12 June 2011 — Morning Star
Anti-poverty charity War on Want lashed out at the BBC over claims of ‘precision bombing’ in Libya at Saturday’s annual Stop the War Coalition conference.
Executive director John Hillary savaged the broadcaster’s coverage of Nato-led air strikes in Libya, including attacks by remote-controlled Predator drones, since late April.
BBC correspondent John Simpson wrote in March that the Nato coalition were ‘plainly making big efforts’ to avoid killing civilians.
‘But times have changed, and so has military technology,’ he said.
‘The old myth of pinpoint precision bombing has become much more of a reality.’
A few weeks later the BBC confirmed the first US drone bombing in the war-torn country.
‘Drones can hit military targets more easily in urban areas, minimising the risk of civilian casualties,’ an unnamed reporter wrote.
But Mr Hillary said the use of drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan proved that claims of increased precision were ‘lies.’
Of the more than 700 people killed by drone attacks in Pakistan, only 14 have been al-Qaida leaders, he said, referring to a 2009 study by military experts David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum.
The UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Philip Alston has described the use of drone missiles as a crime against humanity.
Mr Hillary said the drones were indiscriminate weapons which consequently breached international law.
‘And yet the BBC with absolutely no backing or justification feels happy to go out and say these are precise bombing instruments.’
‘We have to stand up and say enough with these lies from the BBC.
‘This is not precision bombing – this is indiscriminate bombing with massive civilian casualties,’ he said to applause.
Drone bombings in Pakistan have killed up to 2,431 people since 2004, according to monitoring by the right-wing New America Foundation.
The foundation has disputed the figures on collateral damage, claiming a civilian casualty rate of only 20 per cent based on ‘reliable press.’
But a study by the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, based on interviews with locals in 2009, recorded more than 30 civilian deaths in just the incidents they investigated, compared to the Pentagon’s claims of only 20 civilian casualties in all 53 attacks that year.
The New Dark Age 
Leave a comment