U.S. Senator: Drone Attacks Have Killed 4,700 People
Voice of Russia
February 21, 2013
US drones killed 4,700 people worldwide
“Sometimes you hit innocent people and I hate that.”
A US senator has estimated the total number of drone attack fatalities at 4,700 people, including civilians. As many have been murdered in America’s continuing secret bombing raids the world over.
This is the third time an American lawmaker speaks on the death toll of the US drone war.
“We have killed 4,700,” U.S. Republican senator Lindsey Graham acknowledged at a meeting in Easley in South Carolina on Wednesday.
“Sometimes you hit innocent people and I hate that,” he said, commenting on the use of drones by the United States.
The figure named by Sen. Graham matches the high end of a tally by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, who said the number killed in hundreds of drone strikes was between 3,072 and 4,756.
Those are the first estimates of the drone related loss of life openly cited by a U.S. official.
Washington has been using remote controlled unmanned aircraft in overseas operations since 2004.
Voice of Russia, Interfax
Sundry statements on drone warfare
http://www.politico.com/gallery/2013/02/pro-con-best-quotes-about-drones/000809-011443.html
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The US government justified its attack on Saddam Hussein in Iraq and against Gaddafi in Libya, and elsewhere, with claims that these despots were killing their own citizens without trial or due process. It is true that extra-juridical killing is the opposite of justice in a free society.
…
When we talk about killing as if it were golf, we debase ourselves. And when the government kills and we put our heads in the sand, woe to us when there is no place to hide.
http://original.antiwar.com/paul/2013/02/18/the-drone-threat/
(and another former US official who mentioned boots on the ground)
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/madeleine-albright-drones-very-effective-87777.html?hp=r14
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and more interesting questions…
It is important to consider that the technology the US now possesses will soon be available to other states and non-state actors. So too the legal justifications American leaders are now using to give themselves absolution may also one day be used by others.
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/usa-war-on-terror/2245-drone-president-obama-says-he-has-legal-right-to-murder-anyone-anywhere-at-will
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(which was not just activist conjecture…the “other state” drone warfare apparently already is under consideration by China.)
Liu Yuejin, director of the Public Security Ministry’s anti-drug bureau, told the state-run Global Times newspaper Monday the plan called for bombing drug lord Naw Kham’s mountain hideout in northeastern Burma…
Top drone exporter Israel has sold its aircraft to a variety of countries, including Nigeria, India and Russia.
http://www.voanews.com/content/china-drone-threat-highlights-new-global-arms-race/1608458.html