Increased U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan killing few high-ranking militants

[cory777]

Source: Washington Post

CIA drone attacks in Pakistan killed at least 581 militants last year, according to independent estimates. The number of those militants noteworthy enough to appear on a U.S. list of most-wanted terrorists: two.

Despite a major escalation in the number of unmanned Predator strikes being carried out under the Obama administration, data from government and independent sources indicate that the number of high-ranking militants being killed as a result has either slipped or barely increased.

Even more-generous counts - which indicate that the CIA killed as many as 13 "high-value targets" - suggest that the drone program is hitting senior operatives only a fraction of the time.

After a year in which the CIA carried out a record 118 drone strikes, costing more than $1 million apiece, the results have raised questions about the purpose and parameters of the drone campaign.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/20/AR2011022002975.html?wprss=rss_nation

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[Autumn]

1. More than $ 118 million in a year and we got 2 big

bad boogy men? What fucking stupidity.

[Robb]

2. At first blush it seems a startlingly expensive way to fight a war.

I read this and thought that's what, $200K per Taliban fighter killed?

Then I starting thinking how expensive conventional warfare is, on the same dollars per enemy killed basis. Ugly calculus, but this may just be the future.

[joshcryer]

3. Military industrial complex, it doesn't have to cost this much to kill people.

It does because we make the bombs in our factories using our labor, fun times.

Outsource that shit. China would happily build our bombs for us. ;)

[Kolesar]

5. The US is just hoping for a turn in luck

The General McCrystal plan is not meeting expectations. We may never get a chance to remove everybody associated with Bin Laden.

If only fking Condi had read the fking memo ten years ago.

[tpsbmam]

8. We're catching a couple & creating scores more enemies

From FAIR:

<snip>

One research paper determined civilians made up 32 percent of deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan (New America Foundation, 2/24/10). This count is almost certainly low, as its data is taken from major U.S. and English-language Pakistani news outlet reports and accepts their characterizations of "civilians" and "militants."

The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) conducted an on-the ground investigation of drone attacks (from 2009 and early 2010), and determined that the nine attacks they surveyed produced a total of 30 civilian deaths (10/10). The CIVIC report points out that Pakistani media outlets, based on government figures, put the civilian death rate from drones at about 90 percent.

<snip>

A more nuanced report about the CIA's drone program by the New Yorker's Jane Mayer (10/26/09) suggested that the U.S. doesn't even pick all its assassination targets, allowing Pakistani officials to direct many drone strikes--a concession to Pakistan's government that would undermine the notion that the strikes are always the subject of careful vetting.

I was glad to see that experts in the field echoed my gut reaction -- we're creating more enemies than we even come close to killing. Great strategy, huh?

In fact, many both inside and outside the government have argued that the strategy is counterproductive; as London School of Economics professor Fawaz Gerges pointed out less than a year ago in the pages of Newsweek (6/7/10), former legal adviser to Army Special Operations Jeffrey Addicott argued that the strategy is "creating more enemies than we're killing or capturing." Mayer's New Yorker piece also cited military advisers who make the case that the many civilian deaths from drone attacks result in "more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased."

This is a strategy that assures we'll have Middle Eastern enemies for decades to come.

[Mimosa]

4. End these obscene wars. n/t

[IamK]

6. Obama loves the drone.... respect the pizza...

[bongbong]

7. Same as in Vietnam

Every day, we would kill HUGE numbers of "the enemy". Somehow we still lost. Sad how America has turned into a pure-militaristic state; the only two sizable industries we have left are:

1) the MIC
2) the financial industry to convince other countries to buy our IOUs to finance #1

[M155Y_A1CH]

9. Collateral damage?

Are many non-combatants killed with these strikes?

They could be much costlier than even this article alludes.