{"id":187312,"date":"2013-04-10T19:59:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T00:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/04\/10\/if-you-claim-the-right-to-kill-anyone-you-want-you-will-kill-anyone-you-want\/"},"modified":"2013-04-10T19:59:00","modified_gmt":"2013-04-11T00:59:00","slug":"if-you-claim-the-right-to-kill-anyone-you-want-you-will-kill-anyone-you-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/04\/10\/if-you-claim-the-right-to-kill-anyone-you-want-you-will-kill-anyone-you-want\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Claim the Right to Kill Anyone You Want, You Will Kill Anyone You Want"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out that Obama\u2019s claims that drone strikes are exclusively made against senior terrorist figures are a lie<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Contrary to assurances it has deployed U.S. drones only against known senior leaders of al Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified \u201cother\u201d militants in scores of strikes in Pakistan\u2019s rugged tribal area, classified U.S. intelligence reports show.<\/span>

<\/span>The administration has said that strikes by the CIA\u2019s missile-firing Predator and Reaper drones are authorized only against \u201cspecific senior operational leaders of al Qaida and associated forces\u201d involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks who are plotting \u201cimminent\u201d violent attacks on Americans.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cIt has to be a threat that is serious and not speculative,\u201d President Barack Obama said in a Sept. 6, 2012, interview with CNN. \u201cIt has to be a situation in which we can\u2019t capture the individual before they move forward on some sort of operational plot against the United States.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>Copies of the top-secret U.S. intelligence reports reviewed by McClatchy, however, show that drone strikes in Pakistan over a four-year period didn\u2019t adhere to those standards.<\/span>

<\/span>The intelligence reports list killings of alleged Afghan insurgents whose organization wasn\u2019t on the U.S. list of terrorist groups at the time of the 9\/11 strikes; of suspected members of a Pakistani extremist group that didn\u2019t exist at the time of 9\/11; and of unidentified individuals described as \u201cother militants\u201d and \u201cforeign fighters.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>In a response to questions from McClatchy, the White House defended its targeting policies, pointing to previous public statements by senior administration officials that the missile strikes are aimed at al Qaida and associated forces.<\/span>

<\/span>Micah Zenko, an expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, a bipartisan foreign policy think tank, who closely follows the target killing program, said McClatchy\u2019s findings indicate that the administration is \u201cmisleading the public about the scope of who can legitimately be targeted.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gee, you think that they are lying to us?<\/p>\n

Hoocoodanode?<\/p>\n

You remember what they say about absolute power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It turns out that Obama\u2019s claims that drone strikes are exclusively made against senior terrorist figures are a lie: Contrary to assurances it has deployed U.S. drones only against known senior leaders of al Qaida and allied groups, the Obama administration has targeted and killed hundreds of suspected lower-level Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified \u201cother\u201d militants …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1153,1142,1032,969,1076,1152],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-barack-obama","category-crimes-against-humanity","category-evil","category-terrorism","category-uav"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187312"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}