Quotes
> The White House and Pentagon boast that the targeted killing program is precise and that civilian deaths are minimal. However, documents detailing a special operations campaign in northeastern Afghanistan, Operation Haymaker, show that between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations airstrikes killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets. During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. In Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. has far more limited intelligence capabilities to confirm the people killed are the intended targets, the equivalent ratios may well be much worse. > The documents show that the military designated people it killed in targeted strikes as EKIA — “enemy killed in action” — even if they were not the intended targets of the strike. Unless evidence posthumously emerged to prove the males killed were not terrorists or “unlawful enemy combatants,” EKIA remained their designation, according to the source. That process, he said, “is insane. But we’ve made ourselves comfortable with that. The intelligence community, JSOC, the CIA, and everybody that helps support and prop up these programs, they’re comfortable with that idea.” > The source described official U.S. government statements minimizing the number of civilian casualties inflicted by drone strikes as “exaggerating at best, if not outright lies.”
crusa187@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
Illegitimate wars fought for oil in Iraq and Afghanistan, with civilian casualties in the 100s of thousands. Let Russia take Crimea, arguably the initial precursor to today’s war in Ukraine, even though we promised them protection in exchange for giving up their nukes. Extra-judicial killing of American citizen via drone strike. He was peak lib and gave corpos everything they wanted and more, so of course the corpo media won’t point any of this out. Doesn’t change the fact that he committed grave crimes against humanity and our own citizens.
Would I rather have him back today instead of the orange dotard? Yeah. Doesn’t mean he was a good guy though, or good for Americans in general.