The Obama administration has gone rogue

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all

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Why Washington Can’t Stop

The Coming Era of Tiny Wars and Micro-Conflicts

By Tom Engelhardt

In terms of pure projectable power, there’s never been anything like it. Its military has divided the world -- the whole planet -- into six “commands.”

Its fleet, with 11 aircraft carrier battle groups, rules the seas and has done so largely unchallenged for almost seven decades.

Its Air Force has ruled the global skies, and despite being almost continuously in action for years, hasn’t faced an enemy plane since 1991 or been seriously challenged anywhere since the early 1970s.

Its fleet of drone aircraft has proven itself capable of targeting and killing suspected enemies in the backlands of the planet from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen and Somalia with little regard for national boundaries, and none at all for the possibility of being shot down.

It funds and trains proxy armies on several continents and has complex aid and training relationships with militaries across the planet.

On hundreds of bases, some tiny and others the size of American towns, its soldiersgarrison the globe from Italy to Australia, Honduras to Afghanistan, and on islands from Okinawa in the Pacific Ocean to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Its weapons makers are the most advanced on Earth and dominate the global arms market. Its nuclear weaponry in silos, on bombers, and on its fleet of submarines would be capable of destroying several planets the size of Earth. Its system of spy satellites is unsurpassed and unchallenged. Its intelligence services can listen in on the phone calls or read the emails of almost anyone in the world from top foreign leaders to obscure insurgents.

The CIA and its expanding paramilitary forces are capable of kidnapping people of interest just about anywhere from rural Macedonia to the streets of Rome and Tripoli.

For its many prisoners, it has set up (and dismantled) secret jails across the planet and on its naval vessels. It spends more on its military than the next most powerful 13 states combined. Add in the spending for its full national security state and it towers over any conceivable group of other nations.

...

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1757...net_are_we_on/

It's not the Obama administration alone. McLiar and BishopGecko would have do nothing to reverse the above, and would have probably increased it, since the Repugs myth is that they are experts on NatSec ( except for 9/11 )

Where Washington is in truly, unshakable majority bi-partisan agreement: the American Imperial Military/Economic Empire MUST rule the planet and MUST be unchallenged anywhere.

"Why Do They Hate Us?"

[DMX7]

No, your hero Alex Jones lies quite a bit so he can sell water filters and iodine pills.

THE ANSWER TO 1984 IS $14.95!!!

AT THE INFOWARS STORE!!!

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Obama Administration May Be Guilty Of War Crimes

The Obama Administration’s assassination program, including its use of drones, has already proved controversial around the world. But now questions are being raised as to whether the program violates the laws of war and international human rights law. Outside of Afghanistan, or a “defined conflict zone”, the use of lethal force is subject to international laws protecting human rights. Laws the Obama Administration may have violated in Yemen and Pakistan where they have killed people using drones.

If the United Statesis only involved in an armed conflict in Afghanistan, international human rights law would be the regime that regulates the use of lethal force in Pakistan and Yemen. Therefore, as noted by Amnesty International, the use of lethal force outside of Afghanistan is legal when it can be demonstrated that:

“[It was] only used when strictly unavoidable to protect life, no less harmful means such as capture or non-lethal incapacitation was possible, and the use of force was proportionate in the prevailing cir stances.”

That is a pretty tough standard to meet when the Obama Administration is engaging in “signature strikes” or essentially killing people based on profiling people in a given area.

It is, in essence, killing by algorithm.

Signature strikes target individuals for death based not on the confirmed iden y or activities of the targets, but rather “behavioral characteristics” identified as those typical of militants. This is a clear violation of the principle of distinction. Further, Amnesty International questions President Obama’s assertion that drone strikes are only launched when there is “near certainty” that civilians will not be killed in the strike – a likely reference to President Obama’s disputed method of counting “all military-age males” in the vicinity of an alleged target as militants.

If formal charges are brought against President Obama and his administration they may need to seek protection from prosecution or, once having left office, limit their travel to countries that do not extradite based on war crimes violations. Though given the prevalence of signatories to the International Criminal Court that could prove difficult.

Whether anyone in the Obama Administration will ever be brought to justice is an open question, though it seems the controversy around the assassination program is likely to continue.

http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/11/...of-war-crimes/

[m>s]

lets take him down

[lefty]