Top Secret Intel Docs Betray Obama Claims on Drone Targeting (McClatchy) [View all]

[KoKo]

(While we are all Digesting Obama's "Chained CPI" to cut Social Security...In the Meantime...McClatchy has come out with this report...which questions Obama's Legal Counsel's ADVICE...It's really sort of a downer...and that it comes out now when everyone is concerned about his Budget Proposal...it might get lost.) Crossposted in "Good Reads.



Top Secret Intel Docs Betray Obama Claims on Drone Targeting (McClatchy)

Last edited Wed Apr 10, 2013, 01:11 PM USA/ET - Edit history (1)
Top Secret Intel Docs Betray Obama Claims on Drone Targeting
US drone war kills all kinds of people beyond Al Qaeda and
- Jon Queally, staff writer

Based on their review of leaked top-secret intelligence reports, McClatchy is reporting that the Obama Administration has long been guilty of misrepresenting the kind of groups and individuals it has targeted with its fleet of armed Predator and Reaper drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan.


McClatchy also explores the broadly held view that the US drone attacks are exacerbating conflicts, not solving them, in the regions where they take place.

Obama, they think, is misinterpreting international law, including the laws of war, which they say apply only to the uniformed military, not the civilian CIA, and to traditional battlefields like those in Afghanistan, not to Pakistan’s tribal area, even though it may be a sanctuary for al Qaida and other violent groups. They argue that Obama also is strengthening his executive powers with an excessively broad application of the September 2001 use-of-force resolution.

The administration’s definition of “imminent threat” also is in dispute. The Justice Department’s leaked white paper argues the United States should be able “to act in self-defense in circumstances where there is evidence of further imminent attacks by terrorist groups even if there is no specific evidence of where such an attack will take place or of the precise nature of the attack.” Legal scholars counter that the administration is using an exaggerated definition of imminence that doesn’t exist in international law.

“I’m thankful that my doctors don’t use their (the administration’s) definition of imminence when looking at imminent death. A head cold could be enough to pull the plug on you,” said Morris Davis, a Howard University Law School professor and former Air Force lawyer who served as chief prosecutor of the Guantanamo Bay terrorism trials.

Since 2004, drone program critics say, the strikes have killed hundreds of civilians, fueling anti-U.S. outrage, boosting extremist recruiting, and helping to destabilize Pakistan’s U.S.-backed government. And some experts warn that the United States may be setting a new standard of international conduct that other countries will grasp to justify their own targeted killings and to evade accountability.

MORE with links to McClatchy's full report at:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/04/09/188062/obamas-drone-war-kills-others.html#storylink=cpy