IPFS News Link • WAR: About that War
CIA Drones Kill Large Groups Without Knowing Who They Are
• www.wired.com/dangerroom
The expansion of the CIA’s undeclared drone war in the tribal areas of
Pakistan required a big expansion of who can be marked for death. Once
the standard for targeted killing was top-level leadership in al-Qaeda
or one of its allies. That’s long gone, especially as the number of
people targeted at once has grown.
This is the new standard, according to a blockbuster piece in the Wall Street Journal: “men believed to be militants associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren’t always known.” The CIA is now killing people without knowing who they are, on suspicion of association with terrorist groups. The article does not define the standards are for “suspicion” and “association.”
Strikes targeting those people — usually “groups” of such people — are called “signature” strikes. “The bulk of CIA’s drone strikes are signature strikes,” the Journal’s Adam Entous, Siobhan Gorman and Julian E. Barnes report.