Top Secret Intel Docs Betray Obama Claims on Drone Targeting

Based on their review of leaked top-secret intelligence reports, McClatchy is reporting that the Obama Administration has long been guilty of misrepresenting the kind of groups and individuals it has targeted with its fleet of armed Predator and Reaper drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Though critics of Obama's targeting killing have long-believed that so-called signature strikes--where targets are chosen for their behavior rather than confirmed intelligence on who they are--would be illegal under US and international law, the White House has long defended the manner in which it targets specific groups and individuals. It has done so, however, without releasing the trail of documents that track the program's decision-making.

But as McClatchy reports, the top-secret U.S. intelligence reports it reviewed "show that drone strikes in Pakistan over a four-year period didn't adhere" to the standards put fourth in public statements and press interviews by White House officials.

According to McClatchy:

The intelligence reports list killings of alleged Afghan insurgents whose organization wasn't 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't exist at the time of 9/11; and of unidentified individuals described as "other militants" and "foreign fighters." [...]

The documents also show that drone operators weren't always certain who they were killing despite the administration's guarantees of the accuracy of the CIA's targeting intelligence and its assertions that civilian casualties have been "exceedingly rare."

McClatchy's review is the first independent evaluation of internal U.S. intelligence accounting of drone attacks since the Bush administration launched America's secret aerial warfare on Oct. 7, 2001, the day a missile-carrying Predator took off for Afghanistan from an airfield in Pakistan on the first operational flight of an armed U.S. drone.

The analysis takes on additional significance because of the domestic and international debate over the legality of drone strikes in Pakistan amid reports that the administration is planning to broaden its use of targeted killings in Afghanistan and North Africa.

McClatchy also explores the broadly held view that the US drone attacks are exacerbating conflicts, not solving them, in the regions where they take place.

Obama, they think, is misinterpreting international law, including the laws of war, which they say apply only to the uniformed military, not the civilian CIA, and to traditional battlefields like those in Afghanistan, not to Pakistan's tribal area, even though it may be a sanctuary for al Qaida and other violent groups. They argue that Obama also is strengthening his executive powers with an excessively broad application of the September 2001 use-of-force resolution.

The administration's definition of "imminent threat" also is in dispute. The Justice Department's leaked white paper argues the United States should be able "to act in self-defense in circumstances where there is evidence of further imminent attacks by terrorist groups even if there is no specific evidence of where such an attack will take place or of the precise nature of the attack." Legal scholars counter that the administration is using an exaggerated definition of imminence that doesn't exist in international law.

"I'm thankful that my doctors don't use their (the administration's) definition of imminence when looking at imminent death. A head cold could be enough to pull the plug on you," said Morris Davis, a Howard University Law School professor and former Air Force lawyer who served as chief prosecutor of the Guantanamo Bay terrorism trials.

Since 2004, drone program critics say, the strikes have killed hundreds of civilians, fueling anti-U.S. outrage, boosting extremist recruiting, and helping to destabilize Pakistan's U.S.-backed government. And some experts warn that the United States may be setting a new standard of international conduct that other countries will grasp to justify their own targeted killings and to evade accountability.

Read McClatchy's complete reporting here.

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