"Astonishingly Disturbing" - Endless War Across the Globe

[Lauren Johnson]

Of course this is a crock. One of the most visible and telling things Barry could do would be to end the state of emergency that was begun right after 9/11. It gets renewed every year by the Congress.

[Adele Edisen]

The New York Times
Editorial
May 23, 2013

The End of the Perpetual War
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD


President Obama's speech on Thursday was the most important statement on counterterrorism policy since the 2001 attacks, a momentous turning point in post-9/11 America. For the first time, a president stated clearly and unequivocally that the state of perpetual warfare that began nearly 12 years ago is unsustainable for a democracy and must come to an end in the not-too-distant future.

"Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue," Mr. Obama said in the speech at the National Defense University. "But this war, like all wars, must end. That's what history advises. It's what our democracy demands."

As frustratingly late as it was much of what Mr. Obama said should have been said years ago there is no underestimating the importance of that statement. Mr. Obama and his predecessor, President George W. Bush, used the state of war that began with the authorization to invade Afghanistan and go after Al Qaeda and others who planned the Sept. 11 attacks to justify extraordinary acts like indefinite detention without charges and the targeted killing of terrorist suspects.

While there are some, particularly the more hawkish Congressional Republicans, who say this war should essentially last forever, Mr. Obama told the world that the United States must return to a state in which counterterrorism is handled, as it always was before 2001, primarily by law enforcement and the intelligence agencies. That shift is essential to preserving the democratic system and rule of law for which the United States is fighting, and for repairing its badly damaged global image.

Mr. Obama said the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which was passed after Sept. 11, 2001, must be replaced to avoid keeping "America on a perpetual wartime footing." He added: "Unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don't need to fight, or continue to grant presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states."

He did not say what should replace that law, but he vowed: "I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further." Mr. Obama's speech covered the range of national security, counterterrorism and civil liberties issues facing the United States since 2001.

TARGETED KILLINGS For the first time, Mr. Obama admitted to ordering the death of an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, and to the unintentional deaths of three other Americans, including Mr. Awlaki's 16-year-old son, in drone strikes.

Mr. Obama announced important shifts in the policy of using unmanned drones to kill citizens of other countries, in the territory of sovereign nations, without any public, judicial or meaningful Congressional oversight. From now on, the Central Intelligence Agency and the military will no longer target individuals or groups of people in countries like Pakistan based merely on the suspicion that their location or actions link them to Al Qaeda or other groups allied with the terrorist network. Those attacks, referred to as "signature strikes," have slaughtered an untold number of civilians and have become as damaging a symbol of American overreach as the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The targeting of citizens of other countries will now be subjected to the same conditions the administration uses to kill American citizens abroad. They must be shown to pose "a continuing, imminent threat to Americans," as Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. wrote in a letter to Congress that was made public on Wednesday. In addition, the letter said, lethal force can be used only when capture is not feasible and there are "no other reasonable alternatives to effectively address the threat."

The acknowledgment of the killing of Mr. Awlaki in 2011, and, more important, the supplying of compelling evidence that he was organizing terrorist attacks and not just preaching jihad on the Internet, was a much-needed step. The administration's refusal to talk about the Awlaki killing and other aspects of the drone policy until now had been highly damaging to Mr. Obama personally and to America's relationship with other countries, like Pakistan.

We wish Mr. Obama had pledged an accounting for the civilian deaths caused by drone strikes, and some form of reparations, but he did not. He should do so.

Mr. Obama did say that he does "not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen with a drone or with a shotgun without due process." Nor, he said, "should any president deploy armed drones over U.S. soil." He also said that he had informed Congress about every planned drone strike outside of Iraq and Afghanistan and that he had ordered his administration to prepare a strict, written set of rules for targeted killings in the future. (Still, it was disturbing to hear that the rules would be in a classified document, not be shared with the public. It's hard to believe that some version could not be declassified.)

In the past, we have been deeply troubled by the administration's insistence that the review of planned targeted killings be handled entirely within the executive branch. On Thursday, he said he was willing to talk to Congress about "options for increased oversight" including the establishment of "a special court to evaluate and authorize lethal action" or "an independent oversight board in the executive branch." Mr. Obama said he had constitutional and operational concerns about both ideas; in the end, he may not agree to either. But at least he did not contemptuously dismiss them as some of his advisers have done in the past.

GUANTÁNAMO BAY Mr. Obama called on Congress to remove the restrictions it has placed for purely partisan reasons on the transfer of most detainees from the prison in Cuba. He endorsed the limited use of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects, about which we have grave doubts, and asked Congress to designate a place in the United States where military tribunals can be held. But he said most terrorism cases should be handled by the federal courts, which have proved their ability to do so efficiently and justly.

"Given my administration's relentless pursuit of Al Qaeda's leadership, there is no justification beyond politics for Congress to prevent us from closing a facility that should have never been opened," said Mr. Obama, who was briefly stopped by a heckler from outlining the very closure plans that she demanded.

One huge obstacle to closing Guantánamo was created by Mr. Bush's policies of detaining prisoners illegally and using torture in interrogations. Those practices left some truly dangerous men in custody without a clear way to try them because the evidence against them is so tainted. Mr. Obama acknowledged this legal disaster but added that once a commitment has been made on a process for closing the prison, "I am confident that this legacy problem can be resolved, consistent with our commitment to the rule of law."

He said passionately that "history will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect of our fight against terrorism and those of us who fail to end it." And he talked about the force-feeding of hunger strikers and added: "Is this who we are? Is that something our founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave our children?"

CIVIL LIBERTIES Mr. Obama pledged to create new protections for Americans' civil liberties "to strike the appropriate balance between our need for security and preserving those freedoms that make us who we are." He called for an independent board to preserve civil liberties. Alluding to the recent disclosure that the Justice Department secretly collected months' worth of phone logs from The Associated Press and considered criminal charges against a Fox News reporter, Mr. Obama defended the need to investigate leaks. But he said: "A free press is also essential for our democracy. That's who we are. And I'm troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable."

Mr. Obama said "journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs." And he repeated his welcome call, even if oddly belated, to "pass a media shield law to guard against government overreach." He said he had instructed Mr. Holder to "review existing Department of Justice guidelines governing investigations that involve reporters," convene media groups to "hear their concerns" and report back to him by July 12.


Adele

[Jan Klimkowski]

Typically disgraceful editorial from the NYT.

Mr. Obama did say that he does "not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen with a drone or with a shotgun without due process." Nor, he said, "should any president deploy armed drones over U.S. soil." He also said that he had informed Congress about every planned drone strike outside of Iraq and Afghanistan and that he had ordered his administration to prepare a strict, written set of rules for targeted killings in the future. (Still, it was disturbing to hear that the rules would be in a classified document, not be shared with the public. It's hard to believe that some version could not be declassified.)

Why are Americans singled out for special treatment and protection by Obama?

The only morally acceptable statement is: it is not constitutional for the government to target and kill any person with a drone or with a shotgun without due process.

[Lauren Johnson]

that's our guy

The speech served to counter critics who say the drone program has been bathed in secrecy, as Obama offered more details on when the U.S. will deploy drone strikes.

But Obama's speech appeared to expand those who are targeted in drone strikes and other undisclosed "lethal actions" in apparent anticipation of an overhaul of the 2001 congressional resolution authorizing the use of force against al Qaida and allied groups that supported the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

In every previous speech, interview and congressional testimony, Obama and his top aides have said that drone strikes are restricted to killing confirmed "senior operational leaders of al Qaida and associated forces" plotting imminent violent attacks against the United States.

But Obama dropped that wording Thursday, making no reference at all to senior operational leaders. While saying that the United States is at war with al Qaida and its associated forces, he used a variety of descriptions of potential targets, from "those who want to kill us" and "terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat" to "all potential terrorist targets."

The previous wording also was absent from a fact sheet distributed by the White House. Targeted killings outside of "areas of active hostilities," it said, could be used against "a senior operational leader of a terrorist organization or the forces that organization is using or intends to use to conduct terrorist attacks."

The preconditions for targeted killings set out by Obama and the fact sheet appear to correspond to the findings of a McClatchy review published in April of U.S. intelligence reports that showed the CIA killed hundreds of lower-level suspected Afghan, Pakistani and unidentified "other" militants in scores of drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal are during the height of the operations in 2010-11.

Nearly 4,000 people are estimated to have died in U.S. drone strikes since 2004, the vast majority if them conducted by the CIA in Pakistan's tribal area bordering Afghanistan.

The fact sheet also said that those who can be killed must pose a "continuing and imminent threat" to "U.S. persons," setting no geographic limits. Previous administration statements have referred to imminent threats to the United States the homeland or its interests.

"They appear to be broadening the potential target set," said Christopher Swift, an international legal expert who teaches national security studies at Georgetown University and closely follows the targeted killing issue.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/23/19...rylink=cpy

[Keith Millea]

Obummer,with his facade crumbling,offers up some ice cream and cake.

Meanwhile,it's Memorial Day weekend.Time to reflect on the millions of crosses,or not.

While the "Dogs of War",are still roaming the corridors freely.



Akira Kurosawa "Dreams" DVD..."The Tunnel"...Pt-2and 3 at link.

http://www.trilulilu.ro/video-film/the-tunnel-pt-1

[Adele Edisen]

The New York Times
May 23, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/us/pol...ng.html?hp


New Terror Strategy Shifts C.I.A. Focus Back to Spying
By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON For more than seven years, Mike a lean, chain-smoking officer at the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Virginia has managed the agency's deadly campaign of armed drone strikes. As the head of the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorism Center, Mike wielded tremendous power in hundreds of decisions over who lived and died in far-off lands.

But under a new plan outlined by the Obama administration on Thursday, the Counterterrorism Center over time would cease to be the hub of America's targeted killing operations in Pakistan, Yemen and other places where presidents might choose to wage war in the future. Already, the C.I.A.'s director, John O. Brennan, has passed over Mike, an undercover officer whose full name is being withheld, for a promotion to run the agency's clandestine service.

It is a sign that Mr. Brennan is trying to shift the C.I.A.'s focus back toward traditional spying and strategic analysis, but that is not an easy task.

Arguably, no agency has changed more in the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks than the C.I.A., and no agency could be affected more by the new direction of the secret wars laid out by American officials on Thursday.

More than half of the C.I.A.'s work force joined the agency after 2001, and many of those new officers have spent the years since almost exclusively on the work of man-hunting and killing.

Some American officials and outside experts believe it could take years for a spy agency that has evolved into a paramilitary service to rebalance its activities.

"There's a huge cultural and generational issue at stake here," said Mark Lowenthal, a former senior C.I.A. official. "A lot of the people hired since 9/11 have done nothing but tactical work for the past 12 years," he said, "and intellectually it's very difficult to go from a tactical approach to seeing things more strategically."

The C.I.A. is not getting out of the killing business anytime soon. Although Mr. Obama did not specifically mention the C.I.A. drone program in his speech, he said that the United States would continue to carry out strikes in the "Afghan war theater" which American officials have long considered to include Pakistan, a country where the C.I.A. has carried out hundreds of drone strikes. Mr. Obama indicated that these strikes could go on for more than a year and a half, until the end of 2014, when most American forces are to be out of Afghanistan.

Obama administration officials said this week that some drone operations would shift to the Pentagon, particularly those in Yemen, where the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command is already running a parallel drone program. And, they said, the "preference" for the future is for all drone operations to be run by the Defense Department, rather than the C.I.A. While C.I.A. officers and analysts will continue to play a role in any drone operations run by the Pentagon, the White House plan is for the Defense Department to assume control over all drone operations in less than two years.

American officials said that one of the biggest challenges facing the C.I.A. is to take a large group of case officers who have spent more than a decade trying to hunt terrorists in war zones and retrain them to spy in countries like Russia, China and other so-called hard targets difficult environments where governments are hard to penetrate and many C.I.A. operatives are under constant surveillance. Spying on the streets of Moscow might involve less physical danger than working in Karachi, Pakistan, or in Sana, Yemen, but trying to recruit Russian sources and to outwit Russian intelligence officers requires a subtlety that spies have not always practiced in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In an embarrassing case last week, the Russians detained a young man in Moscow who they said was a C.I.A. officer trying to recruit a Russian official to spy for the United States. Video images of the man, Ryan Fogle, showed him wearing a shaggy blond wig under a baseball cap and revealed an assortment of items he was said to be carrying including a compass, a street map of Moscow and a second wig. The images portraying an amateurish American spying effort played in an endless loop on Russian television.

Beyond the drone campaign, the C.I.A. over the past decade built large stations in Kabul and Baghdad, populating them with hundreds of young clandestine officers, many of whom were serving on their first overseas tour. The way C.I.A. officers operate in war zones hunkered down much of the time behind large concrete walls and driving through cities in armored vehicles is often the antithesis of the tradecraft used in noncombat areas, where spies need to blend into the local population.

Mr. Brennan, who spent decades in the C.I.A. as an intelligence analyst, also faces a significant challenge in widening the aperture of the CIA's analytical work which has also been consumed by the counterterrorism mission since the Sept. 11 attacks.

"A lot of things that pass for analysis right now is really targeting," said Michael V. Hayden, a former C.I.A. director. "There has to be a shift in emphasis."

In 2011, as popular revolutions spread through the Arab world, White House officials were critical of C.I.A. analysts for what they saw as a failure to keep up with the rapidly changing dynamics of the revolts. During his confirmation hearing earlier this year, Mr. Brennan made a veiled reference to this criticism.

"With billions of dollars invested in C.I.A. over the past decade, policymaker expectations of C.I.A.'s ability to anticipate major geopolitical events should be high," he said in a written response to questions posed by the Senate Intelligence Committee. "Recent events in the Arab world, however, indicate that C.I.A. needs to improve its capabilities and its performance still further."

Even though Mr. Obama made it clear on Thursday that America's shadow wars would continue, it is obviously the hope of the White House that the C.I.A.'s role on the front lines of those wars will gradually diminish and that the C.I.A. can adapt as the administration tries to refocus its foreign policy away from Middle East and counterterrorism and toward other parts of the world.

As Mr. Lowenthal, the former top C.I.A. official put it, "China isn't going to allow us to fly drones over their country."

Adele

[Peter Lemkin]

"That Woman Is Worth Paying Attention To": Medea Benjamin Explains Why She Disrupted Obama's Speech

Less than 24 hours after she interrupted President Obama's major speech on the future of the secret drone war and Guantánamo, CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin describes why she repeatedly interrupted Obama's address. Benjamin, the author of "Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control," criticized Obama for failing to explain why a U.S. drone in Yemen killed the teenage U.S. citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki in 2011. "I was very disappointed. He said that his policy is to capture, not kill. That's just not true. I know personally of many incidents where it would have been very easy to capture people, like the 16-year-old Tariq Aziz in Pakistan, who was in Islamabad at a well-known hotel, but instead was killed by a drone strike two days later," Benjamin says. "I think the president is really justifying the use of drones, which will continue to happen under his administration and be passed on to the next."

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: To discuss President Obama's first major address on counterterrorism strategy since he was re-elected, we're joined now by three guests. In Washington, D.C., Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of CodePink and author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.
AMY GOODMAN: She repeatedly interrupted President Obama's speech Thursday in an exchange that ended with him saying, quote, "The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to."
Medea Benjamin, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about what happened yesterday. First of all, how did you get into the National Defense University for this address? I would assume your face is one of the most famous on Capitol Hill.
MEDEA BENJAMIN: There are some secrets, Amy, that can't be disclosed. But it was great to get in there. And, you know, President Obama, when I just listened to that segment, he said that I wasn't listening to him. I was hanging on every single word. And I really expected to hear some major policy changes, and I didn't know whether I was going to speak up or not. If he had said something like, "To show my commitment to Guantánamo, next week we will start releasing those prisoners who have been cleared," or if he had said, "We're taking drones out of the hands of the CIA immediately," or, "We're going to immediately say that signature strikes, where people are killed on the basis of suspicious behavior, will no longer be allowed," if he had said anything like that significant, I wouldn't have spoken up.
AMY GOODMAN: You told The New York Times, in the piece today, that you don't like being called a "heckler." Why not?
MEDEA BENJAMIN: I think a heckler is a very negative term, and I think it's a positive thing when people find the courage to speak up to leaders who are not leading. And I didn't do what I did to embarrass the president. I did it because I feel that he needs to be pushed more, that it has been over four years now of policies that have been killing innocent people with drones. It has been now over 11 years that innocent people are still being held in Guantánamo and now being force-fed. These are crisis situations, and it requires more from us as citizens.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Medea, having watched interruptions of presidents over many decades, I was struck by the fact that you got to interrupt him three different times in that speech. I'm wondering, do you get a sensedid you get a sense they were goingusually, after the first or maybe the second time, the Secret Service would move in to drag people away. But did you get a sense that maybe, to some degree, his people didn't mind the interruptions, to the degree that he was then able to show that he is confronting opposition on the left to his policies?
MEDEA BENJAMIN: No, not at all. That's not the way it went down, Juan. What you didn't see is what was happening behind the scenes, of the Secret Service, the FBI, the people from the base coming over and saying, "You must come with us immediately, or you'll be under arrest," and trying to grab me. And I was saying, "Don't touch me. I'll scream. You don't want to make a scene in front of the president. You will regret this if you do it." And they were really confused about what to do.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, no order came down immediately to remove you then from theafter the first interruption?
MEDEA BENJAMIN: They all came down immediately, and they didn't know what to do, so they sat down next to me. They sat down behind me. They got up again. They told me I must leave. I said, "No, I'm not leaving." This was all going on in between those three interruptions.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask your assessment of what President Obama said around the issue of drones. Medea, you have written a book about drone warfare. And do you feel he has laid out a different course for drone attacks?
MEDEA BENJAMIN: No, I don't think so. In fact, I was very disappointed. He said that his policy is to capture, not kill. That's just not true. I know personally of many incidents where it would have been very easy to capture people, like the 16-year-old Tariq Aziz in Pakistan, who was in Islamabad at a well-known hotel, but instead was killed by a drone strike two days later. Or we have the cases in Yemen, where the activist speaking before Congress said that in his village it would have been very simple to capture the person they were after, but instead they sent in a drone.
I don't think he laid out major changes. The drone strikes are lessening in Pakistan. We don't really know yet what's happening in Yemen. But there are drone bases being built up all over the world, including in places like Saudi Arabia, that are making us less safe here at home. So, I think the president is really justifying the use of drones, which will continue to happen under his administration and be passed on to the next.

[Adele Edisen]

People should rationally decide whether their heckling, because that's what it was, would produce any good results. The President was very deferential to Medea Benjamin. and very respectful towards her. But this was a public address delivered by the President of the United States, and it was rude and disrespectful to interrupt him. Remember when that idiot. a member of the House of Reprsentatives in the audience burst out with "You lie!" in the middle of one of his speeches? It does not matter what the subject matter is, it was a disrespectful act to interrupt him, causing him to lose his momentum in making a point he wanted to get across. I happen to agree with Ms.Benamin and her views, but not with her method of delivery. She should have more respect for herself and for her views.

Emotional outbursts only produce bad reflections on the maker. There are better and more effective ways of making ones views known, IMO..

Adele

[Keith Millea]

Adele

I'm going to agree with you on this.I'm getting a little tired of Code Pinks tactics.In the beginning they may have been somewhat productive,but now?And,Obummer, playing along with her game,made her look stupid anyhow.

But,it will garner a headline somewhere.....

[Jan Klimkowski]

Adele

I'm going to agree with you on this.I'm getting a little tired of Code Pinks tactics.In the beginning they may have been somewhat productive,but now?And,Obummer, playing along with her game,made her look stupid anyhow.

But,it will garner a headline somewhere.....

I was furious when some self-styled comedian smacked Rupert Murdoch with a custard pie during a Parliamentary Committee hearing.

I loathe Murdoch & the insidious culture of his media empire. However, he'd performed absymally in that public session and the headlines immediately moved from Murdoch as sinner to Murdoch as sinned against.

Counter-productive rubbish.