US Drone Strikes Conducted Based On Wrong Intelligence: Analyst

Kabul, 10 Rajab 1437/16 April 2016 (MINA) – A political commentator says that the United States carries out its drone strikes based on intelligence that turns out to be wrong in the majority of cases.

Frank J. O’Brien made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Friday when asked about a new report that at least 40 people have been killed in a new US drone strike in Afghanistan’s troubled eastern province of Nangarhar.

The aerial assaults took place on Thursday night in the Achin district of the province, which is located 120 kilometers (74 miles) east of the Afghan capital, Kabul. Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) quoted Press Tv as reporting. .

O’Brien said that the US drone program is basically “a failed program. They still haven’t learned their lesson from previous experiences, there’s been so much so-called, euphemistically-called, collateral damage that’s been done by these drone strikes.”

The real purpose of these strikes is “to wage war, to be targeting people on very wrongful intelligence, most of their intelligence has been faulty intelligence,” he noted.

Nearly “fifty to seventy percent of their strikes have been” conducted on “faulty intelligence,” he asserted.

The CIA spy agency regularly uses drones for airstrikes and spying missions in Afghanistan as well as Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt near the Afghan border.

Washington has also been conducting targeted killings through remotely-controlled armed drones in Somalia and Yemen.

The US says the airstrikes target members of Taliban, al-Qaeda and other militants, but according to local officials and witnesses, civilians have in most cases been the victims of the attacks.

The rise of Daesh in Afghanistan and the continued Taliban militancy comes despite about a decade and a half of a US-led war against militancy in the country.

O’Brien went on to say that “basically, the US government has become a terrorist itself, the war on terror is in reverse now, the terrorists are in the US government and the US military.” (T/P002/R03)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)