These drones are certainly not the change that I was believing in during the 2008 election.

Where is the ICC with regard to this? The International Criminal Court can prosecute those from the drone operators up the line to President Obama. I hope they do. If there was no veto power by the US and the other four members of the UNSC undemocratic star chamber they constitute, then we could get some law enforcement on this planet. The good news is that a majority of Americans favor getting rid of the undemocratic veto power the US, China, France, the UK and Russia.

From Bush/Cheney to Obama/Biden, (and Congress largely) power is whatever they want to do that others don't stop. We need law enforcement.

Vidio games military style as we get rid of our political enemies which we call terrorists..let other countries do that over here for economic empire and see what we say.

Frankly, I'm none too impressed with the military's version of "accountability". Saying "oops, my bad" and continuing on with business as usual doesn't seem quite sufficient to me ...

I think the distinction he makes between the CIA and the military use of drones is a distinction without a difference ...

Bring America Back !!!!

****This United Nations representative could have a point about the US use of drones and the human collateral damages.

***Does he feel it may have been the 40,000 laser guided missiles (shock and awe) we shot into a defenseless,
sovereign Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands, displacing millions, that may have put his nose on the hot track.

***Yes, this fellow just might be on to something. I hope he continues to study the US Drone Crusade to the caves of Tora Bora !!!! The CIA strives to slay the demonic dragon which hates us for our freedoms.

WE must use the Drones to kill everybody that is in the way of the PipeLine. If you guys had the ability to go to Google and get the facts on the PipeLine, you might educate yourselves on the Obama Drones.

Hitler felt he had the licence to,-invade, kill, conquer, and do what ever he pleased,and Prescott Bush, with his wealthy friends felt it was the proper way to go, tried to create a coup, overthrow the US government, OUST FDR, to implement hitlerian policies. Failed, but Prescott used his money as the power to form the CIA, become a senator, pass his ideas on to his son George, and George Jr. The Jr thought just like hitler as to appoint himself above the law, to invade, kill and conquer. The Drones were of his regime and used before Obama. Poppa made sure to pick the rght puppet to continue on with the Drones to rid Muslims, as hitler did the Jews. The Jews of today also use the hitlerian doctrine against the Palestinians. The Tea Party will make sure what Prescott started will happen in 2012. Perhaps another Bush, like Jeb or his son.

Remember when Conservatives campaigned on Law and Order?

Now it is harsh law and order for the masses and might makes right for Plutocracy.

I guess it always has been.

The truth is, the United States likes to kill people, and that is why we are so good at it. America is not about to quit using this new form of killing. Drones will be used until we design and build something even more effective at killing. Can you even imagine how much money we pour into this type of research and development? Really now, it is all about money.

"In a situation in which there is no disclosure of who has been killed, for what reason, and whether innocent civilians have died, the legal principle of international accountability is, by definition, comprehensively violated."

Well, I guess we're lucky that someone in an official position at the UN is still able to say this out loud.

Yet it's published by the French wire-service APF only, a country which the US has derided and belittled systematically since 2001 due to the country's more ethical stands on international relations. (Although France itself is no saint - but what state is?)

Execution by drone is so far removed from rule by law; there is no presentation of rules of evidence of guilt and no opportunity to present a defense. And, then his wife, daughter, grand-daughter and anyone else within reach of the bomb were also executed. This follows the philosophy of Tim McVeigh to justify his actions in Oklahoma City as just collateral damage. Who did he credit with teaching him this philosophy? The US Gov't during his service in the first war on Iraq.

But now, there is hope for change. The change is more drones.

We were the first to drop atomic bombs on civilians and now the first to use drones to do the same. We thus set a horrible example for others to emulate. TIME TO STOP.

The U.S. had nuclear weapons but no one else was supposed to get them, then many other nations got nuclear weapons. If the nation was a formidable enemy they were allowed to keep the weapons but if they were not a formidable enemy they are sanctioned, bombed, and sanctioned again and Iraq was bombed again based on lies about nuclear weapons and a connection to 9-11. Now proliferation of nuclear weapons is not a criminal act because Industrialized nations sell nuclear technology even the U.S. President Reagan sold nuclear technology to Communist China. Critics said that China would sell the information to Pakistan. However producing them is criminal if the nation is not a fully industrialized prosperous nation such as Iraq or Iran. The possible production of Nuclear weapons can be used now as an excuse to invade a nation if U.S. corporations want to control the oil wells or pipelines. Is this what will happen with drones? Many nations already have drones. But if a Muslim nation is said to have drones will that be an excuse to sanction and bomb that nation? And the terrorist leaders will not need terrorist with a suicide, death- wish because they can fly the planes into our skyscrapers with remote control from anywhere in the world. Do drones make you feel safe? The U.N. should be calling for drones to be banned immediately.

If you're into murder and don't want to be punished or prosecuted, get a job with a badge that says you are one of those that are hired to protect.

" THE EAGLE HAS STRANDED "

from Stardust

The drone had his number on it,
as it raced through the morning fog,
but also his wife and his children's,
and even the family dog.

So silent in stealth and the sun rays,
a beautiful morn had begun.
One would not know it was coming,
It hit like a flash of the sun.

"Kill!" yelled the young operator,
as stateside he notched off his strike.
Coordinates, fogged and misguided,
he took out his own family's life.

MARS of technology grinning,
the Finger of Fate, it has struck,
Alas for the dog and the family,
and for us--- we have run out of luck.

I hate to sound another negative note here, but IMO Mr. Alston should've cep his mouf shut.

Hasn't anyone clued in the UN to the perverse effect that ANY pronouncement from an UN special rapporteur has on a red-blooded Amerikan audience?

A "special rapporteur"? What the hell kind of la-de-da pissant poindexter is THAT? Sounds like a fancy, froggy word for a fudge-packin', cheese-eatin' surrender monkey!

So naturally, the Amerikan audience is determined to do the Exact Opposite of whatever a special rapporteur recommends, and cling twice as tightly to any course of action a special rapporteur criticizes or deplores.

Haven't special rapporteurs been trained on the virtues of Reverse Psychology?

When you say CIA drones, do you mean career employees, young recruits with sharp kill sets, one-trick minds, the outsourced vessels of desolation, management, the research department--or do you refer mainly to CIA's status as separate from worker bees and queens?

""I'm particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe," he told the 47-member council."

Oblivious !!!! What BS :-(

UN is just a talk shop when it comes to important issues. Guess this is all to justify all the money spent there to do in the end ...... NOTHING.

"He warned that hundreds of people had been killed including innocent civilians yet the CIA criteria for targeted killings remained shrouded in official secrecy."

It's becoming obvious that when the CIA or any other agency claims their "criteria" for killing people is secret it only means they do not have criteria beyond hoping that they get the also-shrouded-in-secrecy "bad guy" and any thinking they do about it is completely submerged by an unerring, if irrational to the point of deluded, belief in what should happen as opposed to what does.

This has become a marker of the age, this belief in what should happen rather than what does. In every disastrous outcome we have had to grieve during the last twenty years the belief in what should take place over the negative outcome that is equally predictable, or at least left unaccounted for because it is not preferable and doesn't fit into the positive spin necessary, has been the primary motivation for leaving things undone, for allowing thing to be done that are abhorrent and go against everything we were taught as children this country stands for, and for keeping the perpetrators of the worse crimes against humanity and the world we live in out of jail and still in charge of the next "should happen" debacle.

One could recommend any kind of revolution to wrest control away from the plutocrats who continue to link ours and our children's future to the tyranny of the public relations of What Should Be, but then revolutions, at least the violent kind, are also fraught with the inevitability of coming out badly for the very people they profess to be for: another gone rancid example of what should happen over what does.

The oddest and most bizarre aspect of this is how completely and transparently self-destructive such thinking turns out to be. Is it that those in charge of what should happen believe that the memory of the victims of these drone attacks will either be silenced into the oblivion of the mass-marketed memory loss that is the current oeuvre to keep people in a perpetual state of history-less reactionism like the Tea Party movement?...

...or have we simply been fed the pabulum of celebrity culture and ten minute sound bites for so long that we have grown into a culture of history retards who cannot imagine that anyone will have a longer memory than our Media Chains dictate and so all the killing of innocents, the sullying of the food chains, and the militarization of responses to peaceful relief operations will become just so much more fodder to keep the booby big-eyed and manikin-faced “newscasters” in jobs while it continues to manicure our newly adopted penchant for the fashionable short attention span?

I have a hard time believing that this might be so... but then I've never lived in this Age of History-lessness before so who knows?