"What Trump is doing is expanding something that existed before," says Mustafa Qadri, who investigated earlier drone "Double Taps"
Obama acknowledged that he was unexpectedly skilled at authorizing drone strikes, stating, “Turns out I’m really good at killing people,” reflecting on the extensive use of drone warfare during his presidency. This comment highlights the controversial nature of his administration's targeted killing program.
He conducted a total of 542 drone strikes, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 3,797 individuals, including 324 civilians.
Obama acknowledged that he was unexpectedly skilled at authorizing drone strikes, stating, “Turns out I’m really good at killing people,” reflecting on the extensive use of drone warfare during his presidency. This comment highlights the controversial nature of his administration's targeted killing program.
He conducted a total of 542 drone strikes, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 3,797 individuals, including 324 civilians.
Barack Obama, 2015, answering questions about drone strikes
On February 6th, 2012, fourteen years before the current controversy over Venezuelan boat bombings, Scott Shane of the New York Times wrote a story with the ominous title, U.S. Said to Target Rescuers in Drone Strikes. Though the phenomenon had been mentioned in academic reports previously, the Times piece was one of the first press organs in America to describe “follow-up” drone strikes, which came to be better known as “double tap” strikes.
The piece explained that British and Pakistani journalists had counted 50 civilians had died in recent “follow-up strikes” that sources on the ground claimed were intended to kill rescuers and first responders. The Times report elicited a bizarre non-denial denial from Barack Obama’s White House, in which an unnamed spokesman said we should “wonder” about “misinformation” coming from “elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help Al Qaeda succeed.”
Because the U.S. and its allies were releasing so little information about these strikes, Amnesty International in 2013 sent a researcher named Mustafa Qadri to Pakistan to try to collect information about them. Currently the CEO and founder of a human rights organization called Equidem, Qadri conducted 60 interviews, mainly at nine strike sites in south Waziristan, Pakistan (the Pakistani government wouldn’t allow entrance into more heavily-bombed northern Waziristan). Qadri ended up compiling a long report that described the U.S. as complicit in a variety of grisly offenses. The first known strike took place in the village of Dhok in 2004, but after January, 2009, “President Barack Obama markedly expanded the use of drone aircraft for killings.”
Qadri put named sources to accounts of drone killings. This was rare, because there was significant fear of reprisal by Pakistani authorities at the time. He nonetheless detailed deaths of people like 68-year old Mamani Bibi, who was so accustomed to seeing drones that she continued work outside gathering okra at the sight of one on October 24th, 2012, until she was blown up in front of her grandchildren (who described the “terrible smell” and the site of her empty shoes) by at least two Hellfire missiles. Even more relevant to the present was Qadri’s documentation of a July 6, 2012 attack in the the village of Zowi Sidgi, where at least eight people were killed instantly in a first drone attack. When villagers rushed and found “body parts everywhere… bodies without heads and bodies without hands or legs,” people came with “stretchers, blankets, and water” until they heard a second missile coming and ran in all directions. At least eight more people were killed in this “second strike,” of which Qadri documented many. As he wrote:
The piece explained that British and Pakistani journalists had counted 50 civilians had died in recent “follow-up strikes” that sources on the ground claimed were intended to kill rescuers and first responders. The Times report elicited a bizarre non-denial denial from Barack Obama’s White House, in which an unnamed spokesman said we should “wonder” about “misinformation” coming from “elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help Al Qaeda succeed.”
Because the U.S. and its allies were releasing so little information about these strikes, Amnesty International in 2013 sent a researcher named Mustafa Qadri to Pakistan to try to collect information about them. Currently the CEO and founder of a human rights organization called Equidem, Qadri conducted 60 interviews, mainly at nine strike sites in south Waziristan, Pakistan (the Pakistani government wouldn’t allow entrance into more heavily-bombed northern Waziristan). Qadri ended up compiling a long report that described the U.S. as complicit in a variety of grisly offenses. The first known strike took place in the village of Dhok in 2004, but after January, 2009, “President Barack Obama markedly expanded the use of drone aircraft for killings.”
Qadri put named sources to accounts of drone killings. This was rare, because there was significant fear of reprisal by Pakistani authorities at the time. He nonetheless detailed deaths of people like 68-year old Mamani Bibi, who was so accustomed to seeing drones that she continued work outside gathering okra at the sight of one on October 24th, 2012, until she was blown up in front of her grandchildren (who described the “terrible smell” and the site of her empty shoes) by at least two Hellfire missiles. Even more relevant to the present was Qadri’s documentation of a July 6, 2012 attack in the the village of Zowi Sidgi, where at least eight people were killed instantly in a first drone attack. When villagers rushed and found “body parts everywhere… bodies without heads and bodies without hands or legs,” people came with “stretchers, blankets, and water” until they heard a second missile coming and ran in all directions. At least eight more people were killed in this “second strike,” of which Qadri documented many. As he wrote:
How could the USA attempt to justify the second missile strike which appeared to target those who had gone to rescue people injured in the first strike and recover the dead? Attacking the injured and those who are hors de combat is prohibited under international humanitarian law; and medical personnel and first-responders trying to treat the wounded must be respected and protected.
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