The Obama administration has made “virtually no progress” to increase transparency and accountability for its lethal drone program, a new report has concluded, with only months left to spare before the White House hands control of the targeted killing apparatus to a successor.
The report by the nonpartisan Stimson Center said the administration is failing to release fundamental information about the program or to significantly overhaul it — even after a 2015 strike mistakenly left American contractor Warren Weinstein and Italian hostage Giovanni Lo Porto dead.
“We have seen relatively few successes,” said Rachel Stohl, a researcher at the center. “The administration has been unwilling to provide the number of strikes, even in aggregate; the number of civilian casualties that they estimate that have occurred because of those strikes; the legal justification, unless required by court order, that allows the program to continue; so even on the most basic levels, what is the program doing, we don’t know.”
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