by Glenn Greenwald 

The US government has long maintained, reasonably enough, that a defining tactic of terrorism is to launch a follow-up attack aimed at those who go to the scene of the original attack to rescue the wounded and remove the dead. Morally, such methods have also been widely condemned by the west as a hallmark of savagery. Yet, as was demonstrated yet again this weekend in Pakistan, this has become one of the favorite tactics of the very same US government.

From Voices for Creative Non-Violence

Join Ramsey Clark, Kathy Kelly, Ann Wright and Bill Quigley
Come to Missouri to Join Experts in Constitutional and International Law Supporting Activists in First Anti-Drone Trial Heard in Federal Court, September 10

Former Attorney General of the United States Ramsey Clark will be called as an expert witness in defense of two anti-drone activists on trial in United States District Court in Jefferson City, Missouri, on September 10. Clark, 84, has long and varied legal career that includes the drafting of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and opposition to the Vietnam War. He served as attorney general under President Lyndon Johnson from 1966 to 1969. Also called as expert witnesses for the defense will be retired Col. Ann Wright, who served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and 16 years as a U.S. diplomat and resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War, and Bill Quigley, Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, will be called to witness to the effects of drone warfare on its civilian victims she has met while visiting Afghanistan and Pakistan.

By Conn Hallinan

First, one should never be surprised to find that the NY Times can ferret out experts to say virtually anything. Didn’t they dig up those who told us all that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons? Second, whenever the newspaper uses the words “some,” that’s generally a tipoff the dice are loaded, in this case with a former Air Force officer (who teaches philosophy at the Naval Postgraduate School), a former CIA deputy chief of counterintelligence, and political scientist Avery Plaw, author of Targeting Terrorists: A License To Kill?

By David Kravets

Survivors of three Americans killed by targeted drone attacks in Yemen last year sued top-ranking members of the United States government, alleging Wednesday they illegally killed the three, including a 16-year-old boy, in violation of international human rights law and the U.S. Constitution.

“The government has killed three Americans. It should account for its actions. This case gives us an opportunity to do that,” Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a press call.

By Tom Junod

It was a pre-emptive strike against a pre-emptive strike.

When Nasser al-Awlaki found out in early 2010 that his American-born son Anwar was on American kill list, he responded in a very American way: He sued. "I used every legal means possible to stop the killing of my son," he said in an interview this past spring. Snd so — despite the notoriety of Anwar al-Awlaki and the success of Anwar al-Awlaki in inspiring terrorist attacks against the United States — he contacted the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, and they eventually filed a suit that attempted to enjoin the Obama Administration from carrying out its plans to kill him before he could carry out his alleged plans to kill Americans.

by Glenn Greenwald  

The effort to depict drone warfare as some sort of courageous and noble act is intensifying:

The Pentagon is considering awarding a Distinguished Warfare Medal to drone pilots who work on military bases often far removed from the battlefield. . . .

This is a talk Debra Sweet gave in Madison, Wisconsin in late May at the Veterans for Peace Memorial Day Commemoration:

I am so glad to be here in Madison, and to appreciate what Madison has brought us, including the 1967 Dow Chemical protests against Napalm, and the 2011 uprising against Walker.  The Veterans for Peace chapter in Madison is so active. I saw many of you last week in Chicago, protesting US/NATO war crimes. 

Todd Dennis and others did an inspiring action last Sunday by throwing their medals, won in the illegitimate, unjust, immoral US wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, back at the NATO Summit.  I am proud of Iraq Veterans Against the War for the content of their message, and for the way many of them spoke of the damage to the people of those countries.

by Marjorie Cohn and Jeanne Mirer 

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