Obama Secretly Loosened Standards for Drone Killings in Pakistan – Sarah Lazare

While publicly vaunting drone strike reforms allegedly aimed at minimizing civilian deaths, President Barack Obama secretly loosened the standards for covert attacks in Pakistan, likely paving the way for the killing and wounding of an unknown number of non-combatants, the Wall Street Journal revealed Sunday. The news follows last week’s revelation that CIA drone strikes in January killed one U.S. and one Italian hostage in …

Obama’s drone warfare: Assassination made routine – Patrick Martin

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of President Obama’s announcement Thursday that two hostages of Al Qaeda, an American and an Italian, were killed in a US drone missile strike in Pakistan is the lack of any significant reaction from official political circles or the media. There was a certain amount of tut-tutting in the press and expressions of sympathy for …

Obama’s ‘Openness’ and Deceit – Robert Parry

In disclosing the deaths of two Western hostages in a U.S. drone strike on an Al-Qaeda compound, President Barack Obama said on Thursday that he had ordered the declassification of the secret operation because “the United States is a democracy committed to openness in good times and in bad.” But the reality of the past six years has been that his administration …