When a Pakistani-U.S. national pleaded guilty last week to a failed attempt to detonate explosives packed in a vehicle in the heart of New York City, he admitted that one of the reasons he targeted the busy Times Square neighborhood was to “injure and kill” as many people as possible. The presiding judge, Miriam Goldman …
Continue reading “Unmanned Drones: Targeted Killing or Collateral Murder?”
Yesterday, accepting General McChrystal’s resignation, President Obama said that McChrystal’s departure represented a change in personnel, not a change in policy. "Americans don’t flinch in the face of difficult truths or difficult tasks." he stated, "We persist and we persevere." Yet, President Obama and the U.S. people don’t face up to the ugly truth that, …
Continue reading “‘Americans Don’t Flinch’ – They Duck!”
Tom Engelhardt on Bush’s pilotless dream
Some CIA officers involved in the agency’s drone strikes program in Pakistan and elsewhere are privately expressing their opposition to the program within the agency, because it is helping al-Qaeda and its allies recruit, according to a retired military officer in contact with them. "Some of the CIA operators are concerned that, because of its …
Continue reading “CIA Drone Operators Oppose Strikes as Helping al-Qaeda”
Targeted killings, including those using drones, are increasingly being applied in ways that violate international law, according to a report issued Wednesday by a United Nations expert on extrajudicial killings. The report by special rapporteur Philip Alston will be presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday. It says that while targeted …
Continue reading “UN Expert Calls On US To Halt CIA Targeted Killings”
On the heels of reports that the Barack Obama administration altered a new manual on military commission rules to accommodate an illegal drone program, a senior United Nations official is expected to call on the U.S. this week to stop Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) drone strikes against people suspected of belonging to al-Qaeda.The UN challenge …
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Has the drone war come home? asks Conn Hallinan
ISLAMABAD – On May 12, the day after a U.S. drone strike killed 24 people in Pakistan’s North Waziristan, two men from the area agreed to tell us their perspective as eyewitnesses of previous drone strikes. One is a journalist, Safdar Dawar, general secretary of the Tribal Union of Journalists. Journalists are operating under very …
Continue reading “Drones and Democracy”
The Greeks had it right. When you live on Mount Olympus, your view of humanity is qualitatively different. The Greek gods, after all, lied to, stole from, lusted for, and punished humanity without mercy, while taking the planet for a spin in a manner that we mortals would consider amoral, if not immoral. And it …
Continue reading “Gods and Monsters”
While welcoming an initial effort by the administration of President Barack Obama to offer a legal justification for drone strikes to kill suspected terrorists overseas, human rights groups say critical questions remain unanswered. In an address to an international law group last week, State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh insisted that such operations were being …
Continue reading “Legality of Drone Strikes Still in Question” 
