Sen. Graham Says 4,700 Killed In U.S. Drone Strikes
We've all heard that drone strikes directed against al-Qaida and other militants have been on the rise, but now Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), has put a number on deaths by U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle: 4,700.
Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, rattled off the death toll during a talk he gave to the Easley Rotary Club in Easley, South Carolina, Tuesday afternoon.
"We've killed 4,700," Graham said.
"Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we're at war, and we've taken out some very senior members of al-Qaeda," he added.
But as The Hill notes, the CIA and Pentagon have yet to publicly disclose the actual casualty count from U.S. armed drone operations.
Unofficial casualty estimates stemming from armed drone operations have put the death toll at between 1,900 to 3,200. Most of those strikes have taken place in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere in the Mideast and North Africa.
However, Graham's spokesman Kevin Bishop told The Hill on Wednesday the senator was not quoting actual casualty figures provided by DOD or Langley, but citing independent analysis of the program.