The legality of targeted killing remains hotly contested between the national governments with the standoff targeting capabilities and humanitarian lawyers who view it as an evasion of at least three legal regimes and a practice which, if endorsed by law, raises the incentive to use force rather than resort to law to a dangerous and uncivilised degree.[18] This debate will take time to resolve. But it seems safe to say now that, based on considerations of criminal law, international humanitarian law and the law of armed conflict, and from a moral as well as a legal standpoint, the only arguably acceptable substitute for due process in the context of targeted killing is a combination of accurate intelligence, assiduous target selection that prioritises minimising civilian casualties, and technically precise targeting. Review processes have been established for both assessing the accuracy of purportedly actionable intelligence and determining the feasibility of targeting a given terrorist with a minimal probability of harming innocent civilians.[19] But the details of the procedures used and the level of scrutiny applied remain essentially secret, and certainly closely held by the US military and the CIA.[20] Moreover, these procedures are reportedly routinely disregarded in the field, where mid-level operational commanders or CIA officers sometimes order drone strikes without higher approval.[21] Finally, fears about the integrity of targeted-killing operations have arisen from disclosures that disreputable private military contractors have been hired to deploy missiles on Predators.[22]
19 See, for example, Eben Kaplan, ‘Backgrounder: Targeted Killings’, Council on Foreign Relations, March 2006,
http://www.cfr.org/publication/9627/.
20 See Hina Shamsi, ‘No Longer A Debate About Targeted Killings’, CBS News, 21 July 2009,
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories//2009...n5176876.shtml.
21 See David Montero, ‘Use of Drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan: Deadly, but Legal?’, Christian Science Monitor, 12 August 2009,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0812/p99s01-duts.html; Rajiv Chandrasekaran, ‘Sole Informant Guided Decision on Afghan Strike’, Washington Post, 4 September 2009m p. A1.
22 See James Risen and Mark Mazzetti, ‘C.I.A. Said to Use Outsiders to Put Bombs on Drones’, New York Times, 20 August 2009.
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