Jeremy Scahill (on Bill Maher): Obama made assassination acceptable to Democrats

[ProSense]

11. This

"If it were 'Grandpa' McCain, Democrats would be up in arms."

...is such a bullshit straw man. I remember a lot of people "up in arms" about the Iraq war and torture. There was not massive outrage about drone strikes or targeting terrorists.

Anwar al-Awlaki vs. Kamal Derwish
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x787226
No, OMG an American was killed.

That is not to say the current outrage isn't justified, but there is no need to invent straw man bullshit about Obama making "assassination acceptable to Democrats."

There is also the issue of civilian casualties. So stop trying to insult people's intelligence by implying that they're not aware of the problem with drone strikes.

Unreported Strikes

At the time of this writing, the US is believed to have conducted 344 total strikes in Pakistan, 52 between June 17, 2004 and January 2, 2009 (under President Bush),[62] and 292 strikes between January 23, 2009 and September 2, 2012 (under President Obama).[63] Those numbers, which TBIJ has pieced together from available media reports,[64] may underestimate the total number of strikes, especially during the early years of the drone program.

Between 2004 and 2007, the Pakistani government under President Musharraf attempted to hide the fact of US strikes (and Pakistan’s role in them) by contending that the strikes were either Pakistani military operations, car bombs, or accidental explosions.[65] Many of those claims were contradicted within days or weeks by anonymous leaks and eyewitness accounts,[66] and by local journalists gathering evidence at the scenes of the attacks.[67] In one unusually well-publicized incident, an official in the Musharraf regime reportedly asserted that the Pakistani military had conducted a strike on a religious school in Bajaur that killed over 80 people, including 69 children.[68] One of Musharraf’s aides reportedly told a Pakistani media source that the government believed “it would be less damaging” to claim it had killed 82 people than it would be to reveal that it had agreed to let the US carry out strikes on Pakistani soil.[69] Musharraf’s administration was reported to admit that the strike had been a US operation only after political backlash from the strike turned out to be much greater than the government had anticipated.[70] Considering the Musharraf government’s apparent efforts to cover up the US’s role in drone strikes, and the fact that drones often target remote or isolated areas, it is possible that other strikes from the 2004-2007 period have yet to be identified.

Our team’s fieldwork in Pakistan documented at least one incident that might fit this pattern. We interviewed 15 Waziris, including four survivors and four more who visited the strike site within hours or days of the attack, who described to us what they believed to have been a drone strike that took place on June 10, 2006.[71] The attack took place in the early morning of June 10 on a workers’ bunkhouse in a chromite mining camp in the mountains near Datta Khel. In the bunkhouse, a large group of young miners and woodcutters were asleep. Missiles killed 22 and badly injured four. The press described the incident as a helicopter gunship attack carried out by the Pakistani military,[72] based on statements by Pakistani officials claiming responsibility.[73] The survivors and those killed were asleep before the first explosion and knocked unconscious shortly thereafter. In light of the classification by media sources (helicopter strike), the lack of available physical evidence given the remoteness of the location, the lack of eyewitness testimony to the source of the strike, and the significant passage of time since the attack, our research team could not determine whether this incident was a US drone strike or Pakistani helicopter strike, and so chose not to include this event as a drone strike.[74] Nonetheless, given the extensive loss of life, this incident should investigated thoroughly by competent authorities.

http://livingunderdrones.org/numbers/

Drone Program May Shift From CIA to Military

NEW YORK – A report in The Daily Beast today said that the Obama administration is considering taking targeted killing responsibilities from the CIA and placing them under the control of the military.

“Ending the CIA’s role as a paramilitary killing organization would be an important step in the right direction,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Security Project. “President Obama took the CIA out of the torture and detention business, and it’s past time to do the same with targeted killings. As important as this change would be, the killing program is still wrapped in unwarranted secrecy, and is still unlawful in its scope, dangerous, and unwise. Far greater transparency and accountability for targeted killings must accompany any change of responsibility, and it remains to be seen whether the secretive Joint Special Operations Command will address those concerns.”

http://www.aclu.org/national-security/drone-program-may-shift-cia-military