Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
so why not Pakistani military cooperate with the US and supply correct intel about terrorists so that they can be taken out instead of necessitating drones?
Their definitions of 'terrorist' do not match.
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
CIA gets nod to step up drone strikes in Pakistan - latimes.com
By David S. Cloud and Alex Rodriguez, Los Angeles TimesJune 8, 2012, 5:00 a.m.
KABUL, Afghanistan — **Expressing both public and private frustration with Pakistan, the Obama administration has unleashed the CIA to resume an aggressive campaign of drone strikes in Pakistani territory over the last few weeks, approving strikes that might have been vetoed in the past for fear of angering Islamabad.
Now, said a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity in discussing sensitive issues, the administration’s attitude is, “What do we have to lose?”**
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta made clear the deteriorating relations with Islamabad on Thursday, saying the United States is “reaching the limits of our patience” because Pakistan has not cracked down on local insurgents who carry out deadly attacks on U.S. troops and others in neighboring Afghanistan.
“It is difficult to achieve peace in Afghanistan as long as there is safe haven for terrorists in Pakistan,” Panetta told reporters here on the last stop of his nine-day swing through Asia. He made it clear that the drone strikes will continue.
The CIA has launched eight Predator drone attacks since Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, was invited to attend the May 20-21 NATO summit in Chicago but refused to make a deal to reopen crucial routes used to supply U.S. troops in Afghanistan, as the White House had hoped.
The CIA had logged 14 remotely piloted strikes on targets in Pakistan’s rugged tribal belt in the previous 5 1/2 months, according to the New America Foundation, a U.S. think tank that tracks reported attacks.
“Obviously, something changed after Chicago,” said a senior congressional aide in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity in discussing a classified program. “I am only getting the official story, but even within the official story there is an acknowledgment that something has changed.”
Another congressional official said the surge in drone attacks stemmed in part from success in tracking down militants on the CIA’s target list, although only one has been publicly identified. It’s unclear who else has been targeted.
**Pakistanis view the drone strikes as an attempt to intimidate their civilian and military leaders into giving in to U.S. demands. If that’s the strategy, it won’t work, said experts and analysts in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital.
"They are trying to send a message: ‘If you don’t come around, we will continue with our plan, the way we want to do it,’ " said Javed Ashraf Qazi, a retired Pakistani intelligence chief and former senator. It’s “superpower arrogance being shown to a smaller state… But this will only increase the feeling among Pakistanis that the Americans are bent on having their way through force and not negotiation.**”
A White House official said no political or foreign policy considerations would have prevented the CIA from taking action when it found Abu Yahya al Libi, Al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader, who was killed by a drone-fired missile in Pakistan on Monday.
Both sides blame each other for the current dispute.
Pakistan blocked truck convoys hauling North Atlantic Treaty Organization war supplies from the port city of Karachi after a clash near the Afghan border in November led to errors andU.S. military helicopters accidentally killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers.
As part of the fallout, Pakistan ordered the U.S. to leave an air base in the country’s southwest that the CIA had used to launch drone flights bound for targets in the tribal areas. Since then, the aircraft reportedly have flown from across the border in Afghanistan.
The U.S. initially halted all drone strikes for two months to ease Pakistani sensitivities, and the attacks resumed only sporadically after mid-January. By May, Pakistani officials were signaling a willingness to reopen the supply route to resurrect relations.
But talks deadlocked over Pakistan’s demands for sharply higher transit fees just before the NATO conference, and President Obama appeared to give Zardari a cold shoulder in Chicago. Pentagonofficials will visit Islamabad this week for a new round of talks.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, Pakistan allowed NATO supplies to transit through its territory at no charge. It later levied a token $250 charge per truck. Islamabad now wants more than $5,000 per truck to reopen the road, a toll U.S. officials refuse to pay.
As an alternative to Pakistan, Washington concluded a deal this week to haul military gear out of landlocked Afghanistan through three Central Asian nations — Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan — as NATO coalition troops withdraw.
The senior U.S. official said the Obama administration and members of Congress were angered when a Pakistani court sentenced Shakeel Afridi, a doctor who helped the CIA search for Osama bin Laden, to 33 years in prison. Navy SEALs killed Bin Laden in May 2011 in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad.
But Panetta chiefly stressed his dissatisfaction with Pakistan’s inability or unwillingness to clamp down on sanctuaries used by the Haqqani network, a militant group that has been blamed for numerous deadly attacks in Afghanistan.
U.S. officials say Haqqani fighters, including some wearing suicide vests, most recently were involved in an assault last week on Forward Operating Base Salerno, a U.S. base in southeastern Afghanistan. U.S. troops killed 14 insurgents and suffered no casualties, officials said.
Panetta’s complaint isn’t new, but his language was unusually bellicose.
He told a think tank audience in New Delhi on Wednesday that “we are at war in the FATA,” referring to the federally administered tribal areas in northwestern Pakistan where the Haqqani fighters and other insurgents have concentrated.
He later confirmed that the U.S. is targeting not just remaining Al Qaeda leaders but suspected militants from the Haqqani network and other Taliban-linked groups responsible for cross-border attacks. U.S. officials noted that Panetta leveled his charges in the capital of India, Pakistan’s archfoe.
“The tensions with Pakistan are clearly going up, not down,” said the second congressional official. “The fact that Panetta was talking about Pakistan in India tells you how frustrated people are.”
Zardari’s beleaguered government is bracing for elections and can ill-afford to appear subservient to Washington. Neither can the country’s powerful military, which wields vast influence over foreign policy but has seen its image dented by recent crises, including the relentless drone attacks on its territory.
“If the U.S. feels it is doing very well in the war against Al Qaeda, OK,” said Riaz Khokhar, a former Pakistani foreign secretary. “But people in Pakistan don’t know who Al Libi is and don’t care who he is. What people care about is that Pakistani sovereignty is being violated repeatedly by drones.”
Despite the intensity of anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, the U.S. has steadfastly defended the drone strikes as a vital tool against Al Qaeda and other militant organizations. Aside from Al Libi, CIA drone strikes have killed five senior Al Qaeda leaders in the last year.
“We have made it very clear that we are going to continue to defend ourselves,” Panetta said in New Delhi. “This is about our sovereignty as well.”
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
Afghanistan: Nato apologises over civilian deaths in “Logar”
Kabul: The US commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan **General John Allen has apologised over the deaths of Afghan civilians in an air strike this week, flying personally to the scene to deliver his condolences.**President Hamid Karzai had expressed outrage over the incident, in which Afghan officials said 18 civilians including women and children were killed, and cut short a visit to Beijing to return home.Nato Spokesman Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson told AFP that Nato commander General John Allen flew to Logar province south of Kabul “to see local leaders and the population to apologise and offer condolences to the families.”This was the first public acknowledgement by Nato that civilians died in the air strike on a home in the province in the early hours of Wednesday.Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) says multiple insurgents were killed in the strike, which was ordered after troops came under fire during an operation against a Taliban insurgent leader.“We did a call out of those who were shooting from the building to come out, but they refused and then things escalated, culminating in the use of close air support,” an Isaf spokesman, Col Gary Kolb, told AFP. “Attacks by Nato that cause life and property losses to civilians under no circumstances could be justified and are not acceptable,” Karzai said of the attack.This is the second time within a month that Allen has had to admit civilian deaths in Nato air strikes that have strained relations between Karzai and the US, which leads international forces in the fight against Taliban insurgents.For the past five years the number of civilians killed in the war has risen steadily, reaching a record of 3,021 in 2011 — with the vast majority caused by insurgents, the United Nations says.The recent air strikes resulting in civilian deaths come after a series of incidents this year that have complicated relations between Nato forces and their Afghan allies.They include pictures of US soldiers abusing Taliban corpses, the accidental burning of Korans at a Nato base and the alleged massacre of 16 civilians by a rogue US soldier.
BUT THEY WON’T SAY SORRY TO PAKISTAN..
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
International - Joshua Foust - What We Misunderstand About Drones - The Atlantic
The New York Times’ blockbuster article on President Obama’s counterterrorism policies has sparked wide discussion of his evolution into a president focused very strongly on killing terrorists. Americans are also debating the effectiveness and morality of drones. These are important conversations to be having, to which I’d add some of the common misconceptions about drones. The first is that drones are cheap, and the second is that they’re replacing other forms of military operations.
Drones might seem like a cheap and easy way to wage war, but that’s not always the case. They require a substantial base of operations and support staff to function, which means they can actually cost more than traditional aircraft to purchase and function. And public anger over drones in the targeted countries has created severe political blowback, adding challenges for U.S. diplomacy and influence in parts of the world that are already tough enough to manage.
**
There’s also a common assumption that defeating terrorism requires a fundamentally kinetic approach. Obviously, that’s often true, but the point is that it’s not categorically true. And sometimes the kinetic approach can be costly. In Yemen, there is very little evidence that the growing use of drones has actually reduced the threat posed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In Pakistan, while drones have reduced the presence and reach of al-Qaeda Central, they have not necessarily diminished the global challenge posed by the group’s ideology. Furthermore, this drone-associated political turmoil has had disastrous consequences for that country’s internal politics and economy – meaning there is some risk that our drones might contribute to further destabilizing a country armed with a hundred nuclear weapons.**
**There are other ways of addressing the problem of terrorism. Current U.S. strategy is primarily about violence: hunt down and kill suspected terrorists. But allowing the Defense Department and the CIA to target people they cannot identify – to kill people who behave suspiciously without knowing who they are or what their intentions are – doesn’t really seem like self-defense. And it risks creating more instability, more state failure, and thus bigger problems in the future.
**
**Yemen is a perfect example of what can go wrong. In 2007, AQAP was a worrying presence in the country’s hinterlands, but not yet a major force in national politics. The U.S. lavished the regime of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh with hundreds of millions of dollars in training, equipment, and U.S. personnel. The U.S. also made Yemen its second most active battlefield for “surgical strikes” and drone operations, after Pakistan. However, after years of increasingly violent actions against AQAP, there are more al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen than ever before. The Saleh government lied to the U.S. about targets, possibly exploiting them to take out his rival. The U.S. has said that it treats opponents to the current government in Yemen as part of the same larger threat as al-Qaeda terrorists. Talk about mission creep.
**
**The policy of thwacking terrorists with drones (or even with small special forces teams or aircraft) has not, so far, been hugely successful at changing the targeted environments such that terrorism is neither growing nor a major threat to the U.S. It has killed a lot of people associated with al-Qaeda (in addition to people not associated with al-Qaeda). But the movement and potentially affiliated branches are on the march in Northern Africa, in Nigeria, in Mali, in Somalia, and in Yemen.
**
A broader approach could, for example, place more emphasis on affecting social and political currents that presently support the terrorist movements and ideologies. One interesting project is the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, an inter-agency shop created last September and run out of the State Department. The group recently posted, to a jihadi forum, Photoshoped images meant to reverse al-Qaeda’s online propaganda – and, in the process, created a lot of nervous responses from al-Qaeda posters about the unreliability of the internet.
The Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications’s gambit was a small victory, but one that could presage a more creative, less invasive approach to countering terrorists; using their own tools against them. Creativity, agility, and innovation – things the U.S. is actually quite good at – seem more promising as a long-term counterterrorism strategy than throwing drones at every country with a security problem.
The problem with drones is not the drones themselves, but the trend of killing first and asking questions later.
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
here is Iran who have full command and control over their airspace and on the other hand, Pakistani leaders who cant have dare to take a stand for their country during these tough times!
perhaps they want to tell their public, look we can win this war, but the only obstacle is Pakistan.
Instead of giving a genuine apology, they are intensifying the drones, these are all election gimmicks by US administration
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
If human piloted machines can make a 'mistake' and attack a Pakistani check post, why should we assume that drones only kill 'terrorists'?
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
If human piloted machines can make a 'mistake' and attack a Pakistani check post, why should we assume that drones only kill 'terrorists'?
They kill terrorists only, as the president believes all adults in that area are 'terrorists' unless proven otherwise.
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
Here we go again, alqaeda claim al libi is alive…
Qaeda websites suggest Libi alive, promise new video - geo.tv
Qaeda websites suggest Libi alive, promise new video - geo.tvDUBAI: Two websites linked to Al-Qaeda announced on Sunday that they will air a new video featuring the jihadist network’s deputy leader Abu Yahya al-Libi, whom Washington claimed last week to have killed.
The messages posted by Ansar and Alfidaa websites suggested that Libi remains alive.
“Soon, a video message by sheikh Abu Yahya al-Libi, may Allah protect him,” read the message posted by Al-Qaeda’s Sahab media arm on both sites, one of which was put online on around 1500 GMT on Sunday.
The United States said Tuesday that Al-Qaeda’s number two was killed in a drone strike, in the most weighty blow to the organisation since the killing of its founder Osama bin Laden.
Pakistani authorities spoke of a pre-dawn CIA drone strike on Monday on a compound in North Waziristan, near the Afghan border while US officials did not disclose details of the attack.
A trusted lieutenant of bin Laden, Libi appeared in countless Al-Qaeda videos and was considered the chief architect of its global propaganda machine.
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
White house lies
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
If human piloted machines can make a 'mistake' and attack a Pakistani check post, why should we assume that drones only kill 'terrorists'?
according to them, every tribal men who is carrying a gun is a terrorist!!
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
Now this is interesting. Do the Americans still have a drone base within Pakistan? Shahbaz Airbase in Jacobabad?
Obama Increases Pakistan Drone Strikes as Relations Sour - Bloomberg
U.S. officials, who spoke yesterday on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified intelligence, said they expect Pakistan may order the CIA to stop using a remaining air base from which the officials say they have controlled Predators to target militants sheltered in Pakistan’s tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.
Pakistani authorities today disputed the U.S. version of events, insisting that the CIA officers working on the drones program were expelled from all Pakistani air bases late last year. Predator strikes on targets in Pakistan’s tribal areas are being launched from bases in Afghanistan, according to two Pakistani national security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak.
The U.S. conducted drone strikes from air bases inside Pakistan starting in 2004 with the tacit approval of authorities in Islamabad. The strikes became extremely unpopular in Pakistan, where politicians and the media denounce them as a violation of sovereignty that has claimed innocent bystanders. Pakistan’s parliament and leadership have demanded the U.S. cease the strikes entirely.
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
Revisiting a Key Legal Basis for Obama’s Anti-Terror Drone Strikes | Swampland | TIME.com
After I wrote a short piece for last week’s magazine which, among other things, chastised the Obama Administration for not doing more to discuss the pros and cons of its heavy reliance on drone strikes against suspected terrorism, an Administration official groused that I hadn’t credited public comments on the subject by various Obama officials. He specifically cited an April 30 speech by the White House’s counter terrorism point man, John Brennan, outlining the laws, rules and ethics that guide the drone campaign.
**
It’s a pretty good speech, and definitely worth reading if you care about these issues. But Brennan doesn’t really address the point of my article, which is the danger that drone strikes could have a counterproductive effect. The civilian casualties and general resentment they breed in places like Pakistan and Yemen clearly threaten to undermine long-term American interests in those countries, even if we are nailing some top al-Qaeda figures in the short term. But reading Brennan’s remarks drove home a point that virtually no one discusses, but which is a little startling when you step back and contemplate it. It is the Obama Administration’s heavy reliance on a law passed by Congress three days after the September 11 attacks that justified an extremely broad range of military action in the name of fighting terrorism. **
Here’s Brennan:
*First, these targeted strikes are legal. Attorney General Holder, Harold Koh and Jeh Johnson have all addressed this question at length. To briefly recap, as a matter of domestic law, the Constitution empowers the President to protect the nation from any imminent threat of attack. The Authorization for Use of Military Force—the AUMF—passed by Congress after the September 11th attacks authorizes the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force” against those nations, organizations and individuals responsible for 9/11. There is nothing in the AUMF that restricts the use of military force against al-Qa’ida to Afghanistan.
*
*As a matter of international law, the United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qa’ida, the Taliban, and associated forces, in response to the 9/11 attacks, and we may also use force consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense. There is nothing in international law that bans the use of remotely piloted aircraft for this purpose or that prohibits us from using lethal force against our enemies outside of an active battlefield, at least when the country involved consents or is unable or unwilling to take action against the threat.
Here’s the complete passage that Brennan cites from the AUMF:
*That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
**It’s been more than a decade since Congress, acting with all the contemplation you’d expect while the Ground Zero rubble still burned, approved the AUMF. The law was designed mainly to allow the coming invasion of Afghanistan and various other acts of immediate retribution. It’s hard to believe that anyone envisioned it being cited as a legal justification for missile strikes in countries like Yemen and Somalia more than ten years later.
**
**And it’s hard to understand why the AUMF allows us to kill the leader of the Pakistani-based Taliban, which had little or no role that I’m aware of in “plan[ing], authorize[ing], commit[ing], or aid[ing]” the 9/11 attacks that originated across the Durand Line in Afghanistan.
**
I suppose the Obama Administration would say that any group with pre-9/11 ties to al-Qaeda can be deemed as having aided the 9/11 attacks. And that the AUMF’s language justifying action to “prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States” (“future” being a conveniently open-ended word for the purposes of the law) allows us to strike splinter groups of al Qaeda, like those in Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere in Africa.
But it still seems peculiar that the central basis for these strikes—apart from the right of self-defense against imminent attack provided by international law, which is hard to establish in any specific case—is a law of about 350 words that was written and approved within three days of September 11.
Obama Administration officials long ago stopped using the phrase “war on terror.” But that war carries on, under a legal basis that remains unchanged–and largely unquestioned.
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
They have three more bases and all of them are in Balochistan.
Remember in Early 2012, they were pressing Pakistan to allow more bases near Iran bordering areas.
Restored attachments:
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
Why did Pakistan just asked them to vacate Shamsi Airbase, what about the other three?
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
Its good that the debate has picked up regarding the use of drone strikes internationally. Is it reasonable to pursue short term goals at the expense of long term interests.
Drones are unlawful and dangerous
Robert Grenier, the head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center during the Bush administration, said last week that “we have been seduced” by drones, and that drone killings “are creating more enemies than we are removing from the battlefield.” He’s right.**
When our nation violates the law in the name of our national security, it gives propaganda tools to our enemies and alienates our allies**. That is why the government’s targeted killing program, which has resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths, is both unlawful and dangerous.
To be sure, targeted killing is not always illegal, nor is the use of drones. Under international law and our Constitution, the government can use lethal force when, for example, an individual takes up arms against the United States in an actual war, or against a person who poses an imminent threat to life and no means other than killing will prevent the threat. These are not the rules the government is following.
Today, our government is killing people in countries in which the United States is not at war. It reportedly adds suspected terrorists — including U.S. citizens — to “kill lists” for months at a time, which by definition cannot be limited to genuinely imminent threats. The New York Times disclosed that the government “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants” unless intelligence proves them innocent — but only after they are dead.
When mistakes are made, our nation refuses to acknowledge them and does not compensate victims. The first Yemeni missile strike President Obama authorized, in December 2009, targeted alleged militants but killed 21 children and 14 women. WikiLeaks revealeda secret agreement by Yemen to accept responsibility for the U.S. killing. Yemenis were enraged, but most Americans probably never heard about it.
**White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan admits that the U.S. targeted killing program sets a precedent. Russia, China or Iran may claim tomorrow, as our government does today, the power to declare individuals enemies of the state and kill them far from any battlefield, based on secret legal criteria, secret evidence and a secret process. That is the world we are unleashing unless the program is stopped.
**
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
Global Opinion of Obama Slips, International Policies Faulted | Pew Global Attitudes Project
http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2012/06/USIMAGE00461.png
**There remains a widespread perception that the U.S. acts unilaterally and does not consider the interests of other countries. In predominantly Muslim nations, American anti-terrorism efforts are still widely unpopular. And in nearly all countries, there is considerable opposition to a major component of the Obama administration’s anti-terrorism policy: drone strikes. In 17 of 20 countries, more than half disapprove of U.S. drone attacks targeting extremist leaders and groups in nations such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
**
Americans are the clear outliers on this issue – 62% approve of the drone campaign, including most Republicans (74%), independents (60%) and Democrats (58%).
These are among the principal findings from a 21-nation survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project from March 17-April 20.
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
Letter demands Obama explain legal justification for drone strikes – The Express Tribune
****WASHINGTON: **Members of the US Congress have sent a letter to the US President Barack Obama “demanding the White House’s legal justification for “signature” drone strikes.”
**
According to a press release, Congressman Dennis Kucinich and 25 other members of Congress have said that drone strikes “could significantly increase the risk of killing innocent civilians or those who have no relationship to a potential attack on the US, further enflaming anti-US sentiment abroad.”
The letter, signed by 24 Democrats and 2 Republican members of the US House say that they want to know how the CIA operated drone strikes are authorised and executed, and what mechanisms are used by the CIA and JSOC to ensure that such killings are legal.
The letter also calls for ”the nature of the follow-up that is conducted when civilians are killed or injured; and the mechanisms that ensure civilian casualty numbers are collected, tracked and analysed.”
“The implications of the use of drones for our national security are profound. They are faceless ambassadors that cause civilian deaths, and are frequently the only direct contact with Americans that the targeted communities have. They can generate powerful and enduring anti-American sentiment,” Congressman Kucinich warned.
The press release said that the letter has been signed by John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL), Rush Holt (D-NJ), Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Fortney Pete Stark (D-CA), Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ), Michael M. Honda (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Bob Filner (D-CA), Henry C. “Hank” Johnson (D-GA), Lynn C. Woolsey (D-CA), Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL), Ron Paul (R-TX), James P. McGovern (D-MA), John Lewis (D-GA), George Miller (D-CA), Jim McDermott (D-WA), Yvette D. Clarke (D-NY), Peter A. DeFazio (D-OR), Peter Welch (D-VT), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Keith Ellison (D-MN) Walter B. Jones (R-NC), and Donna Edwards (D-MD).
Earlier in the day, results of the latest Pew poll showed that the controversial programme was widely opposed internationally, with key US allies including Britian, France, Germany, Italy and Japan opposed to the strikes.
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
New Statesman June 18th cover on Drone Warefare.
Re: Drone attacks just and legal: white house
**There remains a widespread perception that the U.S. acts unilaterally and does not consider the interests of other countries. In predominantly Muslim nations, American anti-terrorism efforts are still widely unpopular. And in nearly all countries, there is considerable opposition to a major component of the Obama administration’s anti-terrorism policy: drone strikes. In 17 of 20 countries, more than half disapprove of U.S. drone attacks targeting extremist leaders and groups in nations such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
** Americans are the clear outliers on this issue – 62% approve of the drone campaign, including most Republicans (74%), independents (60%) and Democrats (58%). These are among the principal findings from a 21-nation survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project from March 17-April 20.
The 62% approval rating in US is down from 83% in a Feb Washington Post poll.