Profound Quotes

"Neither is it that US foreign policy is cruel because American leaders are cruel. It's that our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment; it might as well be written into the job description. People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers - (let alone American soldiers - do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want to." From 'Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower' by William Blum

From "9-11, Six Years Later": "If one looks at the credentials of skeptics compared to the credentials of defenders of the official line, it is impossible to dismiss skeptics as kooks. There are many people with strong imaginations on the Internet, but serious skeptics stick to known facts, known violations of standard procedures and the laws of physics. The vast majority of the people who call skeptics "kooks" are themselves ignorant of physics and have little comprehension of the improbability that such an attack could succeed without either the complicity or complete failure of government agencies. " Paul Craig Roberts

"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular? But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right." Martin Luther King, Jr.

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PressTV - ACLU: CIA defiance on drone case ‘unlawful’

The Central Intelligence Agency should be ordered to say whether it has documents explaining the use of unmanned drones to kill individuals in Pakistan and Yemen, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told a federal appeals court in Washington.

The ACLU, in arguments on Thursday in Washington, said the CIA’s refusal to confirm or deny that it has records on the drone program is unlawful because President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have publicly acknowledged the program’s existence in public interviews.

“We think it’s clear — and the government now acknowledges — that there is a drone program run by the U.S. government,” Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer told a three-judge panel today. “The hard question is what is the CIA’s role and whether the CIA is actively using drones to carry out targeted killings.”

The dispute involves a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU seeking records on the legal basis for using unmanned aerial vehicles to kill human targets, the number of strikes, the selection of targets, whether the program involves cooperation with foreign countries, the determination of civilian casualties and the evaluation of completed strikes.

The use of American drones has provoked anger abroad, particularly in Pakistan, where human rights groups say innocent people have been victims. Bloomberg

FACTS & FIGURES

The CIA and the U.S. military have used unmanned aerial vehicles known as drones to target and kill those Washington calls “suspected militants” in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Libya.

In 2008, after Barack Obama won the presidency in the U.S., the drone strikes escalated and soon began occurring almost weekly, later nearly daily, and so became a permanent feature of life for those living in the tribal borderlands of northern Pakistan. CBS News

A report released by the United Nations in June 2010 called the drone attacks part of a “strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability”. CNN

Sourcing on civilian deaths is weak and the numbers are often exaggerated, but numbers suggest that for every militant killed, 10 or so civilians also died. Brookings


Pakistani local sources say more than 2,800 civilians have died in the drone attacks since seven years ago.

AHT/DT

PressTV - ACLU: CIA defiance on drone case ‘unlawful’.

September 22nd, 2012 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment |

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