The reliable Katie Bo Williams reports from the bowels of the U.S. intelligence community (That’s “IC” to some; the “deep state” to others).
In Defense One Williams has an update on U.S. drone wars.
The Trump administration has breathed new life into the CIA’s covert drone program, which Obama sought to suffocate by shifting control of drone attacks to the military in the final years of his presidency. Over the past two years, the spy agency has resumed conducting strikes, rather than passing intelligence to the Pentagon to carry out attacks.
In the process, the Trump White House has excused itself from the chore of reporting how many innocent bystanders have been killed or injured in the U.S. attacks (Spoiler alert: the most careful reporting indicates the figure is in the thousands.)
The reliable Katie Bo Williams reports;
Overturning an Obama-era rule by executive order, President Trump declared that the director of national intelligence need no longer issue “an unclassified summary of the number of strikes undertaken by the United States government against terrorist targets outside areas of active hostilities, as well as assessments of combatant and non-combatant deaths resulting from those strikes, among other information.”
So you want to know how many innocent people are killed by U.S. policymakers? You’re not allowed to know.
Source: How Many Civilians Die in Covert US Drone Strikes? It Just Got Harder to Say – Defense One
