recently a u.n. report an investigation by human rights groups make it abundantly clear obama's drone policies may constitute war crimes under international law and the white house dismisses these claims it would appear washington reserves the exceptional right to murder with impunity. i was a new alert animation scripts scare me a little bit. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of the why it great thing that. he had.

found alive there's a story made for a movie is playing out in real life. well . sunny it's technology innovations all the lives developments from around russia we've gone to the future and covered. hello and welcome to cross talk or all things considered i'm peter lawwell this week members of a pakistani family were in washington to tell congress what it's like to be victims of a drone strike only for a lawmaker showed up and recently a un report an investigation by human rights groups make it abundantly clear

obama's drone policies may constitute war crimes under international law the white house dismisses these claims it would appear washington reserves the exceptional right to murder with impunity. crosstalk washington's drone policies i'm joined by medea benjamin in washington she is a co-founder of code pink and author of drone warfare also in washington we have morris davis he is a professor at the howard university school of law and in new york we cross to. he is a journalist and a former fellow of the council on foreign relations where i cross talk rules and effective means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it i mean if i can go to you first in washington before we talk about the lookout woody and you're teaching elements and moral elements of the drone policy i'd like you to reflect upon the fact that only four lawmakers listen to that pakistani family that

made it all the way to washington who lost a loved one in a drone attack is official washington just doesn't care. oh definitely i don't think official washington cares very much if they did they would have done something over all these years that we've been using drones to try to get to the bottom of it they haven't demanded that the legal justification for drones be made public they haven't demanded that secondary strikes where people are killed just on the basis of suspicious behavior being stopped they haven't demanded apologies or compensation for the innocent victims so they've been missing for years not just at this hearing more and how do you reflect upon that because it was i watched the testimony it was quite moving do you think it's going to impact at all the way the balmy administration applies this policy because it shrouded in mystery still and there's no recourse and they don't seem to want to answer any serious questions or investigations that have been made recently that come from what most people would

say reliable sources in organizations yeah i wish i could say that i had some optimism that it would have an impact but my experience has been over the you know four plus years of the obama administration that i'm disappointed more often please i can't say that i expect any change and it's regrettable because the ministration and the drone policy is really setting the precedent for other countries and how this evolution of warfare will continue to develop and i think we're setting a very bad precedent what period it looks like to me in new york here it looks like the obama administration is just in pervious to any kind of investigation i mean human rights watch and other organizations i mean these i mean by any definition of international law these are war crimes and they are just impervious to you know these claims of these are very serious claims that are being made. yes but here we have to look into the basically dipali surrounding the groundwater in pakistan the

problem with the wrong water is like in pakistan with the us is the problem of politics and it's the problem of transparency no one knows what's the nature of pakistan u.s. relations and what has been the agreements made in order for the u.s. to be allowed to conduct these drone strikes within pakistan so this is one thing that is the inaccessibility of the area you cannot go deal at and investigate so the information coming out of the tribal areas is very much unconfirmed what appear to experiment i agree with you this is this is one of the rationales it or use that these are very distant places no man's land it's called but this pakistani family went to washington d. c. i mean does that mean anything it's a count for anything but their mother was murdered by a drone and there is no accountability whatsoever it just is medea said in the

beginning the program no explanation no compensation i mean what else do the people have to do to get the word out. yeah i mean this is you have a varied put the thing is that pakistan is complicit in these attacks and pakistan should be held responsible for stuff. to its people what's the nature of its their lives and ship it to us about that it has allowed the u.s. to conduct these attacks not. pakistan has done compensated those family and it is a very clear cut case of civilian casualties that's why the family came out and there has been very few of these cases in which families have been given access to the international media and also been allowed to visit the u.s. so the thing is that if you how to take into the account the politics they say that the u.s. the problem here is that the program was acknowledged very late. it is nor transport and. similarly we don't know no president.

has been reported. yes while some sort of orbit started to be so the point is that you have. to go back to you under international law and this is my point of view all the time international law the united states is not in the conflict official conflict in pakistan. legal under international law if the united states said yes we're in a military conflict in the state of with the state of pakistan then you there's a little bit of wiggle room there but still they deny the obvious. well that's right what they're saying is that the united states is that a war with al-qaeda and its associated forces which gives according to the us government carte blanche to go in anywhere but as colonel morris davis said this is

a terrible precedent that we're setting for the rest of the world and no matter what kind of arrangement was made with the pakistani government earlier on it certainly has not been made with the present government and ben emmerson the u.n. rapport tourer said that even if the military of pakistan made an agreement with the united states the military is not the elected government we have to go by what the elected government says which is stop the drone strikes but i would agree with piers there is certainly a responsibility for the pakistani government as well somebody should acknowledge these strikes somebody should compensate the families and it is good that the pakistani government finally went to the united nations to denounce drone strikes just recently more imminent danger go ahead jump in please do this is crosstalk. if i could i think you know one misnomer i'd like to clear up as we've talked about the drone program and there are actually drone programs plural because we have two

separate programs we have one operated by the military that stencil believes should comply with the law of war which you know but did just mention that you're crossing into pakistan and whether we're or you know there is a problematic question but we have that military program that should operate within the law of war and then we've created another paramilitary program offered about the cia which is a civilian agency i mean they have the same status under the law of war is arming the postal service of the library of congress you have to go into another country at the civilian agency to kill people they don't have combatant immunity that applied to the military and to me that cia program is the the extraordinarily problematic legal problem here well appear if i can go to you in new york that's exactly true because if you do officially call it a conflict then the rules of law i'm sorry the rules of war apply and humanitarian

laws apply as well this is exactly what the administration and officials in pakistan want to avoid is keep shouting it in mystery. exactly as i said the problem is the excess. anybody in different tribal areas so tribal area especially in south waziristan like completely black hole where you know no one knows what's going on and things come up when there is a case of civilian casualties as we saw in the case of a few quid i'm on we had his grandmother grandmother was killed. so i mean this is basically it's not only these are there are not only drone attacks going on bit of a lot of. human rights violations going on going on board by the pakistani military and by the taliban but it's difficult to report on them because there is no access to information also people are for it so you can be very much easily anti american

and you can bash the whole drone program and you know just to deflect. attention from many other things which are going on the tribal area where the tribal areas are the one under the frontier crimes that will listen down by the british against the fundamental human rights but no human rights organization talk about those issues just talk about the drones and the tribal people. they might not be agreeing with what the international community and the human rights what about the situation relating to the drone issue so that thing in pakistan is present it's over the other way to complicated and you leave early to when they're complicated but if we stay with it it's only going to go on for i agree with you about the situation in the tribal areas but media but the drone issue is something that we can talk about and we should talk about and we should change we may not be able to change what happens in the tribal areas of pakistan but we can change all you should know more about american policy there and we don't what we have to change u.s.

policy because there drones are not just in the purview of the u.s. government agencies the drones are being sold to over seventy countries around the world. by american companies israeli companies chinese companies and so if we allow the u.s. government to continue to use drones violating the sovereignty of other nations for refusing to reveal to the american public and the international community what it's doing why it's doing it how it's doing it we will be opening up the pandora's box to a world of total chaos and lawlessness so i think it's incumbent upon us to rein in the united states government and set a new precedent for the use of drones. could you reflect upon that because i was going to get that in the second half of the program but it's a strategic value of these drones here i did see only does this create blowback well you know the drone itself and i think this discussion sometimes gets sidetracked by focusing on the drone the platform and it's not the platform that's

the problem it's the policy for how they're use i mean the drone is just another weapon system innocent f. sixteen or an a ten or an apache helicopter with the pilot sitting in a lounge chair rather than in the cockpit so i'm not opposed to the platform of the drone it's the policy for how it's use to you know for years now we've been the only game in town and when you can you know make up your own the only game in town that you know we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on drone state are. you. the the piece of legislation was terrible and

they come up very hard to make an outlet once again a little longer a plug that never had sex with others make their lives let's call it was. just say. listen the i'm living. the. press and media freedom works nothing. when it comes to the interests of multinationals we have

a media that is corrupted by power mostly by corporate you have corporate ownership from the top corporate advertising coming in from the side we have a media that is where advertising and money and corporate influence is really the mother's milk a documentary filmmaker is being sued. for the truth is being told a private investigator so something something touching. reading it happens people buy and sell those kind of services all of the world when you've got hundreds of million dollar industry that needs to protect its reputation a few million being spent on it on a campaign to do just that is probably goods good money well spent. so what will be the verdict. big boy is going bananas.

for salads like to adopt a camp at guantanamo where patients are forced that is the aftermath of our strike never turned world's attention to the place that some. of our time. is a. welcome back to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle so mind you we're discussing washington's global drone policies. i go back to you morris in washington you and medea mentioned something that i wanted to go into. and that is let me give all three of you a hypothetical prince bandar. we've been told to warned russia that if it didn't

change its position on syria that it could make things that the sochi olympic games a bit uncomfortable in terms of terrorism so morris let me ask you this let's say with that kind of knowledge russia knows that the sochi games are going to be under threat by terrorists somewhere in the world and russia has drones and maybe because of self defense using exactly the same logic being applied in washington today russia strikes let's say saudi arabia so what would you think the world's response would be and what would washington's response be would it be just hypocritical or would say russia is the aggressor washington is certainly not been hesitant to be hypocritical i mean there have been any number of practices in the post nine eleven era where we have condemned others for doing exactly what we have done and again that's my concern of the president there were setting on the use of drones so i think the solution or what i would like to see happen is there needs to be an international consensus you are applying the geneva conventions and international

humanitarian law that is largely a byproduct of world war two they didn't contemplate these kinds of weapons and on the horizon we've got autonomous weapons that will make their own decision and so i think we need to have an international discussion and come up with rules that we can all agree upon on how this kind of technology can be used here what about that because i mean we have countries now developing the media has already told us there's export of these weapons around the world so far as i can tell it's israel the u.k. and the united states use them the most here but in the next few years they're going to proliferate immensely and then we have absolute chaos more violence than we already have right now i mean is pakistan even prepared for something like that you know but i think progress on is also what i understand drone program but of the professor third that the u.s. has. saluted in the technology. and internet from the g.m.

to control the use of drones otherwise as you mentioned the us cannot continue with these bad precedents and we are just people who did think against their security but again as i mentioned in pakistan the things are different the politics is different the problem is not the drone. use of drones. the problem and the problem is that the secret of pakistan used to relationships there has to be more focus on that in order to make the transition ship more transparent and then what you have. to do it's. all right go ahead medea jump in go ahead yes please read well i wanted to say i don't think it's not going to be coming from the u.s. government either from this administration or congress it really has to be from the american people who are starting to get educated about this issue and starting to

organize and protest and we're having a summit nov sixteenth in washington d.c. hundreds of people coming from around the country and around the world could create a global network to change these policies and i think that's where the solutions will come but more so i don't think it's going to you know the u.s. government is going to have to take a lot of pressure because i think as we've pointed out here the way these weapons are used is just great for any kind of government that does want to be held accountable whatsoever because you say well it's not a war so we're not you know there's no international law that applies i mean this is the evilness if i can use that word of this of these weapons because you can you go through it you avoid the law in every single possible way and you can don't have to be held accountable and you don't have to demonstrate any goodwill on the people that you're attacking because you know they're an imminent threat whatever that means. no you're exactly right and what this administration has done and the last administration as well is try to play both sides of the street when it's convenient

and we can apply the law of war and we categorize this is a war on terrorism then we use the military and we operate under the law of war but when that's an impediment then we have this other program by the way that operates under no law that you know we use as well so we played it both ways and i think you know the example you gave about you know russia and saudi arabia i think to really bring it home to america would be at the mexican government you know war on drugs came across our border and launched a drone strike in arizona that killed some children there because that would be the exact same scenario and would we just say well you know that's the way things happen or would you complain and i expect the american people would be outraged if it happened here but what do you think about that is i completely agree with morris there but again the united states it's very it's exceptional we are such a great wonderful nation we know how to use these weapons we use them justly i mean these are like talking points coming out of the white house that that day and age

is coming to an end very very quickly. well i think so i think public opinion has changed dramatically here in the united states and certainly around the world it's been against the use of these drones there's one point i wanted to make. when colonel morris davis said that it's not the platform it's the policy i agree but your listeners should know and your viewers that the drones are special in that they can hover overhead for days and weeks at a time and terrorize entire villages so it's not just who is killed and maimed it's also a collective punishment and we know in yemen and in pakistan children who can't go to sleep at night they're free to go to school so recognize how this is terrorizing entire populations what more can the pakistanis do because again as it's always pointed out when you're dealing with pakistan and we have the government and we have the military i mean is there going to be a resolution there because pakistan could be a first good step in reining in this policy in reining in the americans. yeah but

pakistan of pakistan needs to rein in the militants pakistan has to eliminate the sanctuaries of. pakistani tribal areas sanctuaries of al qaeda and taliban and as i mentioned this is really complicated in the sense that now the americans are leaving from one is than the focus will be on counterterrorism instead of going to insurgency so the americans will be leaving ten to fifteen thousand forces and for them the drones will continue to be the weapons of choice because again the same politics we continue to be here don't don't you don't you are really in the park with you know it's been mentioned a number of times every time a drone strike kills a family a funeral a wedding it just generates more blowback it's just the greatest recruiting element of al qaeda and other groups like it i mean it doesn't that logic of that stand or

be understood in pakistan it just makes things worse. yes i mean this is you are right in the sense that if you kill civilians and by civilians i mean purely civilians and this happened in a few quid a month is there is a blowback and people have come out people have protested and because but as i said in pakistan the problem is not drones but the problem is with the negative of the drones which have been promoted all these years in the absence of american counter argument so as i mentioned the very beginning you have to take into the account the politics surrounding the drone issue in pakistan it's to be didn't pakistan and between pakistan and the u.s. and did has never been a genuine debate and i'm glad now that the american acknowledged the program last year since last year there is now some sort of discussion going on i think the more you discuss this issue the more it will force pakistan and the u.s.

to take corrective measures in order to avoid the civilian casualties in order to be able to compensate those civilians who have lost the ability to morrissey know it everything i've read about this policy from bush to obama tells me it's been institutionalized we've tweaked it there really happy with it because in their mind it's effective it's cheap no american boots on the ground you know no awful pictures of like we saw with a blackhawk down things like that i mean this is really kind of quote unquote convenient isn't it it's war on the cheap and you can kill anybody you want in the world and get away with it it's amazing. now you're exactly right and for the american public when americans come home in body bags the american public gets upset but we can operate from the convenience of air conditioned room in a recliner with

a joystick then you know we're killing other people which the administration apparently if you're material or mobile. and muslim then that counts as being a militant so we've been pretty liberal and defining you know who we conducted these strikes on and you mentioned american exceptionalism but we've used that is an american exception where you know we demand others live up to a standard of accountability that we don't hold up to ourselves and you know president obama says we're allied into the world but for the last ten years we've been a warning light not a guiding light medea you know i know your activities with code pink in i very much supported how are you going to get the american people to get the administration to say this is the wrong path because there's a law you know like i mentioned before you know it's cheap no american boots on the ground this is something that people are thinking we don't want big wars anymore we don't want to invade these countries anymore syria's a good case in point but drones is really the addiction there we get

a lot accomplished a lot without losing american lives i think that's what the administration thought and that was just even a year ago but that has changed dramatically the polls have showed a significant shift in the population's thinking about these drones americans have become a war why is and recognize that it's we didn't want to go to war in syria we want the diplomatic talks with iran and the american people don't want to see the u.s. creating new conflict and that's what the drones are doing there is now supposedly forty different associated al-qaeda groups the use of drones has not eliminated that threat it's just moved it around and i think we are getting getting the american people now to be aware of how this policy is. not making us safer and actually jeopardizing our security and that's already having an impact on the administration which is reducing the number of drone strikes we've got to get them to stop on doc note i want to thank all my guests in washington and in new york and

i want to thank our viewers for watching us here arky see you next time and remember. you know not only are you the only one. recently a u.n. report an investigation by human rights groups make it abundantly clear obama's drone policies may constitute war crimes under international law the white house says miss is these claims it would appear washington reserves the exceptional right to murder with impunity.

last time was a new alert animation scripts scare me a little bit. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of joy at a brave thing that has bred dark at the core of what they found online is a story made sort of movies playing out in real life. so

i began and this is breaking the set so soon senator diane feinstein had a change of heart this week which went from being a cheerleader for the n.s.a. to calling for a top to bottom review of the agency in the wake of the spying on allies leak and just yesterday feinstein put forth a bill that will lead to the reform the spy agency's surveillance practices within that then i read the fine print the bill basically leaves the bulk metadata collection untouched and codified is the practice is already put in place well so they need senator nice three sixty on that one looks like the same old diane frankenstein to me hi.