Classified Report Shows America's Drones Aren't Just Killing Al Qaeda Members [View all]

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http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/classified-report-shows-americas-drones-arent-just-killing-al-qaeda-members/274835/



The Obama administration's drone attacks have not just targeted Al Qaeda leaders, but a wide variety of groups and individuals in Pakistan, according to classified intelligence documents obtained by McClatchy's Jonathan Landay.

"At least 265 of up to 482 people who the U.S. intelligence reports estimated the CIA killed during a 12-month period ending in September 2011 were not senior al Qaida leaders but instead were 'assessed' as Afghan, Pakistani and unknown extremists," Landay writes in the story, published today.

This is despite the administration's rhetoric about how the CIA is using its drones solely to go after high-ranking Al Qaeda officials. Landay notes that when John Brennan gave the longest defense of the program on record, he "referred to al Qaida 73 times, the Afghan Taliban three times and mentioned no other group by name."

While my colleague Conor Friedersdorf has repeatedly questioned the moral and legal logic of the drone war, Micah Zenko of the Council of Foreign Relations ponders another dark possibility in the McClatchy article. The United States is leading the creation and adoption of drone technology and forming the norms for their deployment in ad hoc, hypocritical way. So what's going to happen when other countries get their own large drone fleets?