US Senator says drones killed 4700
“A high-ranking US senator has estimated America's use of drone strikes has killed about 4,700 people, including civilians.
“Republican Lindsey Graham is the first US government official to offer an estimate on the total number of fatalities in America's secretive drone war.
“'Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we're at war ...' Mr Graham told the Easley Rotary Club ...”
“The strikes have been condemned by rights groups as extrajudicial assassinations.”
US less popular under Obama than Bush in Middle East
“Obama has presided over an America that, in many respects, is now even more unpopular in the Muslim world than it was under George Bush and Dick Cheney ...
“Citing a poll of numerous Middle East countries that had just been released, the [Washington Post said in July 2011]: 'In most countries surveyed, favorable attitudes toward the United States dropped to levels lower than they were during the last year of the Bush administration.'
“'A 2011 Arab American Institute poll found that US favorable ratings across the Arab world have plummeted. In most countries they are lower than at the end of the Bush Administration, and lower than Iran's favorable ratings.'
“A 2012 Pew poll of six predominantly Muslim nations found not only similar or worse perceptions of the US as compared to the Bush years, but also documented that China is vastly more popular in that part of the world than the US. In that region, the US and Israel are still considered, by far, to be the two greatest threats to peace.”
― Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian, February 15.