As Obama Expands Drone War, Activists & Victims' Advocates Join D.C. Summit on Civilian Toll

[The Northerner]

DemocracyNow.org - We speak with Pakistani lawyer, Shahzad Akbar, who represents families of civilians killed in U.S. drone strikes. After first being denied a visa, he is in Washington, D.C., to attend a Drone Summit organized by human rights groups to call attention to the lethal rise in the number of drone strikes during the Obama administration. The human rights group, Reprieve, estimates up to 2,283 people have been killed by unmanned U.S. drones in Pakistan since 2004. The summit comes as the United States pursues a radical expansion of how it carries out drone strikes inside Yemen. The so-called "signature" strike policy went into effect earlier this month allowing the U.S. to strike without knowing identity of the targets, and at least one attack has already been launched. We're also joined by Medea Benjamin, the cofounder of CODEPINK, one of the organizers of this weekend's summit. Her new book is called, "Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control," which also examines the rise in the use of drones for domestic surveillance in the United States.