![]() assessments of such casualties, and non-governmental reports.” This gap is wide indeed. In his widely discussed speech at the National Defense University, President Obama acknowledged that “much of the criticism about drone strikes-at home and abroad-understandably centers on reports of civilian casualties. The organization “corroborated written and oral testimony against photographic and video evidence and satellite imagery for every strike discussed in report,” and in an attempt to negate the high risk of misinformation, the organization also “assembled a number of local investigative teams, which worked independently from one another, and then cross-corroborated the information they gathered, including against other sources.” AI discloses up front that it “does not have comprehensive data on the total number of US drone attacks or the numbers killed and injured, and is not in a position to endorse the findings of others”-but the report does include a rudimentary list of casualty counts from various other sources. Amnesty International (AI) writes in its introduction that the report is “a qualitative assessment based on detailed field research into nine of the 45 reported strikes” in North Waziristan, and that it arose out of more than sixty interviews in the region. The two reports are based on case studies of individual strikes, and are not a broad examination of the scope and scale of civilian casualties caused by drones. Amnesty International’s “'Will I Be Next?': US Drone Strikes in Pakistan" investigates nine drone strikes in North Waziristan between January 2012 and August 2013 Human Rights Watch’s “'Between a Drone and Al Qaeda': The Civilian Cost of US Targeted Killings in Yemen" examines six drone strikes in Yemen, one from 2009 and the remaining five from 20. ![]() drone strikes-particularly in the wake of President Obama’s speech on the future of the War on Terror. Two major human rights groups released reports this month that together provide much-needed texture to the debate on civilian casualties from U.S. ![]()
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