said in remarks that were cleared for release by the CIA. "To enforce the law" The specific actions U.S. officials believed Yazid was planning in May 2010 have not been disclosed, but Yazid was public in his desire to retaliate for U.S. drone strikes. He had praised the "supreme bravery" of the suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees at the U.S. airbase in Khost in December 2009 to avenge the death of a Pakistani militant leader in a previous CIA drone strike. Whether CIA officials watching Yazid's convoy on live video feed on the afternoon of May 21, 2010, were aware that it carried women and children is not known. So it is impossible to know if "great care" was taken to prevent the death of Fatima and the other children in the convoy. The presence of non-combatants in the immediate vicinity of targeted individuals has not prevented other CIA drone attacks in the past, most notoriously in the case of a June 2009 drone attack on a funeral ceremony that killed an estimated 60 people. In the face of persistent complaints from the Pakistani government and near universal opposition in Pakistani society, the U.S. has since reduced the number of drone attacks. After a peak of 118 reported attacks in 2010, attacks declined to 70 in 2011, according to the New America Foundation in Washington. So far in 2012 there have been 14 drone attacks in Pakistan. The most recent one was on Monday , in which eight