Micah Zenko, at his CFR blog, caught an obscure statement U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham made yesterday during a speech in Easley, South Carolina. Graham issued the usual dreary defense of the drone war and then might have let something slip.
Graham said at one point in his speech: "We’ve killed 4,700. Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we’re at war, and we’ve taken out some very senior members of Al-Qaeda."
His estimate of the death toll of suspected terrorists and militants by U.S. non-battlefield targeted killings is higher than any other reported by either officials or the mainstream media.
Just a reminder to help put this 4,700 in context: the Standford/NYU study of the drone war found that, "The number of 'high-level’ targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low—estimated at just 2%."
So the other 98% are you and I, innocent families just trying to make it through life in a cold and vicious society that we’ve allowed foolish elites to create. Which begs the question, who are the real fools, those that get away with this garbage or us for allowing it?
