PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to this week's edition of The Porter Report with investigative journalist and historian Gareth Porter. Thanks for joining us, Gareth.
http://www.pdamerica.org/news/item/...om-us-drone-attacks-much-higher-than-reported ( full text) (video)
PORTER: Well, this week I—over the weekend I just published a major investigative report on the real level of civilian casualties in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, as based on the actual data gathered by a Pakistani lawyer for the families of the victims of drone strikes, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London based on their interviews with eyewitnesses and others in the areas where the strikes take place. This is really the first effort to come up with a set of data that can be compared with the data that's been published by the New America Foundation on its website, something they call "Year of the Drone", which keeps track of every strike that is covered in the news media and keeps a running tally on casualties. And so what we can do now is see that the New America Foundation has been systematically underestimating or underplaying, underreporting the number of civilian casualties in the U.S. drone war in Pakistan over the past three years.
JAY: And what are the numbers that now—that you think are correct?
PORTER: Well, the numbers—there are a lot of numbers my piece, and in order to really boil this down to the simplest terms, what I've done is to combine all of these strikes in 24—the data on all the strikes in 24 cases, which involved 11 strikes which the Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar gathered material on and 13 strikes on which the Bureau of Investigative Journalism gathered material. And combining all that data, what we find is that the number of—the proportion, I should say, of the civilian casualties and the total casualties which was reported by the New America Foundation as being 38 percent in these 24 strikes is in fact 70 percent.
That's a huge difference, an 84 percent increase in the proportion of civilians in those casualties reported in these 24 strikes. So it's really quite a major revelation. It's a major reversal, because previously civilian casualties were being reported as a fairly—certainly much less than 50 percent, and now they're much more than 50 percent of the casualties in this set of 24 strikes.
JAY: And of course that's leading to increased outrage in Pakistan.
PORTER: Well, definitely. I mean, these strikes, everybody understands that—I mean, no one denies that the drone war in Pakistan has created enormous anti-American sentiment throughout the country. And particularly, of course, in the areas where the strikes have taken place, they generate not just anger, but I think it's generally agreed that the Taliban and al-Qaeda and other groups have been able to generate more enthusiasm for support for the jihadist sentiment that they represent. So, I mean, it's—by every measure that is available, there's no question that these strikes are doing precisely the opposite of what they're supposed to do, which is allegedly to weaken the al-Qaeda hold on the territory, like North and South Waziristan, where the strikes are taking place.
And what we can say, really, you know, it seems to me, is that this new set of data underlines more clearly than ever before that what's really going on is that U.S. policy on the drone war is not being guided by any objective assessment of U.S. interests, security interests or any other interests; it's being guided by the bureaucratic interests of the CIA, which is, of course, responsible for the drone war in Pakistan and elsewhere, and which has a vested interest in keeping this war going because their budget, their manpower, their mission has been built up for the past few years around the drone war in Pakistan in particular.
JAY: And in today's, Monday's Guardian, Glenn Greenwald writes that the U.S. is actually using what they call a sort of double tap—in other words, essentially, a second strike after the first drone strike, deliberately targeting rescuers, which one would think has to enhance or increase the possibilities of killing civilians.
PORTER: Right. And let me make it clear that the 13 strikes that I talked about having been researched by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism were all strikes which are precisely the ones that you were talking about. They're strikes that are targeted against either mourners at funerals of victims of previous drone strikes or striking at the rescuers of people who have been either killed or wounded in previous drone strikes. So, obviously, this is a very important category of drone strikes. And what we find is that the percentage of civilians (again, in the strikes that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism researched, based on local context, eyewitnesses and others) was much higher. It was roughly twice as high as it had been reported by the( New America Foundation.http://newamerica.net/ )
http://www.pdamerica.org/news/item/...om-us-drone-attacks-much-higher-than-reported ( full text) (video)
PORTER: Well, this week I—over the weekend I just published a major investigative report on the real level of civilian casualties in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, as based on the actual data gathered by a Pakistani lawyer for the families of the victims of drone strikes, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London based on their interviews with eyewitnesses and others in the areas where the strikes take place. This is really the first effort to come up with a set of data that can be compared with the data that's been published by the New America Foundation on its website, something they call "Year of the Drone", which keeps track of every strike that is covered in the news media and keeps a running tally on casualties. And so what we can do now is see that the New America Foundation has been systematically underestimating or underplaying, underreporting the number of civilian casualties in the U.S. drone war in Pakistan over the past three years.
JAY: And what are the numbers that now—that you think are correct?
PORTER: Well, the numbers—there are a lot of numbers my piece, and in order to really boil this down to the simplest terms, what I've done is to combine all of these strikes in 24—the data on all the strikes in 24 cases, which involved 11 strikes which the Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar gathered material on and 13 strikes on which the Bureau of Investigative Journalism gathered material. And combining all that data, what we find is that the number of—the proportion, I should say, of the civilian casualties and the total casualties which was reported by the New America Foundation as being 38 percent in these 24 strikes is in fact 70 percent.
That's a huge difference, an 84 percent increase in the proportion of civilians in those casualties reported in these 24 strikes. So it's really quite a major revelation. It's a major reversal, because previously civilian casualties were being reported as a fairly—certainly much less than 50 percent, and now they're much more than 50 percent of the casualties in this set of 24 strikes.
JAY: And of course that's leading to increased outrage in Pakistan.
PORTER: Well, definitely. I mean, these strikes, everybody understands that—I mean, no one denies that the drone war in Pakistan has created enormous anti-American sentiment throughout the country. And particularly, of course, in the areas where the strikes have taken place, they generate not just anger, but I think it's generally agreed that the Taliban and al-Qaeda and other groups have been able to generate more enthusiasm for support for the jihadist sentiment that they represent. So, I mean, it's—by every measure that is available, there's no question that these strikes are doing precisely the opposite of what they're supposed to do, which is allegedly to weaken the al-Qaeda hold on the territory, like North and South Waziristan, where the strikes are taking place.
And what we can say, really, you know, it seems to me, is that this new set of data underlines more clearly than ever before that what's really going on is that U.S. policy on the drone war is not being guided by any objective assessment of U.S. interests, security interests or any other interests; it's being guided by the bureaucratic interests of the CIA, which is, of course, responsible for the drone war in Pakistan and elsewhere, and which has a vested interest in keeping this war going because their budget, their manpower, their mission has been built up for the past few years around the drone war in Pakistan in particular.
JAY: And in today's, Monday's Guardian, Glenn Greenwald writes that the U.S. is actually using what they call a sort of double tap—in other words, essentially, a second strike after the first drone strike, deliberately targeting rescuers, which one would think has to enhance or increase the possibilities of killing civilians.
PORTER: Right. And let me make it clear that the 13 strikes that I talked about having been researched by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism were all strikes which are precisely the ones that you were talking about. They're strikes that are targeted against either mourners at funerals of victims of previous drone strikes or striking at the rescuers of people who have been either killed or wounded in previous drone strikes. So, obviously, this is a very important category of drone strikes. And what we find is that the percentage of civilians (again, in the strikes that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism researched, based on local context, eyewitnesses and others) was much higher. It was roughly twice as high as it had been reported by the( New America Foundation.http://newamerica.net/ )
Last edited:
