Tuesday, May 03, 2011

UN Wants Details On Bin Laden Kill (Update: US Has Some Explaining To Do)

The UN wants to make sure the killing of Osama bin Laden was done exactly right:
The United Nations' top human rights official called on the United States on Tuesday to give the U.N. details about Osama bin Laden's killing and said that all counter-terrorism operations must respect international law.


Navi Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that the al Qaeda leader, killed in a U.S. operation in Pakistan on Sunday, was a "very dangerous man" who had claimed "command responsibility for the most appalling acts of terrorism," including the September 11 attacks on America nearly a decade ago.

"This was a complex operation and it would be helpful if we knew the precise facts surrounding his killing. The United Nations has consistently emphasized that all counter-terrorism acts must respect international law," she said in a statement issued in response to a Reuters request.
This is what it all comes down to--democratic countries that go after terrorists who murder their citizens will have to sit before the UN and give an accounting of just how they did it.

Meanwhile, Hamas to this day has yet to give an accounting of the rockets it fires on civilians or the continued holding of kidnapped Gilad Shalit without access to the Red Cross--and you see how strongly the UN has reacted to that on a regular daily basis.

Are we supposed to just tell ourselves that we hold ourselves to a higher standard, while the terrorists keep on killing?

UPDATE: From what Michael Rubin John Hinderaker of Powerline writes, the US has some explaining to do on the killing of Bin Laden:
It has now come out that the account of bin Laden's death that was retailed by John O. Brennan, President Obama's remarkably cavalier Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, was wrong in just about every detail. Bin Laden was unarmed; he did not use his wife (or any other woman) as a human shield; and his wife was not killed in the raid. These corrections appear to shed additional light on an earlier contradiction: one Obama official told the press that this was a shoot-to-kill operation all the way, while another said that the SEALs were prepared to capture bin Laden if he had surrendered.
(I confused Rubin's post Who Says Bin Laden’s Killing Was Not Legal? with Hinderaker's)

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