Ok, so nobody likes drones that hideously disfigure little girls in Afghanistan, especially Glenn Greenwald.
But when the US stops using them, the enemy starts succeeding again, or so we're told by The New York Times in a piece titled "Lull in US Drones Aids Militants.
And what, *did* the little girl actually get struck by a drone? Threat Matrix says no, CNN was misleading when it reported about three little girls found horribly injured in a trash bin: "
All anyone could say is that there had been a U.S. drone attack. The girls were likely hurt in the strike"
Says Threat Matrix:
There is a major problem this story: there has never been a report of a US Predator or Reaper airstrike in Swat. Ever. In fact, only four of the 53 drone strikes reported in Pakistan in 2009 took place outside of North and South Waziristan. Of those four strikes, two were in Kurram, one was in Bannu, and one was in Arakzai.
Interestingly, Threat Matrix found that CNN later changed their story, something that most people have long since ceased to notice. Threat Matrix said the story was changed to the following text:
All anyone could say is that there had been a U.S. drone attack, though U.S. officials say that drones have never struck targets in Swat.
It was not known how the girls came to be where they were but one thing was clear: they'd suffered horrific injuries.
Shakira, believed burned in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan, will undergo reconstructive surgery in January.
All anyone could say is that there had been a U.S. drone attack, though U.S. officials say that drones have never struck targets in Swat.
It was not known how the girls came to be where they were but one thing was clear: they'd suffered horrific injuries.
Why would the international and not the domestic edition be changed?
Oh, I'm not the first person to discover this, actually Firedoglake found three different versions.
Obama is determined to keep using them as part of a leaner force in modern warfare. When you have a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and one of the most liberal presidents in history, if not *the* most liberal, determined to use drones, then you may have to concede that he has made this calculation based on what he believes to be hard notions of national security and minimizing of casualties of our own soldiers and civilians.
Human Rights Watch is going to turn it mainly into an issue of chasing Harold Koh, the State Department's legal advisor, around for an answer.
It would be more compelling if they could document better whether drones do awful things like hideously disfigure the little Afghan girl. But there's a problem with doing that:
“CIA drone strikes have become an almost daily occurrence around the world, but little is known about who is killed and under what circumstances,” said James Ross, legal and policy director at Human Rights Watch. “So long as the US resists public accountability for CIA drone strikes, the agency should not be conducting targeted killings.”
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