“US Unleashes Three Days of Drone Strikes on Yemen, 55 Killed”
The first article starts to look in to the increased amount of civilian casualties from the drone strikes carried out in Yemen. In December 2013, a wedding party was mistaken for a target that needed to be attacked. The procession of vehicles for the wedding party was mistaken for a militant convoy and was attacked by drones, killing 15 members of the wedding party. Surprisingly the US said that its military was responsible. Last October, the Human Rights Watch released a report claiming that in 6 of the target killings conducted, 57 out of the 82 killed were civilian. Obama has claimed to raise the standards of drone attacks but one would question whether the Obama administration would support these new policies.
Strikes Totals in Pakistan and Yemen
The second article completely questions the numbers that are given on the total body counts for each strike. A new report finds that for every identified target that is killed, there are 28 unknown killed. The group Reprieve found that among 41 different people that were targeted throughout Pakistan and Yemen, 1000 unknown were killed. CIA attempted to kill the al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and in the process killed 76 children and 29 adults. Al-Zawahiri remains alive today. OF the 41 high valued targets, it took and an average of 3 strikes to kill them, 7 of which are still alive today.
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/3/a_precise_us_drone_war_report
These two article completely go against the claims on how successful the drone strikes have been. Through false id on various targets, success rate of destroying a target and by askew numbers reported deaths go against the continue use of drones. These uncertainties are the reason why the acceptance rate for their use is dropping each year that goes by.
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