Obama admits civilians killed during Bin Laden raid

A couple interesting takeaways emerged from a recent CNN interview with President Obama regarding the use of drones. First, the president continues to push the false, or at best, misleading claim that “drones cause less collateral damage than conventional weapons.” Secondly, foreign policy expert Micah Zenko points out that Obama may have slipped up and admitted that innocent civilians were killed during the raid.

If you look at, for example, the Bin Laden raid, there were some people there who may have been related to Bin Laden, but were not themselves terrorist operatives, they got killed. – President Obama

You can dig into the data on drone strikes here.

Since Obama entered office, 462 drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia have killed an estimated 289 civilians, or one civilian per 1.6 strikes. These estimates are an average of the ranges provided by three research NGOs: the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, New America Foundation, and Long War Journal. (The U.S. government releases no data on the number of drone strikes or casualties in these countries, claiming the “covert” missions are classified information.)

In short, drones are far less precise than airstrikes conducted by piloted aircraft, which themselves also conduct “precision strikes.” Drones result in far more civilian fatalities per each bomb dropped.

**Since the anti-Islamic State air campaign began in August 2014, coalition airstrikes totaling 41,697 have killed approximately 577 civilians, or one civilian per 72 bombs dropped.

It goes without saying that, in addition to being wrong or lying, drone strikes act as a recruiting tool for terrorist groups in the Middle East. Duh.