U.S. Has Killed Far More Civilians With Drones Than It Admits, Says UN

At least 400 civilians in Pakistan and 58 in Yemen have been killed by U.S. drones, and the United States has not helped an investigation into this by providing figures.

A new report from a special U.N. investigator says drone strikes have killed far more civilians than U.S. officials have publicly acknowledged – at least 400 in Pakistan and as many as 58 in Yemen – and chides the U.S. for failing to aid the investigation by disclosing its own figures.

U.N. Special Rapporteur Ben Emmerson, who issued the “interim” report, said the U.S. had created “an almost insurmountable obstacle to transparency.”

“The Special Rapporteur does not accept that considerations of national security justify withholding statistical and basic methodological data of this kind,” wrote Emmerson in the report, which is due to be presented to the U.N. General Assembly next Friday.

U.S. intelligence officials have consistently downplayed the number of civilian deaths from drone strikes. In a June 2011 speech, White House counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan, who is now CIA director, said that “for nearly the past year, there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency [and] precision” of U.S. counter-terror strikes.

Later, the CIA acknowledged some civilian casualties, but told Congress that they were in the “single digits,” according to a February 2013 statement by Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Diane Feinstein, D.-Calif.

Transparency would be a good ideal for the United States to live up to. So would credibility.

By: Cheston Catalano

Cheston Catalano is a Kentucky-based journalist whose work has been featured in the Chattanooga Times Free Press and the Clarksville Leaf Chronicle. He is a long-time contributor to Liberaland.