In Photos: America's Secret Drone War
Danger Room has assembled a powerful slide show of graphic photos taken by Noor Behram, a resident of North Waziristan:
Before posting Behram's photos we took a number of measures to confirm as best we could what was being shown. We verified Behramâ??s bona fides with other news organizations. We sifted through the images, tossing out any pictures that couldnâ??t correlate with previously reported drone attacks. Then we grilled Behram in a series of lengthy Skype interviews from Pakistan, translated by Akbar, about the circumstances surrounding each of the images.Still, we weren't at the events depicted. We don't know for sure if the destruction and casualties shown in the photos were caused by CIA drones or Pakistani militants. Even Behram, who drives at great personal risk to the scenes of the strikes, has little choice but to rely on the accounts of alleged eyewitnesses to learn what happened.
But we know for sure that these are rare photos from a war zone most Americans never see.
Behram's images are not conclusive proof that the Obama administration was incorrect (or disingenuous) when it claimed that no civilians had been killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, but it's additional evidence that the claim was unfounded. It does beggar belief why such a claim was made in the first place. I suspect most Americans would support drone strikes even if the administration acknowledged that they carry the risk of killing innocent bystanders. Yet rather than level with the public about the hazy nature of the drone campaign, the administration insisted on a clear-cut assertion that no "non-combatants" had been killed.
