The leader of the government regularly sits down with his senior generals and spies and advisers and reviews a list of the people they want him to authorize their agents to kill. They do this every Tuesday morning when the leader is in town. The leader once condemned any practice even close to this, but now relishes the killing because he has convinced himself that it is a sane and sterile way to keep his country safe and himself in power. The leader, who is running for re-election, even invited his campaign manager to join the group that decides whom to kill.
This is not from a work of fiction, and it is not describing a series of events in the Kremlin or Beijing or Pyongyang. It is a fair summary of a 6,000-word investigative report in The New York Times earlier this week about the White House of Barack Obama. Two Times journalists, Jo Becker and Scott Shane, painstakingly and chillingly reported that the former lecturer in constitutional law and liberal senator who railed against torture and Gitmo now weekly reviews a secret kill list, personally decides who should be killed and then dispatches killers all over the world -- and some of his killers have killed Americans.
We have known for some time that President Obama is waging a private war. By that I mean he is using the CIA on his own -- and not the military after congressional authorization -- to fire drones at thousands of persons in foreign lands, usually while they are riding in a car or a truck. He has done this both with the consent and over the objection of the governments of the countries in which he has killed. He doesn't want to talk about this, but he doesn't deny it. How chilling is it that David Axelrod -- the president's campaign manager -- has periodically seen the secret kill list? Might this be to keep the killings politically correct?
[...]
More: http://reason.com/archives/2012/05/31/obamas-secret-kill-list
Depending on whom you ask, the Obama administration has either executed hundreds of civilians abroad with poorly planned drone strikes or none at all. A new report, however, finally offers insight into those conflicting conclusions.
A New York Times article published on Tuesday unearths a lot of information about the White House's largely secretive drone program: despite being a hallmark of the presidency of Barack Obama, authorities working under the commander-in-chief — as well as Obama himself — are for the most part mum when questions arise about the administration's ongoing air strikes by way of unmanned robotic aircraft. In particular, the question of civilian casualties and the death toll of innocent Afghans and Pakistanis who have lost their life at the hands of Washington's war machine are often left unanswered or, even worse, addressed differently. According to the Times' latest write-up, though, the Obama administration has some scandalous opinions on who can and can't be killed by its murder program.
The White House convinces itself that the Obama-ordered air strikes overseas have not killed many civilians because, according to the president, any and all men near around a drone target are considered enemies of America and can be executed without being added to the count of civilian casualties.
"It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent," is how the Times report it. "Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good."
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More: http://rt.com/usa/news/drone-strike-obama-casualties-604
The worst part of the scandal is not that the idea alone is unconstitutional, but that the regime is investigating the leak reports and state propaganda media is focusing on that as well, rather than dealing with the situation they have created.
The president hasn't endangered national security -- and Congress is pursuing the wrong solution. America needs less classified info, not fewer leaks.
When Joseph Heller's literary heirs satirize the War on Terror's absurdity (for there is absurdity in every war), the treatment of classified information is sure to be as fruitful a theme as it was in Catch-22. For example, the CIA bombarded Pakistan last week with three days of drone strikes, ultimately killing Al Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi. This didn't surprise anyone, for the whole world knows that the CIA uses drones to target Al Qaeda in Pakistan. The drone program is nevertheless classified. The Department of Justice says as much when explaining to judges why it shouldn't be forced to litigate certain cases. And White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is forced into vague locutions when asked about drone kills. "Our intelligence community has intelligence that leads them to believe that Al Qaeda's number-two leader, al-Libi, is dead," he said last week. "I can't get into details about how his death was brought about."
That is essential context in the ongoing controversy over leaks in the Obama Administration. "A bipartisan Congressional chorus has been expressing concerns on cable news shows over national security leaks," Michael Calderone reported last week. "Lawmakers suggested that the White House had sanctioned intelligence disclosures for its own political gain, in an attempt to depict the president as strong and decisive when dealing with suspected terrorists."
Attorney General Eric Holder has even appointed two prosecutors to conduct leak investigations. (They're unlikely to end in prosecutions for revealing state secrets, as Charlie Savage explains.)
One thing I find amazing is President Obama's statement. "The notion that the White House would purposely release classified national-security information is offensive, it's wrong, and people, I think, need to have a better sense of how I approach this office and how the people around me approach this office," he said. "We are dealing with issues that can touch on the safety and security of the American people -- our families or our military or our allies -- and so we don't play with that."
That's nonsense.
Forget the White House generally. President Obama himself has purposely disclosed "national-security information" -- the existence of the CIA drone program -- that his own Justice Department and press secretary treat as classified. I'm glad he's done so. The notion that the United States government should wage ongoing war in multiple countries while keeping it secret from its own citizens is noxious. By my lights, the CIA drone program's existence should not be a state secret. Obama ought to declassify it.
More: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/06/dont-be-fooled-by-obamas-faux-righteous-indignation-about-leaks/258316
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