{"id":15233,"date":"2012-05-29T09:34:19","date_gmt":"2012-05-29T17:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=15233"},"modified":"2012-05-29T09:34:19","modified_gmt":"2012-05-29T17:34:19","slug":"theres-no-such-thing-as-civilians-in-the-drone-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/29\/theres-no-such-thing-as-civilians-in-the-drone-war\/","title":{"rendered":"There&#8217;s No Such Thing as Civilians in the Drone War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2012\/05\/29\/militants_media_propaganda\/singleton\/\">Via Glenn Greenwald<\/a>, this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/05\/29\/world\/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=1&amp;_r=3\">New York Times report<\/a> on the Obama administration&#8217;s drone wars:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect <strong>counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants<\/strong>, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;The C.I.A. accounting has so troubled some administration officials outside the agency that they have brought their concerns to the White House. One called it \u201cguilt by association\u201d that has led to \u201cdeceptive\u201d estimates of civilian casualties.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,\u201d the official said. \u201cThey count the corpses and they\u2019re not really sure who they are.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Even when it is admitted that civilians are killed in drone strikes, it is inevitably described as legitimate &#8220;collateral damage.&#8221; There is a systematic refusal to call it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/05\/institutionalizing-extra-judicial-execution-obama-is-a-mass-murderer\/&amp;sa=U&amp;ei=kgjFT7fGJdDcggff0ZzVCQ&amp;ved=0CAUQFjAA&amp;client=internal-uds-cse&amp;usg=AFQjCNH3JRUYv2xezVAi46fxcPIxRU5DAg\">what it really is<\/a>, although former\u00a0general counsel at the CIA\u00a0John A. Rizzo, now <a href=\"CIA\">under investigation<\/a> in Obama&#8217;s war on whistleblowers, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/newsweek\/2011\/02\/13\/inside-the-killing-machine.html\">has referred to these killings as &#8220;murder<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Via Glenn Greenwald, this New York Times report on the Obama administration&#8217;s drone wars: Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-15233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15234,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15233\/revisions\/15234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15233"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=15233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}