CENK: One of the quotes I wanna give you right off the top is from the Abyan Province and after the bombings here's what Abdelaziz Muhammed Hamza said, "All the residents of the area have joined Al Qaeda." Now I want you to keep that in mind cause we're bombing civilians and people are saying, hey you know what, if you're gonna bomb us why don't we go to the other side. Now speaking of the drones strikes I wanna show you how much they've increased during the Obama administration. And especially since 2012 they've gone up 63%, you can see in '02 only 1 and now up to 21. Now of course the Obama administration assures us over and over again, don’t worry we're only killing terrorists and our mainstream media goes along with that. In fact, take a look at this ABC news report.
ABC: "The drone attacks are intensifying. The strikes have jumped dramatically. Just look at this. Two separate attacks - 11 suspected terrorists killed. An escalation that includes two attacks as well. Seven killed including two top leaders. While this escalation may not aimed at any one terrorist, officials would undoubtedly like to get the bombmaker Ibrahim Al-Assiri."
In other words, they didn't get him, they'd like to get him but they didn't. And they say you know everyone that got killed were suspected terrorists. Even though they said in the middle of that news story, it's not clear that any of them were terrorists. And of course, when you actually do real reporting you find out a lot of civilians have been killed. In fact, let's show you the numbers. In Yemen 27-37 strikes and casualties are 55-135 civilians killed. Civilians. Now I'm going to show you the damage that that has done. First let's look at Al Jazeera English as they cover the story showing the civilian side of the damage.
AJE: "Following an airstrike in Southern Yemen in Dec 2009 a Yemeni Parliamentary report said 44 civilians were killed along with 14 fighters. But despite physical evidence that a U.S. missile was involved backed up by leaked diplomatic cables, Washington never acknowledged operations in Yemen. Still the reports authors say the attacks are creating real antagonism on the ground."
WOODS: "On one occasion where they killed 44 civilians in just on one day, and another occasion where they killed a deputy governor by mistake, we've seen enormous outpourings of anger on those occasions."
CENK: Well, that’s very understandable if they killed your family you might be pretty angry too. In fact, the Washington Post, has explained it's led to this: "But as in the tribal areas of Pakistan, where U.S. drone strikes have significantly weakened al-Qaeda's capabilities, an unintended consequence of the attacks has been a marked radicalization of the local population."
So the population that was not in favor of Al Qaeda, that wasn't radicals before, once you kill their cousins, nephews, sons, they go well all right if you're fighting those guys that just killed my family member then I'm gonna join you. So that is not the result that we want.
In fact, here is Mohammed al-Ahmadi, he's a legal coordinator in Yemen, he says, "The drones are killing Al Qaeda leaders" so, yes, sometimes we kill Al Qaeda leaders, no question about that. "But they're also turning them into heroes." Part of the reason for that is after the civilians gets killed Al Qaeda comes in and says we'll bury their bodies. Everybody else is scared to go because sometimes they do multiple strikes and kill the people picking up the bodies. We've reported on that before too.
So this is not a good way to win hearts and minds, obviously. Continuing here top former advisor to the President of Yemen said, "Yemen is paying a heavy price, losing its sons. But the Americans are not paying the same price." Do you get that if you're losing your sons and you feel the other side isn't, you wanna change that equation? What does that create? It creates more people trying to fight us. I'm not against all drone strikes, I'm against dumb drone strikes.
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