From Yahoo News
By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket
Just how many people have America’s drones killed? Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has put the death toll at 4,700—the first time an American official has publicly put a precise figure on the impact of strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles. The South Carolina lawmaker's office said he was citing an estimate already discussed on cable television.
Just how many people have America’s drones killed? Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has put the death toll at 4,700—the first time an American official has publicly put a precise figure on the impact of strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles. The South Carolina lawmaker's office said he was citing an estimate already discussed on cable television.
Graham,
a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, used the figure during
a question and answer session on Tuesday with the Rotary Club of Easley
in his home state of South Carolina. His remarks were first reported by the Easley Patch.
“We've
killed 4,700,” the lawmaker said. “Sometimes you hit innocent people,
and I hate that, but we're at war, and we've taken out some very senior
members of al-Qaida.”
Drone
strikes, President Barack Obama’s signature tactic for killing
suspected al-Qaida and other extremist fighters, have been “very
effective,” said Graham. “It's a weapon that needs to be used.”
Amid a controversy sparked by Obama’s targeted assassination of American citizens overseassuspected
of consorting with terrorists, Graham came down sharply against any
judicial oversight of the drone war, calling the idea “crazy.”
“I
can't imagine, in World War [II] for Roosevelt to have gone to a bunch
of judges and said, 'I need your permission before we can attack the
enemy,'” Graham said.
Drone war expert Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations noted on his blog that Graham’s figure lined up with the high-end estimate by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
“Either
Graham is a big fan of TBIJ’s work, or perhaps he inadvertently
revealed the U.S. government’s body count for nonbattlefield targeted
killings,” Zenko said.
Asked
about the disclosure, Graham's office forwarded a clip from MSNBC in
which the anchor cites the figure of 4,700 killed. Asked whether the
Obama Administration harbored any concerns about Graham's comments,
National Security Council Spokesman Tommy Vietor sent along a blog post
including the same clip.
Graham's remarks, as reported, did not specify whether he was discussing CIA drone strikes or military drone strikes.
Obama's expanded drone war has broad popular support in the U.S.,
according to a poll released earlier this month by the nonpartisan Pew
Research Center. That survey found 56 percent support such strikes and
26 percent oppose them. At the same time, 53 percent worry about
potential civilian casualties. But overseas it faces majority opposition, Pew found last year.
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