Friday, June 08, 2012

not a cost-effective way to address The Problem...,

the nation | The image of President Obama poring over baseball-card profiles of terror suspects in Jo Becker and Scott Shane’s now famous New York Times “kill list” exposé probably pleased the administration officials whose cooperation made the story possible, wrapping the president in glinting “warrior in chief” election year packaging. For those concerned about the constitutional protection of civil liberties and the rule of law, however, that image, and the extraordinary practices it represents, was profoundly disturbing. The drone policy the president has developed not only infringes on the sovereignty of other nations, but the assassinations violate laws put in place in the 1970s after scandals enveloped an earlier era of CIA criminality. The new details about Obama’s assassination program also remind us how the 2001 Congressional Authorization of the Use of Military Force established a disastrous policy of “borderless and open-ended war that threatens to indefinitely extend US military engagement around the world,” in the words of the only member of the House to vote against it, Barbara Lee.

The kill list makes a mockery of due process by circumventing judicial review, and turning the executive into judge, jury and executioner. Even worse, the “signature” strikes described in the Times article, in which nameless individuals are assassinated based merely on patterns of behavior, dispense with any semblance of habeas corpus altogether. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, signature strikes account for most of the attacks in Pakistan today, and they were recently approved for use in Yemen.

One of the darkest aspects of this story involves the administration’s method of counting civilian casualties: The CIA simply assumes that any military-age male in the vicinity of a terror suspect must be a militant too. Thus, counterterrorism chief John Brennan was able to state with a straight face in August 2011 that not one civilian had perished from US strikes outside Afghanistan and Iraq in more than a year—a declaration that was greeted with incredulity and outrage in Pakistan, where witnesses have attested to hundreds of civilian deaths. Fist tap Makheru.

7 comments:

CNu said...

Forget about judicial review. The science of their target selection is far more sound than any judicial review process ever could be  http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2011/01/journal-of-social-structure.html

Ed Dunn said...

These are enemy combatants, not heads of state or not even located in their homeland, correct?

CNu said...

The ancient and revered canons of law have a loooooong way to go before they catch up with contemporary command, communications, control, and intelligence (social network analysis). TPTB aren't making any effort to bring lawmakers and the courts up to speed because that would involve disclosing secret methods that confer significant advantage and will continue to do so for the forseeable. 

makheru bradley said...

The propagandizing of this Kill List exposes the depths of Barack Obama’s pathological pandering to the psychopathic vote which is a dramatic reversal of campaign strategy from 2008.  The people who were duped by candidate Obama’s carefully crafted rhetoric into voting for what they thought would be an antiwar president, surely know now that they were pimped worse than Iceberg Slim’s bottom ho.    
 
Obama obviously believes that the Afrikan American body politic is thoroughly seduced by “spiritual wickedness in high places” and he is willing to sacrifice the antiwar vote to pursue the votes of the inheritors of Manifest Destiny. But aren’t these the people who hate Obama the most? This strategy has catastrophic failure written all over it, which is precisely what the Hillary 2016 bandwagon wants.
 
OBTW, the hits keep right on coming.

http://www.allgov.com/US_and_the_World/ViewNews/If_Attacking_Rescuers_and_Funerals_is_Evil_When_Others_Do_It_Why_is_It_Okay_if_Its_Done_by_the_CIA_120608 

makheru bradley said...

"eat pork and happily vote for Obama"  LOL, I see you're really fired up about being the newest member of the Church of St. DeeVee. I guess we should call you Deacon Nulan.

"The 1500 angry afrocentrics"  Hey we didn't vote for the Proxy in 2008 so we were never part of his electoral math. The antiwar vote on the other hand supported him and he's basically telling them to GFYS.

Then there the Black voters like the infamous blogger who said this:
 
“Double-O is about as far removed from what people who voted for him hoped he would be that he is unrecognizable. Obama in his own elite way has done more and more novel damage to the Black brand than any 10,000 ignants, pants on the ground, grills in they mouf, ignants could have ever hoped to have done.” 

I assume they are making a run of vaseline as they prepare to grease it up on November 6.  LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
 
 

Tom said...

I know I'm risking my probationary membership by admitting this, but I just cooked up 5 lbs of pork shoulder on Friday.  MMMMMmmmmm, it was good.

Enjoy your like endives or whatever.

CNu said...

neighborhood association picnic today, really good potato salad and cole slaw washed down with about a gallon of unfiltered wheat beer...,

Africom Expelled From Niger Just Like Little French Bishes...,

abcnews  |   On Saturday, following the meeting, the junta’s spokesperson, Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane, said U.S. flights over Niger’s ter...