I read that crap in Vietnam during the war. Apparently no No. Vietnamese soldiers were ever killed in No. Vietnam, even at anti-aircraft sites, at military bases, on military ships, or at artillery sites, many of which were placed in civilian areas.

The same tactics of placing military weapons in civilian areas was done by the PLO in Lebanon (Lots of photos available of this being done), and more recently, re the rocket firing sites of Hamas and PLO factions in Gaza (caught on film) that were used to attack civilian targets in Israel.

Also forgotten is that the Taliban and related terrorist movement figures targetted in Pakistan, and elsewhere, are not regular, official government troops, just religious fanatics with their own armies (similar to the “Thuggies” in India, the Boko Harem in Nigeria, The Lords Army in Uganda, etc).

The war on terrorism has redefined traditional terms re who is the “enemy” and who is not, as well as who is willingly assisting the terrorists.

My son was ordered not to fire on Saddam’s terrorist forces when they used women and children as human shields. His unit had to honker down and take the fire until the shields were released, or the enemy moved away, or were killed by precision fire snipers.

This happened in Vietnam as well, and there are published mainstream newspaper reports about it.

For those who know anything about the law, the U.S. allows for “long arm” operations against criminals around the world, despite the fact that communist and Islamic nations specifically shield terrorist bombers/murderers, including Maxine Chesimard (Black Liberation Army) cop-killer, an American black muslim assassin named Daud (a movie star in Iran), etc.

Don’t forget that Syria and Egypt, as well as Argentina, protected wanted Nazi war criminals, and when they were seized by Israeli agents and taken to Israel for trial (Eichmann), or killed on the spot (the Germans working on Nasser’s poison gas and rocket programs), the world didn’t say a word about it.

A common theme in the “drone” targetting debate is that the Jihadist movement and the Communist/marxist movements are working in conjunction with each other to protect the terrorist scum of the earth, instead of condemning them and trying to stop their predations. And why not? They are born of the same psychopath ideologies – ones of terrorism, submission, murder, genocide, and eventual slavery of those they attack.

They use the same strategies and tactics that Lenin, Trotskyite and Stalin developed in the early 20th Century, including using all means, legal or illegal, to attain their goals. Using civilian clothing or even civilians to carry out their operations is Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), so what you seem to see in Pakistan at drone strike sites is probably not what it really is.

In a war there will always be “collateral damage.” However, the US armed forces have done the most of any modern military force to avoid/prevent as many needless deaths of the innocents as possible, and we have suffered numerous deaths of our servicemen because of this concern.

There is a difference between us and the enemy, but some don’t want to see it while others deliberately aid the enemy by trying to change who is the good guy.

Long live “Disinformation”!

Now, what if the rescuers may themselves be combatants? In that case, the question is whether or not this can be known. If it is NOT known, if some of the rescuers may be civilians, then firing on them would be an “indiscriminate attack” – one that does not or cannot distinguish between civilians or combatants. This is also a war crime: warring parties are to avoid indiscriminate attacks, and the presence of some combatants among a civilian population does not deprive that population of its civilian character.

But the bigger problem here is the assumption that war law applies in this context, which hinges on whether you accept that it is appropriate to characterize our relation to the targeted individuals as one of “armed conflict.” If not – and my sense is the authors of this report do not – then it is human rights law that applies, not humanitarian law.

My view is that arguments against the drone campaign will be stronger if discussions of their legality focus on the human rights angle and avoid treating this as a situation of armed conflict or referring to its as a drone “war” because the Administration’s strategy depends entirely on exploiting grey areas in humanitarian law – including the definition of armed conflict. Human rights law is much clearer on the subject of extrajudicial execution.

The US Supremes Have ruled that everybody is at least a Civilian under Geneva, and it is a War Crime to kill a civilian, the fact is that the US is bypassing its most fundamental requirement of War, the PROPER determination of whether someone is a Combatant and it started with George W By passing Geneva in the first instance in Afganistan, Never ever has ONE Gitmo Prisoner been given an Article 5 hearing to determine status, and it is impossible to determine status from the air!