[Peace-discuss] German official: Obama 'kills people as he sees fit'...

[C. G. Estabrook]

>From <http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,732684,00.html>:

...The US is increasingly using drones for air strikes in Pakistan's border 
area, with the CIA controlling the unmanned aircraft from the US. Drone attacks 
against insurgent targets form a key part of US President Barack Obama's 
anti-terror strategy, and are estimated to have killed over 500 people in 2010 
alone. The approach has been criticized by some human rights experts as 
violating international law, given that Pakistan is not a war zone.

"Such attacks are happening outside the law," says Neskovic. "International law 
does not provide any legal basis for the killing of suspected terrorists outside 
of a combat situation. … No intelligence service has the license to kill."

According to Neskovic, if other countries adopted such a strategy, the entire 
world would become a war zone, with "American drones over the Brandenburg Gate 
(in Berlin) and North Korean drones over Washington."

Neskovic reserves his strongest criticism for the American president, who he 
sees as being ultimately responsible for the drone attacks. "Barack Obama is not 
God, able to freely decide about life and death," he says....