CIA’s drone program under assault

| June 8, 2010

In this morning’s Washington Post, Mark Theissen warns that the United Nations and the American Civil Liberties Union are joining forces to end the CIA’s successful drone program in Afghanistan;

The special rapporteur, Philip Alston, was joined in his condemnation by the American Civil Liberties Union, which in an April 28 letter to Obama, accused him of supporting a “program of long-premeditated and bureaucratized killing” and declared that the program “violates international law.” The ACLU wrote that “financiers, and other non-combat ‘supporters’ of hostile groups cannot be lawfully targeted with lethal force.” Yet that is precisely what Obama did in the case of Yazid.
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On The Post’s op-ed page Sunday, Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey called the killing of Yazid a “major blow” to al-Qaeda because “Yazid has essentially served as al-Qaeda’s ‘chief financial officer,’ coordinating the group’s fundraising and overseeing the distribution of money essential to its survival.” By the ACLU’s reasoning, this would make the strike that killed Yazid illegal. Does the ACLU want to see the Predator operator who took out al-Qaeda’s third in command prosecuted for murder? The ACLU has already gone after CIA interrogators — surreptitiously photographing these covert operatives and sharing the images with al-Qaeda terrorists in Guantanamo. CIA drone operators may soon be in for similar treatment.

Yeah, it frightens me that lawyers are trying to insinuate themselves into the role of war fighters. It’s impossible to hold warriors to a civilian legal standard during day-to-day operations when their crime is just doing their jobs.

Category: Antiwar crowd, Liberals suck, Terror War

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ponsdorf

Jonn said: … their crime is just doing their jobs.

I do believe that is their working premise in a nutshell.

JAG

Actually, this is not lawyers inserting themselves.

Quick history lesson:
In the 1500s the French outlawed the use of the bow as a method of warfare (The english were kicking thier collective rears using the longbow). They enforced it by cutting off the middle finger of any captured englishman. (Thus the middle finger became profane) There are many arguments whether the english ever held thier middle fingers up and screamed “pluck ewe.”

But more importantly, it represents an early version of “lawfare.” Al Qaeda is an expert in this area of warfare, much better than we are. Witness thier success with detainees/POWs.

This is simply testament to the fact we are doing well with this tactic. So Al Qaeda and thier supporters will try to outlaw its use. The story would be very different if they had the ability to use drones…

Any real lawyer will tell you that outlawing a method of warfare is rare and usually useless. We have specific conventions on mines, chemical weapons, etc. But I can assure you there is nothing on drones, ergo thier use is unrestricted.

Anyone arguing differently is not an attorney, that is called advocacy.

Adirondack Patriot

Once again, people who have never been to Afghanistan or Iraq are trying to tell the people who ARE THERE how to win a war there.

CPT Me

The term for such activities is called “lawfare.” It’s when people use the law and courts to fight and influence war and war policy.

seadog

Drop the members of the ACLU, et al, into Afghanistan. On their own. See how long it takes for them to start screaming for drones, helicopters, troops, etc. Anything to pull their asses out of the fire.

B Woodman

Thank you #5 SeaDog. My first thoughts. Except it wasn’t to see how long it would be before they hollered for help. It was to see how long they survived.

PintoNag

I may be wrong about this, (not being in the military or working for the CIA), but it seems to me that the two should function like the muscles/skeleton and nervous system in the body; without one, the other simply cannot function. If you hamper the function of the intelligence community, the military will suffer, isn’t that correct? And the other way around?