(__) Only 2% of those killed are senior Al Qaeda figures The Toronto Star, May 30, 2013 Legal,

moral and political cost of U.S. drone war, p. A19 The Pakistani government informed the court of 47 high-value foreign militants killed between 2007 and 2012. This is echoed in a Stanford University and NYU study that only 2 per cent of casualties have been senior Al Qaeda or Taliban figures.
How many killed in the first category, i.e. Al Qaeda and other militant leaders? About 50, says the New America Foundation. "Fewer than 60," says Akbar.

(__) Drones increase Anti-Americanism

Vali

Nasr, 2013, The Dispensible Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat, (Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International

Studies in Washington, D.C., Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings Institution, and contributor to Bloomberg View, Nasr is a member of the State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board and served as senior advisor to the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, between 2009 and 2011. He is a Life Member of theCouncil on Foreign Relations,

Drones are also not as innocuous as they sound. Drone strikes are aerial attacks that happen in collusion with a local government or in 'violation of a country's sovereignty and in either case run the risk of inflaming public opinion. They provoke anti-Americanism and the extremism that goes with it, and once those sentiments are inflamed it will be difficult to sustain the programPakistan and Yemen both provide ample evidence of that. (__)Done budgets protected and expanding I spy, with my faraway eye. By: Reardon, Sara, New Scientist, 02624079, 1/26/2013, Vol. 217, Issue 2901
Drones and the soldiers who fly them will undeniably become central to many military operations. Politicians and military alike are enthused by the idea of surveillance and precise aerial

the US air force trained more drone pilots than regular pilots for operations primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some come to drone school straight from training; others are veteran pilots. The Central Intelligence Agency also operates drones in Yemen and Pakistan, but will not reveal how many operators it has or who trains them. And in 2012, despite cuts, President Barack Obama set aside $5 billion of the defense budget for the controversial drone programme that has escalated under his administration.
bombardment that vastly reduces the risk to their own troops. Last year, for the first time,

(__)Drones make it easier for leaders to initiate war Lieutenant Colonel Houston R. Cantwell, USAF, is Vice Wing Commander, 35th Fighter Wing, Misawa Air Base, Japan, The Costs
of Remotely Piloted Foreign Policy, 2013, Joint Forces Quarterly, Issue 8 p. 71

. UAVs may lessen the terrible costs of going to war, and in doing so, make it easier for leaders to go to war . The danger, as Christopher Coker argues, is that leaders can: become so intoxicated by the idea of precise, risk-free warfare that we believe what we want to believe. Unfortunately, we may slip down the slope and find ourselves using violence with impunity, having lost our capacity for critical judgments. We may no longer be inclined to pay attention to the details of the ethical questions which all wars (even the most ethical ones) raise.
Arguably the most troubling effect of the proliferation of unmanned systems relates to the frequency of and decision making calculus toward future war

(__)Obama will not reduce drone strikes Ottawa Citizen, May 31, 2013, Obama hasn't changed course on drones, and he shouldn't, p. A11 Robert Sibley is a senior writer with
the Citizen, currently attached to the editorial board.

Bush reportedly authorized 48 drone strikes in Pakistan during his eight-year presidency. Obama approved about 300 between 2008 and 2012. Moreover, according to Trevor McCrisken, a professor of international studies, writing in a recent edition of the journal Survival, Obama has "direct involvement in the final selection of targets and the decisions to strike." (__)Drones increase the number of boots needed on the ground
Micah

Zenko [of] is fellow for conflict prevention at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he writes the blog Politics,

Power, and Preventive Action, 10 Things You Didn't Know About Drones. By: ZENKO, MICAH, Foreign Policy, 00157228, Mar/Apr2012, Issue 192

Most unmanned aircraft flown by the U.S. military require not just a ground-based "pilot," but also a platoon of surveillance analysts (approximately 19 per drone), sensor operators, and a maintenance crew. Some 168 people are required to keep a Predator drone aloft -- and 180 for its larger cousin, the Reaper -- compared with roughly 100 people for an F-16 fighter jet. To keep up with the demand, the Air Force has trained more drone operators than pilots for the past two years. The upside is that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, drones "are usually less expensive than manned aircraft" ($15 million for a Global Hawk versus about $55 million
for a new F-16), though costly sensors and excessive crashes can negate the difference.