The use of the CIA's drone attacks brings criticism of the President

[sad sally]

Last Friday, I met a boy, just before he was assassinated by the CIA. Tariq Aziz was 16, a quiet young man from North Waziristan, who, like most teenagers, enjoyed soccer. Seventy-two hours later, a Hellfire missile is believed to have killed him as he was travelling in a car to meet his aunt in Miran Shah, to take her home after her wedding. Killed with him was his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan.
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The final order to kill is signed allegedly by Stephen Preston, the general counsel at the CIA headquarters. What evidence, I would like to know, does Mr Preston have against Tariq and Waheed? What right does he have to act as judge, jury and executioner of two teenage boys neither he nor his staff have ever met, let alone cross-examined, or given the opportunity to present witnesses?

It is not too late to call for a prosecution and trial of whoever pushed the button and the US government officials who gave the order: that is, Mr Preston and his boss, President Barack Obama.
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If Barack Obama's CIA believed in justice and judicial process, they could have attended the Islamabad jirga last Friday and met with Tariq. It was, after all, an open meeting. They could have arrested and charged Tariq with the help of the Pakistani police. If a prosecution is ever mounted over the death of Tariq, those of us who met him on several occasions last week would be happy to testify to the character of the young man that we had met. But if the CIA has evidence to the contrary, it should present it to the world.

Unless the CIA can prove that Tariq Aziz posed an imminent threat (as the White House's legal advice stipulates a targeted killing must in order for an attack to be carried out), or that he was a key planner in a war against the US or Pakistan, the killing of this 16 year old was murder, and any jury should convict the CIA accordingly.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/07/cia-unaccountable-drone-war?du

[Octafish]

1. Push Button Murder, Inc.

Killing on one man's say-so is not Constitutional.

[dreamnightwind]

2. K & R

Fool that I am, I thought drone killings would decrease or cease under Obama. Au contraire.

[slipslidingaway]

3. knr - another snip ...

"...The question I would pose to the jury is this: would a terrorist suspect come to a public meeting and converse openly with foreign lawyers and reporters, and allow himself to be photographed and interviewed? More importantly, since he was so easily available, why could Tariq not have been detained in Islamabad, when we spent 48 hours together? Neither Tariz Aziz nor the lawyers attending this meeting had a highly trained private security detail that could have put up resistance.

Attending that jirga, however, were Clive Stafford Smith and Tara Murray, two US lawyers who trained at Columbia and Harvard. They tell me, unequivocally, that US law is based on the fact that every person is innocent until proven guilty. Why was Tariq, even if a terrorist suspect, not offered an opportunity to defend himself?

Let me offer an important alternative argument – the US government has a record of making terrible mistakes in this covert war. On 2 September 2010, the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan claimed to have killed Muhammad Amin, the alleged Taliban deputy governor of Takhar province in Afghanistan, in a drone strike. There was only one problem: Michael Semple, a Taliban expert at Harvard University, subsequently interviewed Muhammad Amin and confirmed that he was alive and well and living in Pakistan in March 2011..."

[slipslidingaway]

4. INTERVIEW-U.S. drone strikes must stop-American lawyer

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/interview-us-drone-strikes-must-stop-american-lawyer/

"Prominent international human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith was impressed by the 16-year-old boy who wanted to draw attention to civilian deaths caused by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan.

Tariq Aziz had volunteered to take pictures of people killed by the remotely piloted aircraft to help Stafford Smith highlight what he calls illegal killings.

Three days later, on Oct. 31, he and his 12-year-old cousin were themselves killed by a drone missile strike in the North Waziristan region on the Afghan border, Stafford Smith said.

For the veteran lawyer, the deaths highlighted major flaws in the CIA-run drone campaign, which U.S. officials say is invaluable in the war on militants.

"What they did to Tariq was absolutely disgusting," he told Reuters in a telephone interview..."

[sad sally]

7. The comparison to US secret bombing in Cambodia during the Vietnam war

should be a wakeup call, but unfortunately leadership in America seems to have no qualms about killing an unknown number of innocent people. It would be refreshing to hear the President just once say the US goals include peace...it's a word that doesn't seem to be part of his vocabulary.
#####

He considers the drones as “scandalous” as the secret US bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War.

Eighty Pakistani tribesmen, including Aziz, recently met Stafford Smith and other Western lawyers for the first time, in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, to complain about the drones.

The United States has sharply stepped up the number of drone attacks in country’s Pashtun areas in the northwest, along the border with Afghanistan.

In 2009, when President Barack Obama took office, there were 53 strikes, compared with 42 over the previous four years. In 2010, that number jumped to 118, followed by 68 this year, according to the New America Foundation.

from The Nation article:http://nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Politics/10-Nov-2011/US-drone-attacks-must-stop-says-American?du

[slipslidingaway]

9. Yes it should be a wake up call ...

too many people seem to be fine with this as long as it happens in another country.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

10. "The comparison to US secret bombing in Cambodia during the Vietnam war"

You know what upsets me the most about this?

We have been reduced to comparing Barack Obama to Richard Nixon -- Richard Milhouse frickin' Nixon.

We had Hope. We believed in Change. We were told we would no longer bully our way around the world.

We don't even get the "Sorry for the collateral damage. Hey! Have you seen this new gun camera footgage!" briefings anymore. Like the drones, the process is being remotely piloted. Dispassionate. Impersonal. It's as if Obama thinks ignoring it means it isn't his hands the blood falls on.

[sad sally]

11. Is the President misled or more likely he knows the lies being told.

‘There is the greatest danger here of a falsehood being told by US intelligence services, which misleads President Obama into taking decisions which are manifestly contrary to America’s best interests.’

Clive Stafford Smith, Human Rights Lawyer.

and this thought...

It’s not a good sign when a country’s intelligence agency begins to accept the mass murdering of possible innocents as standard operating protocol. The potential consequence is that the agency could use the same tactics against its own people; i.e. unruly "mobs" protesting, so-called "rebels without corporate sponsors." Unthinkable? Farfetched?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. "..prosecution and trial for whoever pushed the button and..who gave the order.."

Unfortunately, the laws don't apply to our murderers and those who gave them the orders to kill.

[azul]

6. Might makes right. Who could take them to court?

And we all be damned by these extra-legal killings: done in our name with our money.

[gratuitous]

8. Bingo: The Creed of the High Church of Redemptive Violence

And the hollow explanations and justifications are nauseating, particularly coming from people who should know better. The President and his personnel don't take an oath to preserve, protect and defend the people of the United States or even their phoney baloney jobs. Their oath of office is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, because without that, there is no United States.

This is damnable, and moreso because it's done in our names with our money. It is the shame of our nation - Democrat, Republican, Independent.