Posted on 03/25/2010 9:24:28 AM PDT by Ben Mugged
The US government's refusal to offer a legal rationale for using unmanned drones to kill suspected militants in Pakistan could result in CIA officers facing prosecution for war crimes in foreign courts, a legal expert has told lawmakers. "Prominent voices in the international legal community" were increasingly impatient with Washington's silence on the CIA's bombing raids in Pakistan and elsewhere, Kenneth Anderson, a law professor at American University, told a congressional panel on Tuesday.
Lawyers at the US State Department and other government agencies were concerned that the administration has "not settled on what the rationales are" for the drone strikes, he said.
"And I believe that at some point that ill serves an administration which is embracing this," said Anderson.
The law professor said he believes the drone strikes are legal under international law, based on a country's right to self-defense, and urged the US administration to argue its case publicly.
President Barack Obama has spoken about taking the fight to the enemy and denying safe havens to extremists, and US officials privately tout the drone raids against Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders along the Pakistan border as highly effective.
But the administration declines to discuss the raids openly and has yet to publicly declare the legal justification for hunting down terror suspects in Pakistan and around the world.
"Now, maybe the answer is: This is all really terrible and illegal and anybody that does it should go off to the Hague. But if that's the case, then we should not be having the president saying that this is the greatest thing since whatever. That seems like a bad idea," Anderson said.
The congressional hearing broached a sensitive subject that is usually discussed by lawmakers and officials in closed sessions out of public view.
(Excerpt) Read more at spacedaily.com ...
The lawsuit asks for information on when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, according to the ACLU.
Vomit alert.
Therefore, the ACLU is against them.
What? The "rationales" are that Al Queda has openly, forcefully and frequently declared war on America, its citizens, its homeland and its interests abroad.
When war is declared on a country and its people, it should come as no surprise when those people take the initiative to kill their enemies, before their enemies kill them.
OK CIA...time to start vomiting out ALL of the intelligence you have on the enemies of the U.S, mainly domestic contacts with the enemy.
Let the American People know what you know.
I thought the A in ACLU stood for American not Allah. What American is having his civil rights violated if a a camel jockey meets allah at the tip of a Hellfire missile?
Don’t worry, they’ll never get any significant information out of the CIA. That information is all protected by national security laws that trump FOIA. Foreign courts can indict CIA offices if they want but those courts have no power to arrest and prosecute CIA officers (or even locate them.) These are all symbolic actions by human rights activists and none of it will go anywhere.
Hope your right.
But just the constant drone of the charges against the Cia does damage. It’s hard to defend them when they don’t let people know some of problem people we have in the U.S.
The rationale is that we are at war.
You don’t litigate war. Peacetime laws don’t apply. If they applied, you aren’t at war. If you still are trying to litigate a problem then either you aren’t at war or you seriously don’t understand that you are at war.
There are various political reasons why they are doing this, but there is also the lawyerly conceit that if lawyers haven’t approved of something and aren’t in charge of something it mustn’t be done.
War is the state of affairs that exists when lawyers are not sufficient to contain a conflict. When that day comes, you admit that you are at war, and you resort to violence that is not permitted under normal peacetime law. When you have slaughtered your opponents such that lawyers can now handle any remaining conflicts, you are no longer at war and you put away the heavy weaponry and you let the lawyers resume their normal functions.
Mixing lawyers and war is to distort both and to miss the difference between the two functions. You should not mix them.
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“legal rationale”?
For killing the enemy?
0bama signed an Executive Order giving Interpol the right to arrest American citizens in the United States without a US warrant and to transport them outside the country.
But if Bin Laddie has a drone and attacks NYC or some other liberal honey bucket, it’ll be hunky dory,,Peelosi might even award a medal.
Prosecute the real terrorists.
The ACLU.
That order won’t apply to CIA agents working on a critically important national security program. The war in Afghanistan is all about stopping Iran and it’s nuclear weapons program, and that is NATO’s top national security priority. You know that war is critically important when you actually see France, Germany, and Canada sending real armed soldiers into Afghanistan. Those countries only do that in a very serious situation.
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>>CIA officers.
Well then, the ACLU works to the benefit of the Pentagon and the turf battle between the CIA and the Pentagon would result in the Pentagon having control over all drone operations.
Then no issue, tada!
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