U.S. Likely to Expand Drone Attacks to Nigeria - Leon Panetta, U.S. Defence Secretary

-- --

**Boko haram and its alliance will be prime targets

Four years ago, John Brennan withdrew from consideration for C.I.A. director because of his leadership role there while serious human rights violations were occurring, including waterboarding and secret detention. Mr. Brennan has said he regrets these practices. Yet he moved from the CIA to the White House, where he began to support a practice many consider worse than torture: targeted killing.

Brennan has been a champion and defender of attacks by C.I.A. drones that have killed thousands of people, including hundreds of children, far from any battlefield. These killings have occurred in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has recently said the killing is likely to expand to Libya, Mali and Nigeria.

Panetta, Brennan and others in the Obama administration defended these lawless killings the same way the Bush administration justified the unlawful treatment of detainees. Officials in both administrations

have sought to win public support and overcome opposition by repeatedly asserting that what they are doing is effective and lawful. The tactical parallels are striking.

To create an illusion of legality, both administrations coined new labels for unlawful practices. President Bush's people coined the term "enhanced interrogation methods" to describe torture, and are still asserting that waterboarding is not torture but an effective, necessary tool to keep the country safe.

Brennan unveiled the phrase "hot battlefield" in a speech at Harvard Law in September 2011. A "hot battlefield" is the type found in traditional armed conflicts, where enemy fighters are killed without warning and it is permissible to also kill civilians, as long as their deaths are unintentional collateral damage and not disproportionate to the military objective.

The CIA is killing civilians away from "hot battlefields," but according to Brennan, there are other types of battlefields that are not "hot" but nevertheless lawful places to intentionally kill targets and unintentionally those nearby.


The parallels between the two administrations do not end with fabricated terminology. Lawyers in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in both administrations have written secret memos apparently analyzing the legality of these troubling practices. After the memos were written, waterboarding continued during the Bush administration. President Obama finally ended it with an executive order signed within days of his first inauguration. Guantanamo, however, stayed open, and targeted killing continued. We can safely assume that the memos conclude the United States may lawfully carry out such practices.

It is surprising to me that anyone feels the need to actually see these secret memos. International law clearly makes waterboarding, secret detention and targeted killing away from battlefields unlawful. The fact these practices have continued after the writing of the memos demonstrates the analysis is window dressing.

The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union, among others, have committed significant resources to obtaining the memos on targeted killing. It would, of course, be interesting to compare the specious arguments and omissions that must characterize these memos with those released by the Bush administration on interrogation and detention. Some citizens might actually need to see the memos to finally demand an end to the practice.

Create A Professional Website
—Do you want a prossional website for your business, church, mosque, school, hotel, hospital, services, organization, i can create one for you at an affordable price
Click Here For Details

Learn How To Make Pink Lip Balm
—Learn How To Make Pink Lip Balm, Sell and Make Profit
Click Here To Know How

Become A Website Designer, Blog Creator And A Professional Graphic Designer
Learn how to become a website designer, blog creator and a professional graphic designer with Photoshop,Coral Draw and an expert in the use of Microsoft Word,Microsoft Excel,Microsoft Access
Click Here For The Complete Details

Ads by PLB