Inside Story Americas: Are US Drone Strikes a War Crime?

October 27, 2012 from Al Jazeera English

The United Nations is setting up a special unit to investigate the legality of US drone strikes. The White House appears unapologetic. Is the White House trying to buffer and widen its scope of targeted killings with controversial new legislations? Shihab Rattansi speaks to Greg Miller and Hina Shamsi.

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White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States, located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, D.C.. It has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in 1800. The house was designed by Irish... Explore this topic

Drone attacks in Pakistan

The United States government has made hundreds of attacks on targets in northwest Pakistan since 2004 using drones controlled by the American Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division. These attacks are part of the United States' War on Terror campaign, seeking... Explore this topic

Drone

An unmanned aerial vehicle, commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot on board. Its flight is controlled either autonomously by computers in the vehicle, or under the remote control of a pilot on the ground or in another vehicle. There are a wide variety ... Explore this topic

Targeted killing

Targeted killing is the premeditated killing of an individual, by a state, organization or institution, outside a battlefield. Targeted killings were employed extensively by death squads in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Haiti within the context of civil unr... Explore this topic

Obama administration foreign policy

U.S. President Barack Obama's foreign policy philosophy has been postulated as "The Obama Doctrine" by Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, which Dionne explains as "a form of realism unafraid to deploy American power but mindful that its use must be tempered by practical li... Explore this topic

Predator drone

The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator is an unmanned aerial vehicle built by General Atomics and used primarily by the United States Air Force and Central Intelligence Agency. Initially conceived in the early 1990s for reconnaissance and forward observation roles, the Predator car... Explore this topic

US-Pakistan relations

Pakistan – United States relations or Pakistan-American relations, refers to the international, historical, and cultural bilateral relationship between the State of Pakistan and the United States, with both countries first establishing diplomatic relations on October 20, 1947,... Explore this topic

United Nations

The United Nations is the world's largest, foremost, and most prominent international organization. The stated aims of the United Nations include promoting and facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human r... Explore this topic

Foreign policy

A country's foreign policy, also called the foreign relations policy, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu. The approaches are strategically employed to inter... Explore this topic

United States

The United States of America, commonly called the United States or America, is a federal republic consisting of fifty states and a federal district. The lower forty-eight contiguous states and the federal district of Washington, D.C. are in central North America between Canada... Explore this topic

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