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Legal framework required to stop CIA drone carnage
Published: 08 February, 2012, 17:15
Edited: 08 February, 2012, 21:08
Paramedic staff provide medical treatment to a victim of a missile attack in the tribal region, at a local hospital in Dera Ismail Khan March 26, 2009 (Reuters / Mustansar Baloch)
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СIA drones are attacking funeral processions and civilian and Taliban rescue teams in Pakistan. A staggering report exposing the practice has outraged NGOs and legal experts, who are demanding international laws to govern drone warfare.
The investigation is a follow-up to last summer’s report issued by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, says Chris Woods, the author of the report.
“We've uncovered evidence that the CIA has repeatedly been targeting civilian and Taliban rescuers at the site of previous drone strikes [in Pakistan],” Woods told RT. “We identify by name 48 civilians killed in such attacks. We also identify two funerals deliberately attacked by the CIA…The Bureau also names five civilian mourners killed in a separate strike.”
The journalist noted that the data refer to incidents that took place in the course of the past few years of Barack Obama’s presidency.
“Fifty-two civilian and 32 Taliban rescuers are reported killed in the strikes. The investigation is supported by eyewitness testimonies,” he added.
The use of drones outside a declared war zone by the United States is seen by many international legal experts as setting a dangerous precedent. They question the legality of such attacks and call for a global legal framework that would regulate the use of drones, provided that other nations, including Russia and China, as well as America’s allies, have similar technology.
Christof Heyns, the UN Special rapporteur on extra-judicial executions, has already called for an inquiry into the findings.
“Our concern is how far does it go? Will the whole world be a theater of war?” he asked. “Drones in principle allow collateral damage to be minimized, but because they can be used without danger to a country’s own troops, they tend to be used more widely.”
Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit with a federal court on Wednesday demanding to force the Obama administration release intelligence and other records pertaining to the drone attack in Yemen, in which three US citizens died last year.
“The government’s self-serving attitude toward transparency and disclosure is unacceptable,” the ACLU said in a statement. “Officials cannot be allowed to release bits of information about the targeted killing program when they think it will bolster their position, but refuse even to confirm the existence of a targeted killing program.”
A senior US counterterrorism official has accused the Bureau of supplying “misinformation.” He slammed the report saying that “targeting decisions are the product of intensive intelligence collection and observation.”
“Let’s be under no illusions — there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help Al-Qaeda succeed,” the official told The New York Times, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Chris Woods noted that a number of senior US military officers said they were extremely uncomfortable that the presidential administration was performing such operations through the CIA. He is also worried the CIA hitting civilians is not merely chance.
“Our most recent report shows the CIA drones have been deliberately targeting rescuers and funerals,” he said. “If anyone is fair game simply due to their proximity to militants, that raises profound issues about the legality of modern warfare.”
The CIA is not bound by laws of war or the Geneva Convention and cannot be brought to account for its actions.
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64 comments
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08.02, 17:23
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jr --- INTO A FAKE MORALITY
DARKNESS
jr
“I don't hold with religious fundamentalism, in fact,
I don't hold with organized religion of any kind; it's ok
for people to believe what they like, but not to proselytize.”
LIGHT
Comes now jr to violate our individual right of conscience, by telling us that we may not violate his conscience. For to “proselytize” is something all psychologists, politicians and preachers must do to earn a living in their profession. For to convert one’s conscience to your way of thinking, this is what psychology, politics and religion is all about. Namely religion, only religion and nothing but religion.
For everyone has a religion as we all have a conscience. For our will is our conscience, it tells us what we deserve and this is what controls every aspect of our mind, character and personality. For what a man feels he deserves, this is his highest priority in life, his watermark to achieve.
So, virtually everyone in Empire USA has an ingrate illusion that live is an “unalienable right” that they deserve from nature, not a free gift but a right due and owed to them by nature.
FAKE MORALITY
And so, a conviction that we deserve life, this gives a man no choice but to be convicted that he deserves all the food and wealth needed to have life. Which gives him no choice but to have conviction that he deserves to “Be All You Can Be,” to earn all you can earn, to take all you can take, own all you can own and to be a dictator over all who are on land that you own.
TRUE MORALITY
A conviction that this day of life is more then anyone deserves, which gives us no choice but to except the reality that everything we own belongs to those who have less then us, which makes us feel most guilty if ever we fail to give all we can give.
Mainstream media brainwashed --- Root cause unknown --- Solution Unknown
DARKNESS
jr
“USA... a track record of such cowardice; the mechanization
of killing from World War Two onwards has done nothing
but demeaned the professionalism of the soldier.”
LIGHT
Above is a victim of Western mainstream media, for he knows not the root cause of any world problem nor any possible solution, as even liberal Western media has a blackout on such things. For they all being funded by the corporate rich, into our minds do they jam all the bloody effects of world problems, the goal being a smokescreen, something that blinds the mind by burning the emotions.
ROOT CAUSE
For the more wealth a nation has, all the more does the voting majority feel it deserves more wealth, all the more is it willing to fight for wealth and most eager to plunder by brutal imperialism any weaker nation of all their wealth.
SOLUTION
For nothing can be done about the super-greed of the Western world until is completely sanctioned into bankruptcy. For the Western rich nobility are the most intelligent creatures on earth and not until they are unable to fund a war of plunder shall they stop all their plunder.