Obama-Led Drone Strikes Kill Innocents 90% of the Time

By Andrew Blake. Drone strikes conducted by the United States during a five-month-long campaign in Afghanistan caused the deaths of unintended targets nearly nine out of ten times, leaked intelligence documents suggest.

The apparent 10 percent success rate with regards to a specific span in America’s drone war is among the most damning revelations to surface so far as the result of a series of articles published by The Intercept on Thursday this week which rely on classified and confidential intelligence documents supplied by an unknown source.

“These docs illustrate what a video game, drained of all humanity, these drone assassinations have become,” founding editor Glenn Greenwald tweeted on Thursday.

Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor now in exile, has previously supplied journalists at the online news site with top-secret documents detailing the intelligence community’s eavesdropping efforts — the likes of which has sparked international debates concerning privacy and civil liberties implications, among other factor, as well as calls for legislative reform in the U.S. and abroad.

But the latest trove of documents — previously unpublished reports concerning suspected terrorists, signals intelligence gathering and, ultimately, the launching of often lethal drone strikes — are the apparent offerings of a new source likely to soon be scorned by the U.S. government as well. (Read more from “Obama-Led Drone Strikes Kill Innocents 90% of the Time” HERE)

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Fact Check: Obama Claims Afghan Combat Mission Over – Despite Airstrikes, Special Ops

By Jennifer Griffin and Lucas Tomlison. President Obama may be stretching when he assures the American public that combat operations in Afghanistan ended last year.

The president repeated the claim Thursday as he announced 5,500 U.S. troops would remain in Afghanistan after 2016. “Last December, more than 13 years after our nation was attacked by Al Qaeda on 9/11, America’s combat mission in Afghanistan came to responsible end,” Obama said from the White House, flanked by Vice President Biden, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joe Dunford and Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

But this year alone, the U.S. military has carried out more than 328 airstrikes, dropping 629 bombs since January, according to U.S. Air Force Central Command. That amounts to roughly one U.S. airstrike a day since the president announced that combat operations had ended during his State of the Union address in January. So far this year, 25 U.S. service members have been killed in Afghanistan.

During his January address, Obama said U.S. troops have moved to a “support role.” He said, “Together with our allies, we will complete our mission there by the end of this year, and America’s longest war will finally be over.”

Obama backed off his pledge Thursday to end the war by the end of the year, but maintained that the combat mission is over and said the mission of those staying behind will not change. The remaining U.S. forces will be based at three air bases in Bagram, Kandahar and Jalalabad, and will only be authorized to train Afghans and hunt Al Qaeda. (Read more from this story HERE)

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