[Marxism] The CIA’s Drone Wars

[Nasir Khan <naskha3@xxxxxxxxx>]

The CIA’s Drone Wars: Secrecy Over Data on Bombings Hides Abuses

By Gareth Porter | Counterpunch, June 12 – 14, 2009

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s refusal to share with other
agencies even the most basic data on the bombing attacks by
remote-controlled unmanned predator drones in Pakistan’s northwestern
tribal region, combined with recent revelations that CIA operatives
have been paying Pakistanis to identify the targets, suggests that
managers of the drone attacks programmes have been using the total
secrecy surrounding the programme to hide abuses and high civilian
casualties.

Intelligence analysts have been unable to obtain either the list of
military targets of the drone strikes or the actual results in terms
of al Qaeda or civilians killed, according to a Washington source
familiar with internal discussion of the drone strike programme. The
source insisted on not being identified because of the extreme
sensitivity of the issue.

“They can’t find out anything about the programme,” the source told
IPS. That has made it impossible for other government agencies to
judge its real consequences, according to the source.

Since early 2009, Barack Obama administration officials have been
claiming that the predator attacks in Pakistan have killed nine of 20
top al Qaeda officials, but they have refused to disclose how many
civilians have been killed in the strikes.

Continued >> http://sudhan.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/the-cias-drone-wars/

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