U.N. Official: U.S. Should End CIA Drone Attacks in Pakistan

[Hissyspit]

Source: Washington Post

U.N. official: U.S. should end CIA drone attacks in Pakistan

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2010; 1:51 PM

A senior United Nations official said Wednesday that the United States should halt the CIA's drone campaign against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan, charging that the official secrecy surrounding the strikes violates the legal principle of international accountability. But a report by Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, stopped short of declaring the CIA program illegal.

Alston presented a 29-page report to the U.N.'s Human Rights Council in Geneva on Wednesday that focused on so-called targeted killings by countries such as Russia and Israel as well as the United States.

"It is an essential requirement of international law that States using targeted killings demonstrate that they are complying with the various rules governing their use in situations of armed conflict," Alston said in a press release. "The greatest challenge to this principle today comes from the program operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. . . . The international community does not know when and where the CIA is authorized to kill, the criteria for individuals who may be killed, how it ensures killings are legal, and what follow-up there is when civilians are illegally killed."

Alston noted that that some commentators have argued that CIA personnel involved in drone killings are committing war crimes because, unlike the military, they are "unlawful combatants." But he said, "this argument is not supported" by international humanitarian law.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/02/AR2010060201713.html

[ixion]

1. "stopped short of declaring the CIA program illegal"

Which means if Pakistan or any other country decides to start flying drones around the US zapping thus and so, that the US shouldn't mind at all, right? I mean, it's not illegal by international standards, then what is stopping them? :sarcasm:

[skeptical cynic]

2. You forgot something

American Exceptionalism.

The rules don't apply to us.

[Aaria]

3. Asj long as we're doing this terrorism to Paki's there's no room for us to bitch about Isreal's.

[skeptical cynic]

14. We should be ashamed of both the terrorism we do

and the terrorism we accept and condone.

[pdefalla]

7. But I thought drones were bad.......?

I seem to recall that just before we invaded Iraq, one of the justifications put forward was that Saddam had drones that could drop weaponized biochemicals all over the United States. It was cause for war then, but I guess it's ok now.....?

[2Design]

4. ah yes - spreading the love and we wonder why they hate us n/t

[Wizard777]

5. We always could use less precise weapons.

Our other choice of weapons won't take out the house next to a terrorist safe house. They'll take out the whole damned village. THEN they might insist we use the drones.

[L. Coyote]

6. LOL. Apologist with flawed reasoning.

"I could have killed all my neighbors, your Honor, but I only killed one."

[Wizard777]

8. Flawed analogy. This is a war. The drones give us greater precision in our strikes against Al Qaida.

[L. Coyote]

10. Flawed conceptions of humanity

Thou shalt NOT kill.

[Wizard777]

11. You lay down with dogs and you get fleas and few missiles too.

Go tell that to Al Qaida!

[L. Coyote]

12. Stay in your own yard, you don't get bit in the ass for trespassing.

Go tell that to those who wage wars in foreign lands.

[Wizard777]

13. You mean like Al Qaida?

We'll write in on the nosecone of the next missile. :nuke:

[Socal31]

9. I think some people are forgetting that not only are some drones based in Pakistan....

but we have thier full support for the strikes. Who the heck do you think gives us the intel?

[boppers]

15. They've even asked for ownership/control over the drones.

This whole debate isn't about whether or not to continue strikes, but whether the CIA, or the US military, or Pakistani equivalents, have the control.

[Nihil]

16. They should solve it in the usual way ...

... highest bidder wins. (It's the American Way.)

:shrug: