US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham made a loud statement at a club in the small town of Isley, South Carolina. Protecting Drones as a method of fighting terrorists in the Middle East, he cited the total death toll from such strikes, according to EasyPatch. This is despite the fact that in the eight years during which drones have been used, the statistics of victims at the official level have never been cited.
“We killed 4700 people,” the senator said. “Sometimes innocent people get hit, I hate it, but this is war, and we have destroyed some very important representatives of al-Qaida.”
Graham, known for supporting the use of UAVs in the fight against militants of terrorist organizations, despite criticism of this method in the US Congress, once again presented his arguments. "It - weaponwhich should be used. We do not have troops on the territory of Pakistan and Afghanistan, otherwise we cannot control the movement of militants there, "he said.
According to him, Congress seems to be "crazy" about the idea that the attack of specific targets with the help of UAVs should be coordinated. He cited the example of the destruction of Anvar al-Awlaki, an American-born imam in 2011, who was considered the ideological leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and after the death of Osama bin Laden al-Awlaki was declared the US number one terrorist. "I do not want to be tried. We are not dealing with any crime, it is a war," Graham repeated once more. He also suggested using drones to guard the borders of the United States to curb illegal immigration.
It is not clear whether the senator in his report cited government data, or whether the number of UAV victims is based on his own estimates. “He is the first to disclose this information,” Mick Zenko, a representative of the Council on Foreign Relations, quoted by ABC News. “If it turns out that these are official figures, then the question of bringing Graham to justice for disclosing state secrets may be raised,” Zenko suggested.
According to investigative journalism, as a result of UAV strikes from 2004, only in Pakistan from 2,6 thousand to 3,4 thousand people died, the number of civilians among them ranges from 470 to 900, Interfax notes.
Lindsay Graham, a US Senator from South Carolina since 2003, who has never witnessed military events, is known as a defender of military interventions. So, in 2012, he proposed leaving at least 12 thousands of American soldiers in Iraq, “so that the country would not turn into hell,” when, as is known, there are only 2011 military consultants there since 200.