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Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Washington Post November 2, Pg. Like this: Like Loading Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:.
Email required Address never made public. Name required. I also draw on a decade of travel to and study of Yemen. These are suggestive, not conclusive, which is why many will still disagree with my opinions. Fair enough, although I think to suggest that there is no link between US bombings, dead civilians and tribesmen and the rapid growth of AQAP is something close to willful ignorance. One final point that struck me about the trio of Washington Post articles, and that is all the officials quoted seemed to operate on the assumption that the US can defeat AQAP on its own.
This is flat wrong. The US can do a lot of good in working with these allies, but it can also do a lot of bad. And that is what I see at the moment. By the US operating so heavy handed in Yemen — and with such a consistent patter of stories in the local press about civilians dying in US strikes — the US actually constrains many of its would-be allies by not giving them the space they need to confront al-Qaeda.
Now, none of this should be taken to suggest that the US should never strike in Yemen. Orders are given for demolition. Some structures go down. Some still stand. It is fair to ask what truly determines our success. Irate Twitterati want Superman to stop meddling. It is heartening that the effort to remove a chief minister is following constitutional norms.
The Obama administration has repeatedly claimed its drone strikes are precise and conducted in compliance with international law. Yet, information provided to online journal The Intercept by an unnamed source paints a different picture. The dichotomy between claims made by the Obama administration and the reports by these well-respected observers should attract scrutiny by the media.
I picked this five-year period because of the dramatic increase in drone strikes that occurred since Obama took office. My conclusion: both papers have substantially underrepresented the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen, failed to correct the public record when evidence emerged that their reporting was wrong and ignored the importance of international law.
The sample of articles included 81 NYT and 26 WP stories published within two days of particular strikes. The 81 NYT articles covered the same number of attacks.
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