This annoys me:
The Trump administration has chosen to ignore an executive order that requires the White House to issue an annual report on the number of civilians and enemy fighters killed by American counterterrorism strikes.
The mandate for the report, which was due May 1, was established by former president Barack Obama in 2016 as part of a broader effort to lift the veil of secrecy surrounding drone operations in places such as Yemen, Somalia and Libya. The White House has not formally rescinded the Obama-era executive order but has chosen not to comply with some aspects of it.
The Trump administration could easily revoke the order, so why violate it by keeping the order?
Mind you, I think the order is stupid. Just because civilians are killed in American drone strikes doesn't mean America is legally responsible for the deaths under international law.
Civilian deaths from American bombs might be the fault of enemies who use human shields or it might be in the category of stuff happens in war.
As long as we don't target civilians or blow up a bus full of children to kill a terrorist clerk-typist, we're good under the rules of war.
Or we could operate with the restrictions of the current order that handicap our war efforts. And fail to obey it.
There is also a reporting requirement from the last defense appropriations act. That's a different matter.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how big a deal it is. In my past line of of work I had some experience with that when a state legislator wanted a report to the legislature from a department that was required in statute. The executive branch staffer I talked to basically said "Oops, I guess we'd better do that."
I eventually spent time creating a "reports required in statute" (that was very tedious to compile) to be a companion to another agency's "reports required in boiler plate" (in appropriations acts).
I never did attempt the thankless task of finding out which reports had ever actually been written.
And I never updated it. I wonder if it became an annual product?
