From: The Guardian
He might even help out his friends in t he corporate world by 'eliminating' their inconvenient competition.
by Dan Roberts
Human rights groups wary after president asks Congress to establish special court or board to authorise legal drone action
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| Obama said he would ask Congress to review his proposal for future drone strikes to be subject to court review. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images |
Proposals to vet future US drone strikes risk creating "kill courts" according to human rights campaigners who say Barack Obama's promise of new legal oversight does not go far enough to end what they regard as extrajudicial executions.
The president has asked Congress to consider establishing a special court or oversight board
to authorise lethal action outside warzones under a new
counter-terrorism doctrine which he says will end the "boundless war on
terror".
But responses to his speech
from leading campaign groups, though broadly welcoming, highlight how
little change Obama is proposing to the underlying principle that the US
has a legal right to kill suspected terrorists abroad without trial.
In his speech on Thursday,
Obama suggested that in the future drone attacks would be limited, and
that they would be carried out primarily by the US military rather than
the CIA.
Obama said that US military intervention abroad did not
guarantee the safety of Americans at home, and often fomented extremism.
"A perpetual war – through drones or special forces or troop deployments – will prove self-defeating and alter our country in troubling ways," he said.
But
he defended his administration's decision to launch hundreds of such
strikes in recent years, insisting they were more discriminating than
other military options such as aerial bombing and had helped prevent
terrorist attacks.
Obama also said he would ask Congress to review
his proposal for future drone strikes to be subject to court review or
an independent oversight board.
"The establishment of a special
court to evaluate and authorise lethal action has the benefit of
bringing a third branch of government into the process, but raises
serious constitutional issues about presidential and judicial
authority," he said.
Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty International USA's
Security with Human Rights Campaign, said: "What's needed on drones is
not a 'kill court' but rejection of the radical redefinition of
'imminence' used to expand who can be killed as well as independent
investigations of alleged extrajudicial executions and remedy for
victims.
"The president was right to call for repeal of the 2001
authorisation for use of military force, but he doesn't need to wait for
Congress to act on this. He can unequivocally reject the 'global war'
legal theory today, once and for all, and put an end to the indefinite
detention, military commissions and unlawful killings it has been used
to justify."
This view was echoed by the American Civil Liberties Union,
which welcomed new restrictions against so-called 'signature strikes'
on suspicious groups but warned the notion of legal authority for
targeted assassinations remained deeply flawed.
"To the extent the
speech signals an end to signature strikes, recognises the need for
congressional oversight, and restricts the use of drones to threats
against the American people, the developments on targeted killings are
promising," said ACLU director Anthony Romero. "Yet the president still
claims broad authority to carry out target killings far from any
battlefield, and there is still insufficient transparency. We continue
to disagree fundamentally with the idea that due process requirements
can be satisfied without any form of judicial oversight by regular
federal courts."
Both groups also urged the president and Congress to do more to shut the Guantánamo Bay
detention centre and expressed concern about plans to seek a US
location for military commissions rather than try detainees in civil
courts. MORE
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