News Release

Drone Killings: Obama Administration “Wedded to Drive-by Shooting Strategy”

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9781250081636CommonDreams.org reports: “‘Unprecedented’ Death Toll as U.S. Drone and Air Strikes Kill 150 in Somalia,” and “White House to Reveal Drone Strike Death Toll, But Secrecy Still Reigns.”

ANDREW COCKBURN, [currently in NYC] amcockburn at gmail.com, @andrewmcockburn
Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine, Cockburn is also author of the book Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins (just out in paperback). His recent articles include “Flying Blind,” and “How Assassination Sold Drugs and Promoted Terrorism.”

He said today: “We have the U.S. government claim that the victims were uniformly die-hard terrorists helpfully lined up in formation, but we’ve heard these kinds of things before from JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] or CENTCOM [United States Central Command]. They herald a great victory — and quite often we quietly find out weeks later that they in fact struck some children or a wedding party. We know very little about these strikes and the watch word should be skepticism. Whatever the details however it is clear that the Obama administration remains wedded to the same drive-by shooting strategy that has signally failed for the past fifteen years. This will do precisely nothing to bring peace and stability to Somalia.”

See Institute for Public Accuracy news release: “Drone Whistleblowers: U.S. Assassination Program Ignites Terrorism.”