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Military Drone Attacks Are Not 'Hostile'

Posted by Soulskill on from the napalm-hugs-and-frag-grenade-kisses dept.

sanzibar writes "Not satisfied with the legal conclusion of the DOJ, the Obama administration found other in-house lawyers willing to declare a bomb dropped from a drone is not 'hostile'. The strange conclusion has big implications in determining the President's compliance with the law. If drone strikes are in fact hostile and the Libyan campaign continues past Sunday, he may very well be breaking the law."

2 of 892 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's not a law! by zill · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's called the War Powers Resolution for a reason... it was a resolution, of Congress... which does not have the signature of a President... it was not vetoed... or even pocket vetoed... because it was never presented to a President for his signature... preventing any possibility of a veto override.

    As much as I loathe this President... I do have to give him credit for standing up against the WPA... it’s a shame he’s not competent enough to recognize the reality of the WPA and state it... rather than playing these games.

    Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong.

    It passed the House on July 18, 1973.
    It passed the Senate on July 20, 1973.
    President Nixon vetoed it on October 24, 1973.
    His veto was overridden by the Senate on November 7, 1973. Thus immediately the bill became law, without the need for Nixon's signature.
    And this is a high resolution scan of the final bill.

  2. Re:Of Course Drone Attacks Are Hostile by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 5, Informative

    Except the US and NATO don't "indiscriminately" kill as they please, they put a ton of planning into every strike and try to conduct operations is with a minimal amount of civilian death and injuries.

    After all, the US and UK have been using inert bombs on radar and light structures for over 12 years, because an explosive would do too much civilian damage.

    Those ignorant of military history think all modern bombing and air strikes look like Sir Harris planned them and that because a B-52 can carry 35 tons of bombs, every time a B-52 is mentioned it must have dropped 35 tons of bombs.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_bombing

    But the vast majority of airstrikes and bombings by the US and NATO since 1992 have been with smart weapons, guided missiles or single small (500 pound or 1000 pound) bombs

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_guided_munition

    In Iraq/Kuwait in 1991 8.8% of air strikes were with PGMs, in the Kosovo War the number is up to 90%, in 2001 Afghanistan it drops back to 55%

    In Libya it looks like about 75-80% PGM, and of course anything from a Predator or Reaper drone is going to be a PGM, either a Hellfire (Laser or Millimeter wave radar) or a small JDAM (GPS and/or laser)

    http://theamericanaudacity.blogspot.com/2011/03/canadas-six-cf-18-hornets-deployed-to.html
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nato-runs-short-on-some-munitions-in-libya/2011/04/15/AF3O7ElD_story.html?hpid=z1
    http://jha.ac/articles/a110.htm
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_guided_munition