Sen. Dianne Feinstein with then-nominee for CIA director John Brennan
A March 15 piece in the Washington Post tells us that the UN’s special human rights envoy found that the CIA’s drone strikes in Pakistan violate that country’s sovereignty. It also told readers that the drones had “resulted in far more civilian casualties than the U.S. government has recognized.”
Unfortunately, that message was muddled by reporter Richard Leiby‘s he said/she said approach to the question of civilian deaths:
Estimates of total militant deaths and civilian casualties vary widely. Independent confirmation is difficult in part because the strikes often occur in remote, dangerous tribal areas where Taliban insurgents and Al-Qaeda and its allied militants are active.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London has estimated that at least 411 civilians–or as many as 884–were among some 2,536 to 3,577 people killed in the CIA strikes in Pakistan. But Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D), who chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearings last month that confirmed new CIA Director John O. Brennan, put the number of civilian deaths considerably lower.
“The figures we have obtained from the executive branch, which we have done our utmost to verify, confirm that the number of civilian casualties that have resulted from such strikes each year has typically been in the single digits,” she said.
So, on the one hand, the Bureau has done extensive work documenting drone strikes. But then again you have a senator who heard from the government that it’s much lower.
There is, of course, a way to report the difference between Feinstein’s claim and other estimates. Conor Friesdorf did so in the Atlantic (2/11/13), contrasting the Bureau‘s totals with those of the New America Foundation and other researchers. None of these projects supports Feinstein’s claim. His conclusion:
There is no reason to treat Feinstein’s claim about civilians killed as if it is credible. All the publicly available evidence is arrayed against her position.
Yet she’s treated by the Post as one of two sides of the drone deaths debate.
Senator Feinstein uses the word “confirm” the same way corporate media reporters do: https://fair.org/blog/2013/02/04/when-confirmed-means-an-official-told-me-so/
so it wasn’t very long ago that then CIA director said there were like somewhere between 50 or 100 Al Qaeda members alive. I may not remember the exact number, but it’s not all that important. It was a sort of low-ish number. Compared with 3,000 people killed in Pakistan by drones. These seem inaccurate responses by us, such that we end up killing lots of innocent people.
California should vote Feinstein out; she voted first for Bush’s tax cuts and then for his wars. She never met a weapons system she didn’t like, and never an Israeli atrocity she didn’t rationalize or connive at. She’s the Cheney version of a Princess Warrior. She’ll spend your money and your kids in a bloodbath while the elites maintain her political nest.
This story should wait until someone/anyone has figures they can confirm ,even in the weakest sense.This is a story written before its time.And I always thing it funny that drones are blamed.Like when you read a story with the headline “SUV kills man”.Or “assault weapon kills six in school shooting”.That is written by a progressive lib.It is how they think.Obama is killing these people(if they be killed).It make no diffence that the weapon of choice is a drone.A shovel to the head would get the job done as well.As far as California voting out an idiot….don’t hold your breath.Pelosi rides herd there as i recall