Related: Nominated For Your Consideration: On Drones Brennan Confirmation
"Senate panel clears way for Brennan confirmation" by Scott Shane | New York Times, March 06, 2013
WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 12-3 to confirm John O. Brennan as director of the CIA on Tuesday, hours after the White House agreed to provide more information on the legal basis for targeted killings of Americans believed to pose a terrorist threat.
The vote, in a closed committee meeting, clears the way for Brennan, a 25-year CIA veteran who has been President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, to be confirmed by the full Senate later this week.
In his White House job, Brennan, 57, has overseen the expansion of targeted killing in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. While he is widely expected to win confirmation, senators of both parties have used his nomination to try to pressure the White House into disclosing information it has previously declined to give to Congress.
They have had some success. On Tuesday morning, the committee’s Democratic chairwoman, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, said the White House had agreed to give the committee access to all Justice Department legal opinions on the targeted killing of Americans. Two such opinions were briefly shared with senators at the time of Brennan’s confirmation hearing last month; it is unclear how many more memos will now be shared....
In addition, a staff member for each senator on the Intelligence Committee will now be permitted for the first time to see the Justice Department memos, which govern the use of drones and other weapons to kill US citizens overseas who have been identified as dangerous terrorists. Previously, only senators themselves were permitted to read the memos, a restriction that Feinstein had strongly protested, staff members said.
All this based on lies.
‘‘I have reached an agreement with the White House to provide the committee access to all OLC opinions related to the targeted killing of Americans in a way that allows members to fulfill their oversight responsibilities,’’ Feinstein said, referring to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. ‘‘I am pleased the administration has made this information available. It is important for the committee to do its work and will pave the way for the confirmation of John Brennan to be CIA director.’’
Congressional officials said the administration had also agreed to provide public, unclassified information about its position on when people suspected of terrorism can be killed legally on US soil. Several members of Congress, including Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, have raised the question, but neither Brennan nor Obama has given a clear answer in public.
Three senators who had demanded all of the memos on killing Americans — Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, both Democrats, and Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican — said they were pleased with the agreement and would support Brennan’s confirmation.
“We believe that this sets an important precedent for applying our American system of checks and balances to the challenges of 21st-century warfare,’’ the three senators said in a statement.
It's just a s***-show fooley to justify mass murder from on high in the name of empire and in the service of banks.
They said the next step should be ‘‘to bring the American people into this debate and for Congress to consider ways to ensure that the president’s sweeping authorities are subject to appropriate limitations, oversight and safeguards.’’
As if they would listen to the American people.
Only one American, the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who had joined the Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, has been deliberately killed in a strike, in September 2011. At least three other Americans killed in strikes in Yemen were not the intended targets, officials have said.
See: AmeriKan Missiles Keep Things All in the Family in Yemen
While Feinstein has sought legal opinions governing strikes targeting non-Americans, they are still being withheld by the administration, which views them as confidential legal advice to the president.
I thought this guy was supposed to be different than the last one.
As a result, the detailed legal rules for a vast majority of drone strikes, including so-called signature strikes aimed at suspected militants whose identities are unknown, remain secret.
We are only told when some propaganda needs to be waved in our faces about us getting the "terrorists."
On Monday, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said he hoped the Senate would vote on Brennan’s nomination this week, but he complained that Republicans were insisting on a 60-vote majority to confirm him.
‘‘At a time when America faces so many threats abroad, it is crucial that we have a talented and dedicated individual like John Brennan leading our nation’s most prominent intelligence agency,’’ Reid said.
Christopher E. Anders, the senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, called the promised disclosures ‘‘an important first baby step towards restoring the checks and balances between Congress and the president,’’ but he said it was not enough.
Of course, when Republicans don't agree they are called obstructionists.
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And look who stood up to stop it:
"Filibuster delays CIA nominee vote" by Richard Lardner | Associated Press, March 07, 2013
WASHINGTON — Almost 13 hours after declaring, ‘‘I will speak until I can no longer speak,’’ Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky finally relented early Thursday and ended his self-described filibuster blocking confirmation of President Obama’s nominee to lead the CIA.
Paul, a Tea Party favorite and a Republican critic of Obama’s drone policy, began speaking just before noon by demanding the president or Attorney General Eric Holder issue a statement assuring that the unmanned weapons would not be used in the United States to kill terrorism suspects who are US citizens.
While acknowledging he cannot stop John Brennan from being confirmed, Paul said the nomination was the right vehicle for a debate over what the White House believes are the limits of the government’s ability to conduct lethal operations against suspected terrorists.
Paul, 50, received intermittent support early on from several other conservative senators, plus Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. Paul spoke almost continuously for five hours before Majority Leader Harry Reid tried but failed to move to a vote on Brennan.
The kind of bipartisanship I like to see.
Paul snacked on candy at the dinner hour while continuing to speak. At one point, Senator Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican who walks haltingly because of a stroke, delivered a canister of hot tea and an apple to Paul’s desk, but a doorkeeper removed them. Representative Louie Gohmert, a conservative from Texas, stood off to the side of the floor in a show of support. Other well-wishers with privileges to be on the floor shook his hand when he temporarily turned the speaking over to his colleagues.
Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, read Twitter messages from people eager to ‘‘Stand With Rand.’’ And as the night went on, Cruz spoke for longer periods as Paul leaned against a desk across the floor. Cruz, an insurgent Republican with strong Tea Party backing, read passages from Shakespeare’s ‘‘Henry V’’ and lines from the 1970 movie ‘‘Patton,’’ starring George C. Scott.
See: Cruzing Through This Post About Texas
Dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and red tie, Paul read from notebooks filled with articles about the expanded use of the unmanned weapons, which have become the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s campaign against Al Qaeda suspects. Senate rules say a senator has to remain on the floor to continue to hold it, even though he can yield to another senator for a question.
‘‘No president has the right to say he is judge, jury, and executioner,’’ Paul said.
Related: Inaugurating Obama's Dictatorship
Too late.
Not all Republicans were so enthusiastic about Paul’s performance. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the prospect of drones being used to kill people in the United States was ‘‘ridiculous’’ and called the debate ‘‘paranoia between libertarians and the hard left that is unjustified.’’
Is it?
Later in the evening Paul, who is the son of former Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, offered to allow a vote on Brennan if the Senate would vote on his resolution stating that the use of the unmanned, armed aircraft on US soil against American citizens violates the Constitution. Democrats rejected the offer.
And they are supposed to be out peace party.
Related: The Two-Headed War Party
Yeah, military spending, aid to Israel, and all the other agencies the globe-kickers need are not contentious.
Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said earlier Wednesday he planned to file a motion to bring debate over Brennan’s nomination to an end as soon as possible. Reid had pushed for a confirmation vote Wednesday.
Holder told Paul in a March 4 letter that the federal government has not conducted lethal drone operations on US soil and has no intention of doing so.
Can we get that in writing?
But Holder also wrote that he supposed it was possible under an ‘‘extraordinary circumstance’’ that the president would have no choice but to authorize the military to use lethal force inside US borders.
Oh, so they ARE NOT RULING IT OUT at ALL!
Left on the cutting room floor of a rewritten and reedited update:
"Holder cited the attacks at Pearl Harbor and on Sept. 11, 2001, as examples.
Oh, so ANOTHER FALSE FLAG will be the TRIGGER, 'eh?
Related: PEARL HARBOR: MOTHER OF ALL CONSPIRACIES
ALL WARS are based on LIES!!!!!
Holder came close to making the statement Paul wanted earlier Wednesday during an exchange with Cruz at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, according to Paul.
Cruz asked Holder if the Constitution allowed the federal government to kill on U.S. soil a U.S. citizen who doesn't pose an imminent threat. Holder said the situation was hypothetical, but he did not think that in that situation the use of a drone or lethal force would be appropriate. Cruz criticized Holder for not simply saying "no" in response.
But they have no intention of such things, or so they tell us. Yeah, just trust 'em!
In a letter sent Tuesday to Paul, Brennan said the CIA does not have authority to conduct lethal operations inside the U.S.
Then what agency were you planning on using?
Paul said he did not dispute that the president has the authority to take swift and lethal action against an enemy who carried out a significant attack against the United States. But Paul said he was "alarmed" at how difficult it has been to get the administration to clearly define what qualifies as a legitimate target of a drone strike."
Then what are you arguing about?
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What is also disturbing in this "debate" is NO MENTION of the INNOCENT SOULS being SLAUGHTERED ABROAD! AmeriKa's politicians apparently don't care about them at all.
"Senate confirms Brennan to CIA; Filibuster ends, but not before splitting alliances" by Peter Finn and Aaron Blake | Washington Post, March 08, 2013
WASHINGTON — The Senate, nudged slightly off its political axis by Senator Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster highlighting potential threats from the nation’s drone policy, voted Thursday to confirm John Brennan to be director of the CIA.
The vote was 63 to 34, but the act itself was anticlimactic after the rare ‘‘talking filibuster’’ and the tally was juggled by Paul’s efforts. The reaction to his extraordinary scrutiny of the Obama administration’s drone-strike program revealed some surprising divisions and alliances on Capitol Hill.
The usual partisan landscape in the Capitol was scrambled, with some Republican lawmakers attacking Paul, a Kentucky Republican, for criticizing the president, while liberals and Democrats praised him....
The filibuster began Wednesday afternoon and lasted for nearly 13 hours, ending after midnight on Thursday. Paul was demanding that the White House clarify that it would not use aerial drones to kill American citizens suspected of terrorism on US soil — a point on which he felt the administration had not been sufficiently clear.
Brennan’s nomination forced the administration to be more forthcoming about its drone operations, which have devastated Al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan and have been expanded to target affiliated groups in Yemen and Somalia.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, one of the administration’s harshest Republican critics but a supporter of the drone program, said the filibuster caused him to change his vote on the Brennan nomination to support Obama.
How petty and juvenile.
‘‘I am going to vote for Brennan now because it’s become a referendum on the drone program,’’ Graham said. ‘‘Where were all these people during the Bush administration?’’
I was here complaining.
The one Democrat who joined the filibuster, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, said that Paul was asking important questions of the administration.
‘‘I want it understood that I have great respect for this effort to really ask these kinds of questions,’’ Wyden said. ‘‘And Senator Paul has certainly been digging into these issues in great detail.’’
The American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement supporting Paul. ‘‘There is now a truly bipartisan coalition in Congress and among the public demanding that President Obama turn over the legal opinions claiming the authority to kill people far from a battlefield, including American citizens,’’ said Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU’s Washington legislative office.
Brennan, a CIA veteran and former station chief in Saudi Arabia, has served as Obama’s principal counterterrorism adviser for the past four years and is one of the chief architects of the program that has emerged as the spy agency’s signature counterterrorism tactic.
He was also involved in the adoption of torture, but that has received much less mention.
The Brennan nomination brought unprecedented scrutiny to the administration’s use of drones to kill terrorist suspects overseas, and in recent days critics have questioned whether it could be imported to the United States to target American terrorism suspects at home.
A still-theoretical discussion about the domestic use of armed drones emerged after lawmakers demanded access to the Justice Department legal opinions that justified the 2011 drone killing in Yemen of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen.
The Obama administration turned over a number of classified memos to the Senate Intelligence Committee that laid out the legal rationale underpinning the joint CIA-military operation against Awlaki, who was described by intelligence officials as a senior operational figure in Al Qaeda’s Yemen affiliate.
In a letter to Paul on Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. said that in an ‘‘extraordinary circumstance’’ such as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks or the 1941 Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor it might be ‘‘necessary and appropriate’’ for the president to authorize the military to use lethal force in the United States. But Holder said such a situation was ‘‘entirely hypothetical.’’
Paul was not satisfied.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday that ‘‘the president has not and would not use drone strikes against American citizens on American soil.’’
Can we GET THAT NOTARIZED and in WRITING?
‘‘On the broader question, the legal authorities that exist to use lethal force are bound by and constrained by the law and the Constitution,’’ Carney continued. ‘‘The issue here isn’t the technology. The method does not change the law.
“The president swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and he is bound by the law. Whether the lethal force in question is a drone strike or a gunshot, the law and the Constitution apply in the same way.’’
Unless he wants to issue an executive order.
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What do the courts say?
"Court rejects CIA’s rationale for drone secrecy" by Frederic J. Frommer | Associated Press, March 16, 2013
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court reversed a lower court ruling on Friday that allowed the CIA to refuse to confirm if it had information on the use of unmanned drones to kill suspected terrorists.
A lower court federal judge had sided with the CIA and dismissed a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking those records. In response to the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act request, the CIA said that merely confirming the existence of drone records would reveal classified information. But the government subsequently backed off that claim during oral arguments before the appellate court.
Friday’s ruling by a three-court panel sends the case back to the lower court, where the agency can argue that the records it has on drones are exempt from FOIA disclosure requirements.
The initial refusal to confirm even the existence of a record is a Cold War-era legal defense known as the Glomar response after the Glomar Explorer, a ship built with secret CIA financing to try to raise a Soviet submarine from the ocean floor. The CIA had said that confirming or denying records in this case would reveal ‘‘among other things, whether or not the CIA is involved in drone strikes or at least has an intelligence interest in drone strikes.’’
Next thing you know Obama will be acting like Nixon.
I suppose one could only hope he ends up like Nixon.
In his opinion for the panel, Judge Merrick Garland noted officials from President Obama to John Brennan, now the new CIA director, have acknowledged the use of drones by the government.
‘‘Given these official acknowledgments that the United States has participated in drone strikes, it is neither logical nor plausible for the CIA to maintain that it would reveal anything not already in the public domain,’’ wrote Garland. The use of drones has come under increased public scrutiny recently.
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"US terrorism effort relies on killing" by Scott Shane | New York Times, April 08, 2013
WASHINGTON — When Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, was taken into US custody in Jordan last month, he joined one of the most select groups of the Obama era: high-level terrorist suspects who have been located by the US counterterrorism juggernaut, and who have not been killed.
Abu Ghaith’s case — he awaits a federal criminal trial — is a rare illustration of what Obama administration officials often say is their strong preference for capturing terrorists rather than killing them.
‘‘I have heard it suggested that the Obama administration somehow prefers killing Al Qaeda members rather than capturing them,’’ John Brennan said last year when he was Obama’s counterterrorism adviser; he is now CIA director. ‘‘Nothing could be further from the truth.’’
Have I told you how tired I am of "Al-CIA-Duh?"
Despite Brennan’s protestations, an overwhelming reliance on killing terrorism suspects, which began under George W. Bush, has defined President Obama’s terms.
Time for him to RETURN that PEACE PRIZE then!
Since Obama took office, the CIA and military have killed about 3,000 people in counterterrorist strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, mostly using drones. Only a handful have been caught and brought to the US; an unknown number have been imprisoned by other countries, with US help.
Those are all his, no Bush. You know how you can tell? The blood on his hands. Must have been on his kill list.
This policy on targeted killing, according to experts on counterterrorism inside and outside the government, is shaped by several factors: a weapon that does not risk US casualties; resistance of Pakistani and Yemeni authorities to even brief incursions by US troops; and decreasing urgency of interrogation at a time when the terrorist threat has lessened and the US has deep intelligence on its enemies.
Yeah, except they are KILLING INNOCENT MEN, WOMEN, and CHILDREN along with the "terrorists."
And what do you mean the "threat" has lessened?
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Related:
"TAKING A STAND AGAINST DRONES -- Protesters blocked the entrance road to Creech Air Force Base, home to the Predator and Reaper drones, on Wednesday during a demonstration against drones in Indian Springs, Nev. Ten people were arrested during the event, which was held by a group that holds an annual five-day peace walk to the base (Boston Globe March 28 2013)."
And all the Globe gave me was this lousy photograph in my printed paper.
Also see:
Sunday Globe Special: Drone Degree Program
U.S. Drones Dropping Out of the Skies Like Flies
Droning on About Yemen
Droning on About Pakistan
Do You Hear a Buzzing Sound?
Couldn't be around here, right?
