"Targeted killings" increase under Obama

Far from having broken with the practice of extrajudicial executions (also known as "targeted killings") which the Bush administration had made ample use of, the Obama administration has turned it into a priority tool of intervention.

According to the Washington Post, the White House has set aside $ 9.8 billion for Special Operations in 2011 (6.3 billion funded from the general budget and 3.5 billion off costs) [1].

Under the authority of Admiral Eric T. Olson, secret interventions have been planned in 75 countries this year, as opposed to 60 during George W. Bush’s last year in office, noted the newspaper.

Presenting his annual report to the UN Human Rights Council, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions underscored the commonplace occurrence of drone killings.

The United States is the leading state in the world to perform extra-judicial executions. They get little media coverage, except when Washington boasts of having murdered alleged "leaders of Al Qaeda" without trial because they occur in countries of the Third World.

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[1] U.S. ’secret war’ expands globally as Special Operations forces take larger role, by Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe, Washington Post, 4 juin 2010.