Interesting article up in the WaPo on the Obama administration’s development and use of a robust UAV capability to surveil, track and kill suspected terrorists overseas:
In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents.
Other commanders in chief have presided over wars with far higher casualty counts. But no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals.
I’ve got no beef so far, but:
Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of lethal force.
In Yemen, for instance, the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command pursue the same adversary with nearly identical aircraft. But they alternate taking the lead on strikes to exploit their separate authorities, and they maintain separate kill lists that overlap but don’t match. CIA and military strikes this fall killed three U.S. citizens, two of whom were suspected al-Qaeda operatives.
The convergence of military and intelligence resources has created blind spots in congressional oversight. Intelligence committees are briefed on CIA operations, and JSOC reports to armed services panels. As a result, no committee has a complete, unobstructed view.
Congressional oversight of the executive branch is among the implicit constitutional privileges of the legislature, and inherent to our system of checks and balances.
You can’t fight a war by committee, even a clandestine one. I get that. But if this were being done by George W. Bush, you could bet that the Nobel committee would be wanting their Peace Prize back.
I am just thankful that our civil rights that were so threatened by GWB’s use of drones are now completely safe, and our vigilant protectors in Congress, Hollywood and in the media can now stand down. Elections not only have consequences, sometimes they can even cause threats to miraculously disappear!
If GWB had negotiated a lasting peace between the Israelis and Arabs, talked China out of Tibet and made them back off Taiwan, charmed the Indians and Pakistanis into a group hug, and gotten Angelina to talk to her father, the Nobel committee would still no have given him a Peace Prize that they could demand back. No way, no how. He’s not one of them.
This is not nearly so scary as it sounds, most of it. Special Ops has always worked under two different authorities, Title 10 and Title 50. The only part of this that is genuinely troublesome is the targeting of US citizens, and while these were scum who deserved the death of cockroaches, the new NDAA directs the military to detain US citizens on US soil and gives the military the authority (if not the direction) to send these detained US citizens overseas in the name of the War on Terrorism. How long until the UAV net is turned on US citizens in the country?
Hey, Lex, don´t be unfair. Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was not awarded by things he has done, but by things he WILL do in the future. It’s a Preemptive Award
Preemptive peace instead of preventive war. I think I get that.
Speaking of avoiding the law and not being transparent: It’s become a habit, not an exception, with the information of school aged children. AW1 Tim tracked this down in another forum.
There’s also the small issue of asking for complete “because we want them and we don’t need no stikin’ warrant” access to any citizen’s email and web searching history by LE, and not having to provide info for FOIA requests that you actually have, if you decide it might embarrass someone/thing.
Toss in Fast and Furious, Solyndra, etc, etc, etc. This is all part of a broader methodology of continually and consistently maneuvering around the spirit and, the wording of the law.
And another issue of the Feds getting all their hands on your medical history: In the stimulus bill, there was money to help Drs go paperless. Preceding that, the mandate that all doctors would go paperless. And, what, a few months ago, the Feds requiring the data be forwarded to those responsible for the HIPPA regulations? And for what purpose? Well, make it easy enough to end run the law, snarl and demand the info, and Whoops! there it is!
All of this, when aggregated, it painting a pattern of criminal breaches of the laws of the land, or skating ever so close to the edge of the cliff, one may fall off.
xformed, none of this is an accident, even it isn’t the product of a grand conspiracy–the idea of a cradle to grave “permanent record” that would follow every American goes back to Horace Mann, John Dewey, Carnegie, Rockefeller and Morgan. AW1 Tim (miss him, he doesn’t come ’round this way much these days) and you would both benefit from John Taylor Gatto’s Hidden History of American Education (sic). While it’s ostensibly about schooling, it has utterly reshaped my thinking about the last two to three hundred years of European and American history.
Underground History of American Education, corrected.
Well we have a new version of the old 3 card monte. Congress is being deceived as to which shell hides the pea.
But since The Bamster is incapable of blinding Congressional oversight committees with his brilliance, it’s time to baffle ‘em with bull sh#t.