US must end its assassination campaign: Activist

Press TV has interviewed James Jennings, president of Conscience International in Atlanta, about a former National Security Agency executive and whistleblower saying the US assassination campaign has killed far more civilians than has been reported.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Well it is amazing, the Obama administration actually discussed drone strikes publicly and it offered assurances that such operations would be precise, alternative to boots on the ground and authorized only when an imminent threat is present. What do you think is the impact of reports like this emerging?  

Jennings: Well first of all, I am not surprised neither are my colleagues at the US Academics for Peace. We have made a number of human rights investigations in the region and none of us are surprised or it should not be surprising that these kinds of attacks are taking place and are killing innocent people.

They are quite deliberately attacks. We do not know now about the hospital exactly in Afghanistan whether it was a mistake or something very deliberate but it follows the pattern that has been revealed in the releases by Edward Snowden and others and we who have tracked it have noticed that over and over again civilians are killed. So that is not surprising. But as long it goes with 500 BC, the Chinese sage Sun Tzu in his Art of War said there is no instance of a nation having benefited from a protracted or long war. The war in Afghanistan is the longest war in US history and now the president has doubled down and signed up for a longer war and will hand it over to his successor in 2017.

I think that the American people are to blame in part because they have not really pressed this issue far enough with the military, the Pentagon, the administration, the Congress, to say that we do not want to be involved in the taking of innocent lives.

Press TV: Well the Pentagon, the White House and the Special Operations Command have all declined to actually comment, saying that they do not comment on details of classified reports. You say it is not surprising to you the emergence of such reports. Do you think the American public are already aware and what about the world and why is the United States not being held accountable for all these civilian lives?

Jennings: Well we are governed through our representatives in Congress and in the Executive and if those people do not heed the clear evidence that murders are taking place on a regular basis, then something is wrong. And again the American people need to put more pressure on the Congress about this and the White House because they control the military or supposed to control the military. The military is at times out of control and the attack on the hospital in Kunduz proves that. They say it was a mistake. At first they said it was not a mistake, then they said it was a mistake and so many innocent individuals both doctors and patients died.

This is unacceptable. It is time for an alarm to go out all over the world especially in the United States that these murders have to stop because over and over again civilians are killed and they are called collateral damage but it is unacceptable. It is a horrendous act to be involved in and it is shameful.

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