Trump Has Killed More Civilians with Illegal Drone Strikes in 9 Months Than Obama Did in 8 Years

By Rachel Blevins
 
While the mainstream media focuses on anything but the current state of U.S. intervention in the Middle East, the Trump Administration is breaking records by accumulating a horrific number of civilian deaths.

Former President Obama earned the nickname of “Drone King” when he dramatically escalated the use of drone strikes, while also downplaying the number of innocent civilians who became “collateral damage.” In the two years that his administration devoted to publicly spending millions of taxpayer dollars to fight the Islamic State group, the estimated civilian death toll ranged from 2,300 to 3,400, according to Airwars, an organization tracking deaths in the war against ISIS.

President Trump has been in office for just 9 months, and he has already surpassed Obama’s murderous record with estimated numbers as high as 4,500 civilian deaths.

Trump made headlines in December 2015, when he declared that if elected, he would not only kill members of ISIS—he would also “take out their families.” He is following through on that promise, according to a report from Steven Feldstein, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.

Feldstein noted that researchers have documented the rise of “frequent killing of entire families in likely coalition airstrikes” under the Trump Administration. This trend led to “the deaths of at least 57 women and 52 children in Iraq and Syria” in May.

Continue Reading at ..... https://www.activistpost.com/2017/10/trump-killed-civilians-illegal-drone-strikes-9-months-obama-8-years.html

Email Claims Hillary Clinton Considered Having a Drone Attack Carried Out on Julian Assange

"Can't we just drone this guy [Julian Assange]?" ~ Hillary Clinton

 

Arjun Walia October 3, 2016

http://www.collective-evolution.com

By now it’s clear: Whistleblowers like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden threaten the United States, but perhaps not in the way we have been told. The United States government maintains that leaking classified information threatens national security, yet fail to mention how much information has been withheld from the public under the guise of preserving that security. This is why people like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden are heroes.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that many of these information leaks do not threaten national security, but rather expose the corruption lying at the heart of U.S. politics.

Assange has been releasing a number of previously classified documents about Hillary Clinton, putting a major damper on her campaign and exposing millions of people to information they would not have seen otherwise. Although there has been little mainstream media coverage of these revelations from Assange, the fact remains he has shared much that the public needs and deserves to know.

Drone Pilots Have Bank Accounts And Credit Cards Frozen By Feds For Exposing US Murder

Source: www.thefreethoughtproject.com



The U.S. Government failed to deter them through threats of criminal prosecution, and clumsy attempts to intimidate their families. Now four former Air Force drone operators-turned-whistleblowers have had their credit cards and bank accounts frozen, according to human rights attorney Jesselyn Radack.

.@wikileaks My #drone #whistleblowers went public this wk & now their #CreditCards + #BankAccts are #frozen. Advice? pic.twitter.com/4wymwZgeZ9

— unR̶A̶D̶A̶C̶K̶ted (@JesselynRadack) November 22, 2015

“My drone operators went public this week and now their credit cards and bank accounts are frozen,” Radack lamented on her Twitter feed (the spelling of her post has been conventionalized). This was done despite the fact that none of them has been charged with a criminal offense – but this is a trivial formality in the increasingly Sovietesque American National Security State.

Michael Haas, Brandon Bryant, Cian Westmoreland and Stephen Lewis, who served as drone operators in the US Air Force, have gone public with detailed accounts of the widespread corruption and institutionalized indifference to civilian casualties that characterize the program. Some of those disclosures were made in the recent documentary Drone; additional details have been provided in an open letter from the whistleblowers to President Obama, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and CIA Director John Brennan.

Four drone pilots call strikes a 'driving force for terrorism'

 

Four former US Air Force drone pilots have come forward with a blistering critique of the current drone program, first published in The Guardian. In an open letter addressed to President Obama, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, and CIA director John Brennan, the pilots argue the civilian casualties and resulting devastation from US drone strikes have radicalized regions where it is used, fueling the rise of ISIS and other terrorist organizations.

"This administration and its predecessors have built a drone program that is one of the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world," the letter reads.

According to the four pilots, the damage from the drone program's isn't limited to America's reputation. All four pilots report suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and say subsequent medical care and benefits have been inadequate. The letter also references gross mismanagement of the program, citing Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden as examples that compelled them to speak out. "Silence would violate the very oaths we took to support and defend the Constitution," the pilots write.

Jermey Scahill Talks About The New Investigation Into The Drone Killings of Innocent Civilians

Al Jazeera News interviews Jeremy Scahill, best-selling author of Blackwater and Dirty Wars, about his recent whistleblower-sourced story “The Assassination Complex” on The Intercept which begins “From his first days as commander in chief, the drone has been President Barack Obama’s weapon of choice, used by the military and the CIA to hunt down and kill the people his administration has deemed — through secretive processes, without indictment or trial — worthy of execution.”

President Obama Under Fire For Ordering Drone Kills That Murdered Hundreds of Innocent Civilians

The situation is suddenly very ripe for President Obama's immediate removal from office.  In that same context, with her Benghazi testimony scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 22 before the House Select Committee, it is also to be expected that Hillary Clinton will soon be dumped as well.

Over the weekend, President Obama was stung by four devastating attacks on his crimes in office.  Most dramatically, new details continue to emerge from the Drone Papers, the leaked documents that show that President Obama, from his earliest days in office, was in charge of a global assassination program, run out of the White House Situation Room, in which thousands of people were targeted for assassination in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, under Obama's drone-kill program.  An estimated 90 percent of the victims of this mass murder program were not even on the target lists, personally signed by Obama. They were, however, immediately classified as terrorists and enemy combatants to cover up the magnitude of the Obama crimes.

The Drone Papers were only first made public on Thursday, but already, Amnesty International has demanded a thorough Congressional investigation.  More to the point, Lyndon LaRouche demanded over the weekend that Obama be immediately removed from office, either through impeachment or the invoking of the 25th Amendment—and then put on trial before a criminal court for mass murder.

There’s A New Edward Snowden Whistleblower!!!

for the leaked drone papers visit ....... https://theintercept.com/drone-papers

Leaked “Drone Papers” Reveal 90% of People Killed in U.S. Drone Strikes are Innocent Civilians

By Jay Syrmopoulos

Washington, D.C. – An anonymous whistleblower within the U.S. intelligence community provided a cache of classified intelligence documents to The Intercept, which revealed the extremely dysfunctional nature of the American drone warfare/targeted assassination program.

The eight-part investigation, which included documents, analysis, slides, and visuals, was released on Thursday as “The Drone Papers,” by The Intercept.

The insightful reporting by The Intercept’s Jeremy Scahill and fellow investigative journalists analyzed and explored the manner in which drone strikes have been carried out by the U.S. in Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and Afghanistan; ultimately questioning the legitimacy and legality of these extrajudicial killings.

The stunning array of classified information revealed an extreme lack of precision in the drone assassination campaign, with one document reporting that “nearly 90 percent of people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets” over one five-month period.

In an astonishing act of civil courage, one American just shattered an unspeakable lie. https://t.co/2H81IMKPha pic.twitter.com/OwIqygfpqJ

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 15, 2015

It takes 28 civilian lives to kill a single terrorist leader – UK human rights group

 


Eliminating a specific terrorist leader is a ‘targeted killing’ according to the US. However, Britain’s Reprieve human-rights group calculated that it takes about 28 innocent lives to take out a single terrorist leader, often with multiple drone strikes.

The UK human-rights group gave The Guardian the latest statistics (November 24) compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, on collateral damage from American drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

The statistics are the most striking in 10 years: attempts to kill 41 terrorist leaders resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,147 people, the vast majority – civilians and families. 

Political Cartoon: Blasty the Drone, To Protect & Swerve

Published on Jul 20, 2014

The rise of killer drones abroad continues, as does the rise of fireworks-photographing, beer-delivering drones at home. With a huge variety of uses and a very politicized, lethal start, these robots in the sky promise to be one of the most difficult-to-regulate gadgets in the United States. (You can read more at: http://www.MarkFiore.com)

Artists put faces of child drone victims on display for UAV operators

Published on Apr 8, 2014

The victims of drones are not faceless individuals: That's the message an artist collective hopes to convey with its new project. Displaying giant photos of children in Pakistani areas typically targeted by the military, the artists hope the oversized images will be seen by drone operators sitting thousands of miles away, flying the unmanned vehicles. The project uses the hashtag #NotABugSplat, referencing how one drone operator described what victims look like when viewed through a drone's camera. Kathy Kelly, a coordinator at Voices for Creative Nonviolence, speaks with RT's Ameera David about the responsibility the artists feel they have to speak out on the topic of drone use.

Anti Drone Clothing

Former CIA Director, David Petraeus, Doesn't Want to Talk About Drones

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RT News & Ben Swann: Obama violated his own rules with Yemen drone strike

Jesse Ventura goes off the grid 'so that the drones can't find me'

Published time: February 05, 2014 18:45

Former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura (AFP Photo / Brendan Smialovsky)

 

Surveillance drones haven't started hovering outside and above the homes of Americans en masse just yet, but former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura claims he's left the United States just in case.

Ventura, a 62-year-old professional wrestler-turned-politician, says his new Ora TV program 'Off the Grid' is being filmed in secret somewhere in Mexico where the all-seeing eye of American unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, don't have a chance of finding him.

Speaking to CNBC on Tuesday from an “undisclosed location” south of the border, Ventura said there was a reason he doesn't reveal his each and every movement.

“I’m off the grid. I move about with my TV show so that the drones can’t find me and you won’t know exactly where I am,” Ventura said.

According to Ventura, his Ora TV program will continue to broadcast “as long as we have solar power and we can reach the satellite.”
 
“I view the United States, today, much like East Berlin. And I’m off the grid. I’ve tried for 20 years to warn the country about the Democrats and Republicans, and nobody’s listening,” he said
“I now view the United States from the outside, and I don’t like what I see,” added Ventura, who won Minnesota's gubernatorial election back in 1998. “You know what the favorite T-shirt was off the grid down here a couple years ago? A picture of [former President] George Bush, and it said weapon of mass destruction. Is that the way we want the United States portrayed throughout the world? I don’t think so.”

CIA keeps drone program after Pentagon blows up civilians in Yemen

Published on Jan 17, 2014

Another Yemeni civilian - a farmer - was killed in a US drone strike on Wednesday in an attack apparently intended for suspected Islamist militants. Also on Wednesday, the US House approved a $1.1 trillion spending bill that contains a secret provision keeping the drone program under the umbrella of the CIA. Critics had hoped the lethal counterterrorism operations would be moved to the Pentagon's purview, where there was the potential for more transparency. RT's Ameera David speaks with Robert Naiman, policy editor for Just Foreign Policy, about the latest developments in the US drone program.

SecureTeam10 Update - November 25, 2013

11/25/2013 - NEW LEAKED SPY DRONES - FEMA PRISON SHIPS & MARTIAL LAW PLANS FOR 2014

Published on Nov 25, 2013

11/25/2013 - Today we cover the happenings in America as 2013 comes to a close. What has happened this past year and what big brother has in store for us next... Stay tuned.

How Could Only FIVE Members Of Congress Show Up To Look Their Drone Strike Victims In Their Eyes?

US drone strikes could be classed as war crimes, says Amnesty International

Joint report with Human Rights Watch judges US attacks in Yemen and Pakistan to have broken international human rights law

A house in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan destroyed by a drone missile in 2008. Eighteen people including Islamist militants were killed. Photograph: Reuters

US officials responsible for the secret CIA drone campaign against suspected terrorists in Pakistan may have committed war crimes and should stand trial, a report by a leading human rights group warns. Amnesty International has highlighted the case of a grandmother who was killed while she was picking vegetables and other incidents which could have broken international laws designed to protect civilians.

The report is issued in conjunction with an investigation by Human Rights Watch detailing missile attacks in Yemen which the group believes could contravene the laws of armed conflict, international human rights law and Barack Obama's own guidelines on drones.

The reports are being published while Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister, is in Washington. Sharif has promised to tell Obama that the drone strikes – which have caused outrage in Pakistan – must end.

Getting to the bottom of individual strikes is exceptionally difficult in the restive areas bordering Afghanistan, where thousands of militants have settled. People are often terrified of speaking out, fearing retribution from both militants and the state, which is widely suspected of colluding with the CIA-led campaign.

Snowden leak: NSA heavily involved in CIA's drone warfare

Published on Oct 17, 2013

The latest leaked documents by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden show the extent the NSA has been involved with CIA counterterrorism activities, specifically drone strikes. In the past, the drone-strike program was presented as an exclusive initiative of the CIA, but the Snowden documents show that the program depends heavily on the NSA's ability to collect information from e-mails, phone calls and a myriad of other sources. In the meantime, Snowden's father Lon was able to visit the former government contractor in Russia this week, and arrived back in the US on Wednesday. RT's Ameera David has the NSA's response to the leaks about their involvement in drone warfare, as well as the advice Lon Snowden gave his son.