘double-tap’ strikes on rescuers, our field researcher’s findings appear to directly contradict an account of a strike attributed to staffers of the Congressional bodies charged with overseeing CIA drone […]
1 Nov, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Analysis: How Washington Post strips casualties from covert drone data

The Washington Post: is it telling the whole story? Alongside the Washington Post’s latest blockbuster reports on the Obama administration’s drone kill list is a new graphic, depicting US covert strikes since 2002. Based on studies by monitoring organisations, the graphic lists hundreds of US drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, in what the […]
19 Jun, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Analysis: Oversight failures help oil Obama’s killing machine

Revelations that President Barack Obama presides over key aspects of secret kill-list machinery that has sentenced thousands to death by drone have disturbed many. Torture and extraordinary rendition under Bush, it turns out, have been replaced with industrial-scale extrajudicial execution by his successor. Today, CIA and Pentagon armed drones range at will over Pakistan, Yemen […]
29 May, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Analysis: Obama embraced redefinition of ‘civilian’ in drone wars

President Obama with his Defense Secretary and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Two US reports published today provide significant insights into President Obama’s personal and controversial role in the escalating covert US drone war in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. In a major extract from Daniel Klaidman’s forthcoming book Kill Or Capture, the author […]
10 May, 2012
Update
Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen

Analysis: Why we must name all drone attack victims

Drone victim funeral December 29 2010 – two named civilians are known to have died that day. (AP) Sunday’s death of Fahd al-Quso in a CIA drone strike was a significant US success. The admitted al Qaeda bomber had long been sought for his role in the deadly attack on the US navy ship the […]
5 Dec, 2011
Update
Somalia

Analysis: An Iranian news station damages all war reporting

A WFP food distribution centre for displace people near Mogadishu  Revelations by the Bureau at the weekend that Iranian broadcaster Press TV is most likely fabricating multiple reports of alleged US ‘drone strikes’ in Somalia will do little to bolster the channel’s already tattered reputation. And its actions could impede those trying to hold the […]
28 Oct, 2011
Update
Somalia

Bureau Recommends: US flies secret drones from Ethiopia base

Al-Shabaab fighters in Somalia The Bureau Recommends an article in the Washington Post, which reveals that the US Air Force has been secretly flying armed Reaper drones from a remote airbase in Ethiopia. According to the report, millions of dollars have been spent on upgrading the airfield in Arba Minch, which now houses a fleet […]