Did Obama Just Lowball The Drone War Death Toll?

[rug]

The White House says its airstrikes only killed 116 civilians. At least one independent group of experts say the real number is in the thousands.

07.01.16 4:49 PM ET
WRITTEN BY NANCY A. YOUSSEF

The Obama administration said Friday it had killed as many as 116 civilians through its air campaign against jihadists in places like Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya.

Yet no one who has studied the preferred U.S. tactic in the war against terror groups like al Qaeda consider that figure accurate. At least one independent group of observers put the number of innocents slain by U.S. drones and other aircraft in the thousands.

And because the administration provided no details when, where or how those deaths occurred, there was no way to assess the effects of the U.S. war on extremists outside its war zones. That is, the release of the numbers, which the administration hailed Friday as move toward transparency, instead only added to the obfuscation surrounding America’s counterterror operations.

In all, the administration said it had killed as many as 2,581 militants since Obama assumed office on Jan. 20 2009.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/01/did-obama-just-lowball-the-drone-war-death-toll.html

[Cicada]

1. Lying about military matters is routine

Only the brain dead believe us statements about middle east operations.

[malaise]

4. +1,000

Rec

[Cryptoad]

5. ,,,, or people

who only offer up conjecture, speculation and hearsay as proof!

[KG]

2. c'mon now, ya gonna offend the sensibilities of the faithful.

every obama drone dead had coming.

[exboyfil]

3. Probably add a zero to the end

and be closer to the total.

[Martin Eden]

6. The administration's official numbers are far too high ...

... to justify the drone program. Would 64 or 116 innocent deaths be acceptable if they weren't foreign peasants in some dirt poor land on the other side of the globe?

[malthaussen]

8. Funny, no one seems to want to answer that.

Personally I think ONE is one too many, but I'm a fanatic.

-- Mal

[DirkGently]

7. NGOs put it at 200-900 civilians.

Some of those estimates, as the report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence acknowledges, are far below the range put forth by watchdog groups that tally civilian deaths.

Saying that nongovernmental organizations commonly estimate "significantly higher figures for non-combatant deaths," the DNI report went on to provide its own average figure of those group's tallies:

"For instance, for the period between January 20, 2009 and December 31, 2015," the report reads, "non-governmental organizations' estimates range from more than 200 to slightly more than 900 possible non-combatant deaths outside areas of active hostilities."
Concerning the official estimates' range, a senior administration official says that the gaps reflect a lack of definitive information about the victims of an attack.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/01/484359409/seven-years-of-u-s-drone-and-airstrikes-white-house-tallies-civilian-deaths