David MacMichael: U.S. drone killings shame for Americans

By PressTVGlobalNews | Last updated: Jun 13, 2013 - 11:05:17 AM

Photo: Flickr/KAZVorpal

The killing of innocent civilians in U.S. drone attacks is “a shame and embarrassment” for the American people, says David MacMichael, a former senior CIA analyst.

A review of classified U.S. intelligence documents has revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency “did not always know” the identities of people it killed in assassination drone attacks in Pakistan.

According to an exclusive NBC News report, the CIA, which is in charge of the vast majority of U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan, could not confirm the identities of about a quarter of the people it killed in drone strikes over a 14-month period between September 3, 2010, and October 30, 2011.

“I think I speak for many, many people in the United States when I say that we receive these reports with disbelief and increasingly with shame and embarrassment for our country,” said Mr. MacMichael in a June 6 phone interview with Press TV’s U.S. Desk. Earlier in April, a McClatchy report also revealed that the CIA had killed hundreds of unidentified people in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Moreover, a study by researchers at the Stanford and NYU schools of law, published in September, showed that the number of “high-level” militants killed in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan constituted “just 2 percent” of the “total casualties.”

“I’d like, if I can use your airtime, to give my personal apologies to the government and people of Pakistan that they have to endure not only the results of this (the U.S. drone war) but the insulting comments of the United States government,” Mr. MacMichael told Press TV. (PressTV.com)

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