White House Tactic for C.I.A. Bid Holds Back Drone Memos
Source: NYT
The White House is refusing to share fully with Congress the legal opinions that justify targeted killings, while maneuvering to make sure its stance does not do anything to endanger the confirmation of John O. Brennan as C.I.A. director.
Rather than agreeing to some Democratic senators’ demands for full access to the classified legal memos on the targeted killing program, Obama administration officials are negotiating with Republicans to provide more information on the lethal attack last year on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, according to three Congressional staff members.
The strategy is intended to produce a bipartisan majority vote for Mr. Brennan in the Senate Intelligence Committee without giving its members seven additional legal opinions on targeted killing sought by senators and while protecting what the White House views as the confidentiality of the Justice Department’s legal advice to the president. It would allow Mr. Brennan’s nomination to go to the Senate floor even if one or two Democrats vote no to protest the refusal to share more legal memos.
At issue is the critical question of how Congress conducts oversight of a shadow war against people suspected of being terrorists. The administration routinely reports on its lethal drone strikes to both the Senate and the House Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, but it has long rebuffed Congressional attempts to see the legal opinions that authorize the strikes — let alone requests to make them public.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/us/politics/strategy-seeks-to-ensure-bid-of-brennan-for-cia.html?pagewanted=all
Back in the senate confirmation hearings, when grilled by Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, Brennan said that he never thought that killing terrorists was better than capture/detention. Then responding to Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, Brennan stated that the CIA uses drone killings only as a last resort. Mike Malloy broke down Brennan's poor testimony:
= new reply since forum marked as read
I have a stalker. (And you still lied about the Times story, which Mazetti had no part of.)
That's typical behavior for an authoritarian.
The Authoritarians
http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
Authoritarian followers seem to have a “Daddy and mommy know best”
attitude toward the government. They do not see laws as social standards that apply
to all. Instead, they appear to think that authorities are above the law, and can decide
which laws apply to them and which do not--just as parents can when one is young.
But in a democracy no one is supposed to be above the law. Still, authoritarians quite
easily put that aside. They also believe that only criminals and terrorists would object
to having their phones tapped, their mail opened, and their lives put under
surveillance. They have bought their tickets and are standing in line waiting for 1984,
The Real Thing. There might as well not be a Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
And when the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is used to deny people the right of
habeas corpus--one of the oldest rights in western law--it is unlikely that right-wing
authoritarians will object to the loss of this constitutional guarantee either.
Authoritarian Aggression. When I say authoritarian followers are aggressive
I don’t mean they stride into bars and start fights. First of all, high RWAs go to church
enormously more often than they go to bars. Secondly, they usually avoid anything
approaching a fair fight. Instead they aggress when they believe right and might are
on their side. “Right” for them means, more than anything else, that their hostility is
(in their minds) endorsed by established authority, or supports such authority. “Might”
means they have a huge physical advantage over their target, in weaponry say, or in
numbers, as in a lynch mob. It’s striking how often authoritarian aggression happens
in dark and cowardly ways, in the dark, by cowards who later will do everything they
possibly can to avoid responsibility for what they did. Women, children, and others
unable to defend themselves are typical victims. Even more striking, the attackers
typically feel morally superior to the people they are assaulting in an unfair fight. We
shall see research evidence in the next chapter that this self-righteousness plays a huge
role in high RWAs’ hostility.
~snip~
If some day George W. Bush is indicted for authorizing torture, you can bet
your bottom dollar the high RWAs will howl to the heavens in protest. It won’t matter
how extensive the torture was, how cruel and sickening it was, how many years it
went on, how many prisoners died, how devious Bush was in trying to evade
America’s laws and traditional stand against torture, or how many treaties the U.S.
broke. Such an indictment would grind right up against the core of authoritarian
followers, and they won’t have it. Maybe they’ll even say, “The president was busy
running the war. He didn’t really know. It was all done by Rumsfeld and others.”16
~snip~
One more thing. Remember when I was talking about putting President Bush
on trial for authorizing torture? Look back at Items 5 and 6 in my list of acts an ardent
authoritarian follower might do in support of a malevolent government. It’s been
clear in my studies for several decades that lots of people, with no persuading by the
authorities at all, were already close to endorsing the torture and execution of their
fellow citizens if the government simply said it was necessary. So it would be no
surprise at all if they supported President Bush’s insistence that America be allowed
to torture suspected foreign terrorists.
Nice of you to post a collection of the many examples where Obama continues Bush's legacy.
Lots of people here were upset when "Hubris" aired Monday. They called Bush and Cheney, "war criminals."
So when is the Obama administration going to do something about these so-called war criminals?
When is the Obama administration going to do something about torture?
When is the Obama administration going to restore our Fourth Amendment rights and end domestic surveillance?
And lastly, how many licks does it take to get to the center of one of these?
[IMG]
[/IMG]
