The cable excerpts a letter written by Philip Alston, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, addressed to then Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. American troops approached the home of Faiz Harrat Al-Majma’ee, a farmer living in central Iraq, to conduct a house raid in search of insurgents in March of 2006.

“It would appear that when the MNF [Multinational Forces] approached the house,” Alston wrote, “shots were fired from it and a confrontation ensued” before the “troops entered the house, handcuffed all residents and executed all of them.” Mr. Faiz Hratt Khalaf, (aged 28), his wife Sumay’ya Abdul Razzaq Khuther (aged 24), their three children Hawra’a (aged 5) Aisha ( aged 3) and Husam (5 months old), Faiz’s mother Ms. Turkiya Majeed Ali (aged 74), Faiz’s sister (name unknown), Faiz’s nieces Asma’a Yousif Ma’arouf (aged 5 years old), and Usama Yousif Ma’arouf (aged 3 years), and a visiting relative Ms. Iqtisad Hameed Mehdi (aged 23) were killed during the raid.

Alston’s letter reveals that a US airstrike was launched on the house presumably to destroy the evidence, but that “autopsies carried out at the Tikrit Hospital’s morgue revealed that all corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed.”

The details revealed in the cable are a valuable insight into how many of these house raids turn out. The raids, often carried out in the middle of the night, have become one of the primary strategies of the US war in Afghanistan, with tens of thousands orchestrated just in the last year.

In one notable and comparable incident in February of 2010, US Special Operations Forces surrounded a house in a village in the Paktia Province in Afghanistan. Two civilian men exited the home to ask why they had been surrounded and were shot and killed. US forces then shot and killed three female relatives (a pregnant mother of ten, a pregnant mother of six, and a teenager).

Instead of calling in an airstrike to hide the evidence, US troops, realizing their mistake, lied and tampered with the evidence at the scene. The initial claim, which was corroborated by the Pentagon, was that the two men were insurgents who had “engaged” the troops, and the three murdered women were simply found by US soldiers, in what they described as an apparent honor killing. Investigations into the incident eventually forced the Pentagon to retract its initial story and issue an apology.

Civilian deaths are a common occurrence in these commonly occurring raid operations. In May, NATO killed another four civilians in a night raid, and another three in early August. No soldiers or US officials have been held to account.

That’s because President Obama’s claim not only didn’t convince Congress, it didn’t convince his own legal advisers, and both the Pentagon and the Justice Department counsels told the president unequivocally that the war required Congressional approval.

White House spokesman Eric Shultz said the decision came after a “full airing of views.” In the end this simply means that the president thumbed his nose at head legal counsels for both the Pentagon, charged with fighting the illegal war, and the Justice Department, in theory responsible for upholding the law.

Schultz insisted that disagreements in such debates are “ordinary and healthy,” but it is decidedly out of the ordinary for the president to ignore such advice when it comes from top legal officials.

It seems surprising, in retrospect, that President Obama even had to ask if dropping bombs on a country counted as “hostilities.” But having heard from his top legal minds that yes, these are “hostilities,” the unfathomable truth is that he simply decided to ignore it.

The administration was perfectly aware of the requirement to obtain such approval under the War Powers Act of 1973, even using the act as justification for their lack of authorization during the 60 day grace period. Despite this, no authorization was even sought until late Friday afternoon, literally hours before the deadline slipped.

Which of course meant Congress had no time to even consider holding a vote on the conflict. An successful authorization vote is the actual requirement of the law, not simply a last second request for one.

The law was an attempt to settle what many presidents at the time saw as a loophole in the Constitutional requirement for Congress to declare all wars – granting only a short grace period for conflicts of any size so presidents could no longer claim a fight was too small to be a real war.

And indeed, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates brought this age-old claim out early this week, claiming the Libya War was technically just a “limited kinetic action.” Unfortunately for him and the rest of the administration, the act provides no exemption for such an “action.” Whether war, kinetic action, or any other term is applied, there is one label that fits quite neatly – federal crime.

Titled “Precisely Wrong,” the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report focuses on six cases of Israeli drone-launched missile attacks in which 29 Palestinian civilians, eight of them children, were killed. Based on cross-referenced eyewitness accounts corroborated by doctors, as well as ballistics and forensic evidence collected on the attack sites, the report asserts that “in none of the cases did HRW find evidence that Palestinian fighters were present in the immediate area of the attack at the time.”

“These attacks violated international humanitarian law,” the report states in unequivocal terms, following a 10-day investigation.

Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at the emergencies program of HRW, estimates that at least 87 civilians were killed in 42 drone attacks. “Israel’s targeting choices are unacceptable and unlawful,” he declared at a press conference in East Jerusalem, “especially [considering] that UCLAV provide the most precise platform in the military arsenal, and that Israel is the world leader in drone technology.”

The report includes technical information about drones and drone-launched missiles. Israeli drones have advanced sensors, combining radars, electro-optical and infrared cameras, and lasers providing real-time imaging by day and night. “Those sensors enable a drone operator to determine if a person on the ground is armed,” stressed Garlasco.

In addition to these high-resolution cameras, a missile fired from a drone has its own cameras that allow the operator to observe the target from the moment of firing. “If a last-second doubt arises about a target, the operator can divert the fired missile with a joystick,” the report notes.

Everything viewed by the drone operator is recorded. “There is no fog of war with such drones,” Garlasco said. “Yet, the Israeli army failed to distinguish between military objectives and civilians.”

According to Palestinian sources, 900 civilians were killed during the military operations, among a total of more than 1,400 killed. The HRW report says a third of the fatalities were from drone-launched missiles. Israeli sources put the civilian death toll at 300.

“HRW is not against the use of drones in warfare. Its accuracy and concentrated blast radius can indeed reduce civilian casualties,” Garlasco conceded. But “drones, much like sniper rifles, are only as good at sparing civilians as the care taken by the people who operate them.”

The Israeli army questions the credibility of the HRW investigation. “The report is based on anonymous Palestinian sources whose knowledge of military issues is doubtful, who are clearly not impartial observers, and who are part of the propaganda machine in Gaza,” it said in a statement.

“We conducted interviews separate from Hamas activists,” counters Garlasco. “If there were fighters, the interviews were stopped immediately; we just did not use them.”

Garlasco acknowledges that the testimonies collected are limited. “Mistakes can happen, but here there is a clear pattern – many civilians were killed. It seems Israeli rules of engagement were very loose – keeping Israeli casualties to a minimum, valuing the lives of soldiers more than those of Palestinian civilians.”

The report calls on Israel to conduct a “case-by-case investigation” into the use of drone-launched missiles. “Military or civilian personnel found responsible for committing or ordering unlawful drone attacks should be disciplined or prosecuted as appropriate.”

“This report has a look to the future,” says Garlasco. “It’s a cautionary tell to the U.S. continued use of UCLAV in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

Human rights activists have increasingly voiced their concern over U.S. reliance on a drone-launched missile attack policy. In a stinging report submitted earlier this month to the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, UN special investigator Philip Alston charged that the U.S. has created “zones of impunity” by rarely investigating private contractors and civilian intelligence agents involved in the killing of civilians from drone attacks. Alston urged that an independent special prosecutor be charged with pursuing criminal allegations against government officials accused of wrongdoing.

“Even when you’re attacking a legitimate military objective, you cannot cause civilian casualties that exceed the value of a legitimate military attack,” says Garlasco. Still, the reliance on drone tactics – and the strategic cutting-edge drones increasingly provide – may surpass the power of human rights in international forums. Last week, Israel’s Channel Two revealed that Israel had conditioned the sale to Russia of a dozen drones, on Moscow not selling Iran advanced anti-aircraft missile technology. Iran has sought to deploy the Russian S300 air-defense missile system against a possible Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities.

Moscow became aware of a need for advanced drones during its war with Georgia last summer. Georgia operated Israeli-made spy drones, which proved highly effective. The Russians used a drone of their own without great success. Russian military officials have made no secret of their intention to use Israeli models to improve their drone development program.

(Inter Press Service)