{"id":794,"date":"2015-01-23T10:59:46","date_gmt":"2015-01-23T10:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=794"},"modified":"2015-01-23T11:44:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-23T11:44:10","slug":"us-drone-operator-calls-killing-of-1600-people-a-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/us-drone-operator-calls-killing-of-1600-people-a-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"US drone operator calls killing of 1600 people \u2018a mistake\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former US drone operator Brandon Bryant, who was involved in the killing of more than 1600 people, says aerial strikes are conducted with complete uncertainty.<\/p>\n

Bryant, who worked for almost five years in America’s secret drone program bombing targets in Afghanistan and other countries, such as Pakistan and Iraq, said operators lacked visibility and were not sure about the identity of the people they were shooting at.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see silhouette, shadows of people, and we kill those shadows,\u201d said Bryant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no oversight,\u201d said the operator. \u201cI just know that the inside of the entire program was diseased and people need to know what happens to those that were on the inside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bryant, who left his job in 2011, apologized to the families of the US drone victims whose deaths he was responsible for, citing that he \u201ccouldn\u2019t stand\u201d himself for the killings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry that the mistake happened. I\u2019m doing everything that I can to prevent further mistakes from happening,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"unnamed\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Since 2001, the US has been carrying out drone attacks in several countries, including Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia. It insists that the targets of the drone attacks are militants.<\/p>\n

Local officials and witnesses however say civilians have been the main victims of the attacks.<\/p>\n

Data released by human rights group Reprieve, that was published last November, indicated that attempts to kill 41 targeted individuals across Pakistan and Yemen resulted in the killing of at least 1,147 people.<\/p>\n

SB\/GJH<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former US drone operator Brandon Bryant, who was involved in the killing of more than 1600 people, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,125],"tags":[6,43,15,5,113,7],"class_list":["post-794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","tag-defense","tag-drone","tag-militants","tag-military","tag-security","tag-u-s"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/brendon_bryant.jpg?fit=641%2C362&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-cO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":797,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions\/797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}