CIA: Our Drones are Killing Terrorists. Promise.

By Noah Shachtman
Wired

Al Qaeda is so spooked by CIA drone attacks that Osama’s crew is staging spectacular bombings in Pakistan, in an attempt to get America to call off its unmanned attack fleet, former U.S. officials and counterterrror advisers say. And the CIA is apparently so spooked about the possibility of a withdrawal that they’re spilling details about their supposedly-secret drone strikes to the New York Times.

On April 19th, agency sources tell the paper, a CIA drone hit a truck parked inside an al Qaeda compound in Pakistan’s tribal province of South Waziristan. Packed with “high explosives, apparently to be used as a bomb,” the truck “erupted in a fireball” when it was struck. “A second, empty truck destroyed in the same attack may also have been there to be outfitted with explosives,” intelligence officials say. “In another significant attack, on April 29, missiles fired from a C.I.A. Predator killed Abu Sulayman al-Jazairi, an Algerian Qaeda planner who American intelligence officials say they believe helped train operatives for attacks in Europe and the United States.”

In other other words: Pay no attention to those reports of civilian casualties, like those reports of “25 bodies” in the latest unmanned attack. These drones are killing terrorists.

The Times goes on to report that “in meetings this past week in Washington, American and Pakistani officials discussed the possibility of limited joint operations with American Predator and Reaper drones. Under one proposal, the United States would retain control over the firing of missiles, but it would share with the Pakistani security forces some sophisticated imagery and communications intercepts that could be relayed to Pakistani combat forces on the ground.”

(More here.)