Move to C.I.A. Puts Petraeus in Conflict With Pakistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/world/29petraeus.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=move%20to%20C.I.A.%20puts%20petraeus%20in%20conflict&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 9:51 AM
Subject: re: Move to C.I.A. Puts Petraeus in Conflict With Pakistan
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:

    If the goal is to give General Petraeus control of our drone program in Pakistan, we should give that program to the military, rather than move the general to the C.I.A.  Killing combatants is the job of our uniformed armed forces. Killing non-combatants is (if intentional) a war-crime.  A C.I.A. agent or contractor firing a missile from a drone is--in our own parlance--an "unlawful combatant", in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Barry Haskell Levine