News that a US drone strike hit a wedding convoy in Yemen has been getting a lot of international press attention, mostly due to the fact that over a dozen people were reportedly killed. But the New York Times‘ write-up (12/13/13) was one of the most jarring:
Most of the dead appeared to be people suspected of being militants linked to Al Qaeda, according to tribal leaders in the area, but there were also reports that several civilians had been killed.
So most of the dead appeared to be people suspected of being linked to Al Qaeda. That’s a whole lot of qualifiers to make the point that those who were killed were the intended targets.
But there’s a pattern of the Times doing this.
In August of this year there were several suspected US drone attacks. Strikes on August 1 and August 8 reportedly killed several civilians, including children, part of a series of drone strikes around that time.
The New York Times ran an AP dispatch on August 9, reporting this:
Three American drone strikes in Yemen on Thursday killed a total of 12 people suspected of being members of Al Qaeda, a Yemeni military official said, raising to eight the number of attacks in less than two weeks.
A news analysis on August 10 reported, “Eight strikes have been carried out in Yemen in the past two weeks, a ferocious rate of drone attacks,” before adding, “It is yet unknown who exactly was killed in Yemen during the past two weeks.” One would hope that more journalistic energy would be devoted to figuring out who the United States was killing.
And there are other examples. On May 16, 2012, the Times reported news of a drone strike the day before:
The United States has also stepped up its drone strikes in Yemen in recent days, with 11 militants reported killed on Saturday east of Sana.
But other accounts told a different story. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (5/15/12) reported that
between 14 and 15 people have been killed in a double air strike on the southern city of Jaar. Of these, as many as a dozen are being reported as civilians. Up to 21 civilians have also been reported injured.
Witnesses said the first strike targeted alleged militants meeting in a house. Civilians who had flocked to the impact site were killed in a follow-up strike.
And CNN reported (5/15/12):
Two suspected U.S. drone strikes killed seven al Qaeda militants and eight civilians in the southern part of Yemen on Tuesday, three Yemeni security officials said.
And one of the most infamous attacks in Yemen occurred on December 17, 2009, when the United States launched a cruise missile strike on al-Majala, in southern Yemen. That attack included cluster bombs. 41 civilians are believed to have been killed in the strike.
The headline in the December 18, 2009 edition of the New York Times?
“Yemen Says Strikes Against Qaeda Bases Killed 34”
On December 19, it was becoming clear that the U.S. was actually involved in the attack, so the Times ran this headline:
“U.S. Aids Yemeni Raids on Al Qaeda, Officials Say”
The Times added:
Yemeni officials said their security forces had killed at least 34 militants in the broadest attack on the terrorist group in years. A range of Pentagon, military and intelligence officials declined to provide details of the reported attacks, which, according to ABC News, included American missiles.
But officials in Washington offered words of support for the government of Yemen in tackling international terrorism. “Yemen should be commended for actions against Al Qaeda,” said Bryan G. Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. “Al Qaeda poses a serious threat to Yemeni, U.S. and regional interests.”
It would be months before the real story of that cruise missile strike would be reported in US media–a story that obviously was very different from the account US and Yemeni government officials gave at the time.
Which raises the fundamental question: Is there any reason to trust the official denials in the first place? The New York Times still seems to think so.
So just how does someone “appear” to be “suspected”?
And it always bears pointing out that even when strikes murder their “targets” (i.e., living, breathing human beings), such acts are blatantly illegal.
I always come back to what the reaction would be if Cuba were to send drones over south Florida in search of anti-government terrorists (You know, the kind who blow up civilian airliners), and struck their “targets”, leaving any innocent bystanders unscathed.
Somehow I don’t believe the Times and the rest of the corpress would cover that in quite the same fashion.
SHE NEVER SAW IT COMING….
We now take the prerogatives of god and send down his thunderbolts on the flimsiest of pretenses/suspicions–“That’ll teach them to bring children into a battle zone,” eh? JWC
> So just how does someone “appear” to be “suspected”?
Easy, the suspects wear beards and they speak English with an Arabic accent – don’t you see any movies?
Of course, once dead, it is hard to ascertain the accent. In that case, a beard should be enough. Of course, if the head is burnt or blown off, it is hard to ascertain beard-wearing. In that case, one has to rely on the circumstantial evidence alone.
Let’s not forget that the Yemeni journalist who figured out the US did that cluster bomb strike in ’09 spent a couple of years in jail at the request of Barry O. because he was “thought to be a terrorist”.
who gave us the right to drone people? AL Qaeda or not, and we should quit saying we are fighting Al Qaeda, it is already proven we created Al Qaeda, to have an excuse to bomb many countries that we have interest in them, Syria proved it we aid Al Qaeda, the whole worl knows that, except American people still believe we are the good guys.
This is horrible of course if even one civilian is killed.And the joke was just terrible.We are not even arguing that.The question to FAIR and other investigative journalists is this.Are the strikes being launched at suspected terrorists,or innocent civilians sitting down to their dinner?Or both at once?If that is so are we using incorrect targeting strategies ,and protocol for that targeting?If terrorists are being killed it is one thing.If collateral damage is too high(and lets face it ,one innocent is too high)Then we need to rethink this .We need to look at the over all legality’s within international law.Our military’s job is to hunt down those who hit us on 911,no matter where they may hide.Their methodology(the terrorists) is to hide among human shields.One thing is certain.Our government covering up mistakes is a win win….for those terrorists.
The US media and punditry’s attempt to cast the victims of our video murders as somehow terrorist is a slight of hand to distracts us from the real fact:
Even if one of those unperson Muslims stands there (in their own country, BTW) and screams he is going to bring the US down, he cannot according to international law be extrajudicially executed (assassinated). Obama and his predecessor are both war criminals. They are killing innocent people without trial. How are they different from thugs in gangs?
Hey, m.e., was that little girl lying on the board in the photo part of the terrorists winning?