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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>January 1, 2016 <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span style='font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/01/the-year-in-drones-2015/"><span style='color:blue'>The Year in Drones: 2015</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>by <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/charles-pierson/"><span style='color:blue'>Charles Pierson</span></a> <o:p></o:p></span></p><ul type=disc><li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><span style='font-size:20.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>“ Other veterans are also speaking out. In June, forty-four veterans representing each of the four service branches with ranks from private to colonel signed a letter urging armed forces members to refuse to fly drone missions.”<o:p></o:p></span></li></ul><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><img border=0 width=510 height=317 id="Picture_x0020_2" src="cid:image001.jpg@01D1485E.94446110" alt="Description: http://uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/dropzone/2015/12/dronespak-510x317.jpg"></span><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>2015 was another glorious, blood-soaked year for US killer drones.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>One story began in 2014, but it was not until 2015 that we knew how it ended. In February 2014, the Associated Press reported that the Obama Administration was contemplating a drone strike on a US citizen, an al-Qaeda member living in Pakistan and known by the <i>nom de guerre</i> Abdullah al-Shami (Abdullah the Syrian). Al-Shami had been born in Texas, but had not been in the United States since he was a toddler.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>We did not hear of Al-Shami again until the following April. Al-Shami still lived but had been captured by Pakistani security forces and turned over to the United States. In April, al-Shami (now identified by his real name, Mohanad Mahmoud Al Farekh) was arraigned on terrorism charges in federal court in Brooklyn.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Other US citizens have been less fortunate than Al Farekh. On January 14, a 73 year old aid worker, Warren Weinstein, was killed in a US drone strike on an Al-Qaeda compound in Pakistan. His family had been trying to negotiate ransom for Weinstein who had been abducted from his home in Lahore in 2011. Also killed in the strike were an Italian aid worker, Giovanni Lo Porto, and an American member of al-Qaeda, Ahmed Farouq.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Eight US citizens have been killed in US drone strikes. The best known is Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born high-profile al-Qaeda spokesman. Al-Awlaki was killed by a US drone in Yemen on September 30, 2011. Al-Awlaki’s 16-year old son, Abdulrahman, was killed in a separate drone attack a month later. All other US citizens killed by drones have been members of Al-Qaeda. Al-Shami’s tale proves that the Obama Administration continues to be willing to execute Americans without due process of law.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'> “The entire program was diseased”</span></b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>In 2015, <i>The Intercept</i> broke two important stories on drones. In February, <a href="https://theintercept.com/2015/04/17/ramstein/"><span style='color:blue'>Jeremy Scahill</span></a> reported on the US base in Ramstein, Germany. Leaked US slides and their confidential source confirmed what had long been suspected: that Ramstein Air Base is the global hub for relaying signals which allow pilots in the United States to control US drones in South and Central Asia, the Arabian Peninsula and Africa. The slides put the lie to US and German attempts to minimize Ramstein’s crucial importance to the drone war. The slides raise the possibility of US personnel at Ramstein facing prosecution under German law for assisting drone assassinations in violation of international law.<a name="_ftnref2"></a><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/01/the-year-in-drones-2015/#_ftn2"><span style='color:blue'>[2]</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Then in October, <i>The Intercept </i>published <a href="https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/"><span style='color:blue'>The Drone Papers</span></a>: a series of classified documents on the US government’s drone assassination program. <i>The Drone Papers</i> were leaked to <i>The Intercept</i> by an unidentified source inside the intelligence community who is being called the new Edward Snowden. The new source can look forward to getting his face on the cover of <i>Time</i> and his ass in a prison cell—that is, unless he gets out of the US before the Obama Administration finds out who he is.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><i><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The Drone Papers</span></i><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'> confirm every horrifying thing we have learned about drones’ indiscriminate killing. For every intended target, about six unintended targets are killed. Civilians killed by American drones are counted as enemies killed in action (EKIA), unless they are subsequently proven <i>not </i>to be militants. Internal criticism of the drone program is rife. Insiders say that drones are successful only at boosting terrorist recruitment.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Four other whistleblowers—former drone operators in the US Air Force—went public in an <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/obama-drone-war-isis-recruitment-tool-air-force-whistleblowers"><span style='color:blue'>open letter</span></a> to President Obama in November. The four lashed out at the drone program’s callous disregard for human life. Drone operators call children “fun-size terrorists” and refer to killing children as cutting the lawn before the grass gets high. One of the whistleblowers, former Staff Sergeant Brandon Bryant has said: “We killed people who we really didn’t know who they were, and there was no oversight.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>True that. After Warren Weinstein was killed the New York <i>Times</i> ran this headline: “Drone Strikes Reveal Uncomfortable Truth: <i>U.S. Is Often Unsure about Who Will Die</i>.” “The entire program was diseased,” Bryant says. For speaking out, Sgt. Bryant and his colleagues have had their bank accounts and their credit cards frozen.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Perhaps the most appalling revelation in <i>The Drone Papers</i> was that during one five-month period in Afghanistan 90% of drone victims were not the intended target. The civilian death toll is not always that high, but it is high enough. An op-ed in the July 14 <i>New York Times </i>gives these figures:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>In 646 probable drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen recorded by the [British NGO] Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as many as 1,128 civilians, including 225 children, were killed—22 percent of deaths. The New America Foundation’s estimates are lower, but suggest a civilian death rate of about 10 percent.<a name="_ftnref3"></a><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/01/the-year-in-drones-2015/#_ftn3"><span style='color:blue'>[3]</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>US killer drones have taken lives in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Libya, and Somalia, Syria, and the Philippines. US drone strikes on Yemen have continued even during the country’s civil war, providing de facto assistance to Saudi Arabia’s criminal aggression in bombing Yemen.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Drone missions take their toll on those drone operators who still have a conscience. Substance abuse is common. So are burnout and PTSD. “Guilt-ridden American drone pilots continue to quit in unprecedented numbers,” according to RT, the Russian news service. Yet the Obama Administration wants to increase daily drone flights by 50% over the next four years. Good luck finding enough pilots.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Other veterans are also speaking out. In June, forty-four veterans representing each of the four service branches with ranks from private to colonel signed a letter urging armed forces members to refuse to fly drone missions. The “Refuse to Fly” campaign is also running a series of fifteen-second anti-drone TV <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlUo7Z7jN6M"><span style='color:blue'>ads</span></a>. The ads show graphic scenes of death and destruction taken from Madiha Tahir’s documentary <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk7fD5umakg"><i><span style='color:blue'>Wounds of Waziristan</span></i></a> about Pakistanis killed by US drones. Each ad ends with a voice urging drone operators to “refuse to fly.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>According to a poll conducted in May by the Pew Research Center, 58% of Americans support US drone strikes. The same poll shows that one-third (35%) of Americans disapprove of drone strikes, up from 26% two years ago. Americans need to learn the truth about drones. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:20.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Yet coverage of <i>The Drone Papers</i> and the four whistleblowers in the mainstream media has been spotty to nil. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The word needs to go out if there is to be the sort of public pressure that it will take to ground the drones.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>