PRESS RELEASE
Drone Papers Confirm Obama’s Killings Are Illegal; Why Is He Still President?
Nov. 6, 2015 (EIRNS)—Law Professor Marjorie Cohn, at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, a former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, is calling for the drone program to be immediately stopped. She identifies the key violations of international law in a piece called “ ‘Drone Papers’ Revelations Are a Cry for Ending the Slaughter.”
Cohn says that the
“files confirm that the Obama administration’s policy and practice of assassination using armed drones and other methods violate the law.... [and] reveal the kill chain that decides who will be targeted.”
"The newly released documents are a clarion call to us all to demand that our government stop the killing. It is illegal, it is immoral, and it makes us more vulnerable to terrorism."
After focussing on the widespread civilian deaths due to the reliance on merely identifying cell phones and other “signals,” and exposing that CIA Director John Brennan lied in 2011 that “no civilians” had been killed by drone attacks “in nearly a year,” Cohn cites the international laws that the Obama administration has violated.
“The Geneva Conventions provide that only combatants may be targeted,” she writes, but the Drone Papers show that
“during a five-month period almost 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets....”
Later she says,
“The U.S. is violating the right to life enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Because the U.S. ratified this treaty, it constitutes binding domestic law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which states, ‘Treaties shall be the supreme law of the land.’ ”
Every violation of law she cites is coupled with examples from either the Drone documents or the whistleblower source quoted in The Intercept articles. The article has appeared in Huffington Post, Truthdig, Consortium News, Counterpunch, and many other blogs. She previously wrote an article entitled, “Kunduz Hospital Bombing: Probable Cause That the U.S. Committed a War Crime.”
The only remaining question after this is, why is Obama still President?
