May, 12 2011, 02:18pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Beyond bin Laden Killing: Drone Strikes the "New Norm"
Reuters is reporting this morning: "A U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles at militants in Pakistan on Thursday, killing eight of them, Pakistani officials said, the third such attack since U.S. forces found and killed Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani hideout."
WASHINGTON
Reuters is reporting this morning: "A U.S. drone aircraft fired missiles at militants in Pakistan on Thursday, killing eight of them, Pakistani officials said, the third such attack since U.S. forces found and killed Osama bin Laden in his Pakistani hideout."
KATHY KELLY, kathy at vcnv.org
Kelly is with Voices for Creative Nonviolence and was recently in Afghanistan. She wrote the piece "The Predators: Where is Your Democracy?" which states: "World attention has been focused, however briefly, on questions of legality regarding the killing of Osama bin Laden. But, with the increasing use of Predator drones to kill suspected 'high value targets' in Pakistan and Afghanistan, extrajudicial killings by U.S. military forces have become the new norm.
"Just three days after Osama bin Laden was killed, an attack employing remote-control aerial drones killed fifteen people in Pakistan and wounded four. CNN reports that their Islamabad bureau has counted four drone strikes over the last month and a half since the March 17 drone attack which killed 44 people in Pakistan's tribal region. This most recent suspected strike was the 21st this year. There were 111 strikes in 2010. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated that 957 innocent civilians were killed in 2010."
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
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