Kevin_Kennedy
Defend Liberty
- Aug 27, 2008
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- #41
Yep, I don't read salon.co. The link isn't very good, I couldn't scroll down to read the entire article though I tried several times. I don't know if Militants are AQ or innocent civilians but I have to believe Obama is making every effort to avoid killing civilians.
I'm sure the President is cognizant of how targeting civilians would be reported in our press and in the press of other nations - doing so would not benefit him or our cause (cause being our self defense).
Making every effort? He's basically taken on a policy of assumption in drone strikes that anyone in a vicinity of a target could only possibly be a terrorist and nothing else.
That's making "every effort"?
You know this because you have a seat when the President discusses such actions with the Joint Chiefs?
His administration leaked this information to the New York Times.
It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization innocent neighbors dont hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs, said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.
This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths. In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obamas trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the single digits and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1