[Peace-discuss] [Peace] "Killer Koh"

[John W.]

I for one would be interested in the documentation for the statement in the
article that President Obama is responsible for "greatly" more deaths than
George W. Bush:

"If Hillary Clinton is elected president, with the advice of Tim Kaine and
Killer Koh, she may be even more eager to mass-murder than her predecessor:
the number of casualties would likely exceed that of Obama’s kill list,
just as his toll today greatly outnumbers G. W. Bush’s."

John Wason




On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 9:10 AM, Karen Aram via Peace <
peace at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> In relation to the U of I , COL bringing Harold “Killer” as he is known,
> Koh, to campaign for Hillary.
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> October Surprise: Harold “Killer” Koh to Lecture at UI Law School in
> Election Week
> Posted on September 2016
> <http://publici.ucimc.org/october-surprise-harold-killer-koh-to-lecture-at-ui-law-school-in-election-week/>
>  by Midge O'Brien <http://publici.ucimc.org/author/mobrien/>
>
> <https://filament.io/applications/flare?utm_source=flare_wp&utm_medium=deployment&utm_content=flarebar&utm_campaign=filament>
> [image: th] <http://publici.ucimc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/th.jpg>
>
> Harold Hongju Koh
>
> Harold Hongju Koh, Hillary Clinton’s former legal advisor at the State
> Department  has been invited as an ‘endowed speaker’ at the U.I. College of
> Law, twelve days prior to the November election. Koh, currently a Yale Law
> School professor and former Dean, is a close friend of Yale Law School
> graduates Bill and Hillary Clinton. He was appointed by President Bill
> Clinton as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and
> Labor; and by President Obama, as senior legal advisor to Secretary of
> State Hillary Clinton: he provided legal advice to her during the 2009 coup
> in Honduras, the 2011 US/NATO attack on Libya, and Obama’s ongoing drone
> assassinations – as well as damage-control in her email controversy. He
> won’t say what that advice was, claiming “attorney-client privilege” –
> despite the Supreme Court ruling against attorney-client confidences
> between government lawyers and government officials.
>
> An avid advocate of the targeted killing program, “Killer Koh” supports
> the legality of what he terms “extrajudicial killing” in Pakistan, Yemen
> and other Middle Eastern countries in the US “war on terror,” saying it
> complies “with all applicable law, including the laws of war,” and citing
> the ‘principle of proportionality’ in “taking great care in planning and
> execution to ensure that only ‘legitimate’ objectives are targeted and that
> collateral damage is kept to a minimum.” In a feeble attempt at
> transparency, the Obama administration recently released a modest admission
> that some “116 civilians” may have been victims of U. S. drone attacks – a
> figure that is not reconcilable with the accounts of eyewitnesses,
> journalists and human rights researchers, who have documented many
> thousands of casualties. President Obama said – in a revealing moment of
> self-reflection – “Turns out I’m really good at killing people … Didn’t
> know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine” (from Mark Halperin & John
> Heilemann, “Double Down: Game Change 2012”).
>
> If Hillary Clinton is elected president, with the advice of Tim Kaine and
> Killer Koh, she may be even more eager to mass-murder than her predecessor:
> the number of casualties would likely exceed that of Obama’s kill list,
> just as his toll today greatly outnumbers G. W. Bush’s.
>
> Late on Friday 5 August, the White House grudgingly complied with an
> Federal Court order (from an ACLU suit) and released a redacted
> “President’s Policy Guidance” (PPG) on Obama’s program of targeted
> killings. The PPG stipulates that “nothing in this PPG shall be construed
> to prevent the President from exercising his Constitutional authority … to
> authorize lethal force against an individual who poses a continuing,
> imminent threat to another country’s persons.” (Killing US citizens
> requires specific approval by the President). Death lists are drawn up
> weekly by the ‘nominating committee’ and are reviewed by lawyers of the
> nominating agencies (CIA, Pentagon, NSC, officials of the State Department
> and “deputies and principals of the nominating committee”).
>
> Of the seven Middle Eastern countries where drone assassinations take
> place, “active war zones” – Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan (it’s not clear if
> Libya is included) – do not require prior approval. With this protocol in
> place, the White House and the National Security Council are insulated from
> outside scrutiny, even by Congress. It assumes that the Commander in Chief
> can do anything s/he wants; it would provide a President Clinton #2, with
> the approval of hawks Tim Kaine and Harold Koh, immense power and license
> to kill.
>
> Koh as the (former) State Department lawyer has publicly defended
> extrajudicial killing as “due process under the Constitution in the age of
> moral and political degeneration.” In a speech at the Oxford Political
> Union in 2013 he said, “This Administration has not done enough to be
> transparent about the legal standards and decision making process …
> fostering a growing perception that the program [extrajudicial killing] is
> not lawful and necessary…,” adding that this lack of transparency is
> counterproductive and has led to the “negative public image” of targeted
> killing. Does Prof. Koh think the recent exposure of the (heavily redacted)
> PPG ordered by the Court provides the “transparency” to satisfy critics of
> the legality of targeted killing?
>
> Although Koh has been described as a prominent advocate of human and civil
> rights (apparently exclusively of US citizens), he has been an “equal
> opportunist” as a legal advisor to Reagan, Clinton and Obama
> administrations – all of whom have violated the human rights of foreign
> nationals. He hardly represented human and civil rights as a member of the
> Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel to the President in the
> Reagan administration, when that office justified violations of
> international law, the Charter of United Nations and the US Constitution,
> in grievous violation of human rights and attempts to destabilize the
> countries of Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua (attempting to withdraw from
> the International Court of Justice, which denounced the US for bombing
> Nicaraguan harbors), Guatemala, Libya, Angola and elsewhere in southern
> Africa; and when it supported the South African apartheid government
> against its black population, supported Israel’s invasion and massacres of
> Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, and supported illegal Israeli
> settlements in the Palestinian Occupied Territories – for which the US
> exercised its veto in the U.N. Security Council, in opposition to sanctions
> against US. In addition, the Reagan administration and its legal advisors
> refused to support nuclear test ban treaties, instead proliferating
> first-strike nuclear weapons, SDI (“star wars”) and MX missiles. Not a
> record to be proud of for someone serving as legal counsel to the president.
>
> The opportunity extended Harold Koh to lecture potential scholars of
> political and international law poses the question, Is the University of
> Illinois College of Law – with its record of sanctions – qualified to
> educate future lawyers, when it sponsors a person of Harold H. Koh’s
> character in these politically charged times?
>
> The Nuremberg Military Tribunal in 1947 stated unequivocally that the
> crimes of the ten civilian Nazi defendants who were convicted of murder and
> other atrocities, conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against
> humanity of civilians and nationals of occupied territories, were liable to
> severe penalty whether or not they had engaged in military action. The
> Nuremberg judgment still stands in  international law.
>
> A reception to protest Professor Koh’s appearance is planned at the north
> courtyard of the College of Law before the lecture on the afternoon of
> October 28.
>
> (Midge O’Brien was an academic professional in U. of I. life science
> laborotories over twenty years and secretary in the Union of Professional
> Employees; was an election judge twelve years; a member of Nuclear Freeze,
> and Prairie Alliance against nuclear power; and an anti-war activist since
> 1965.  She is a member of the Green Party.)
>
>
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