Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will
Last edited Tue May 29, 2012, 05:30 PM - Edit history (3)
It was not a theoretical question: Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.
Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.
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They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing.While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”
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The day before the executive orders were issued, the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, had called the White House in a panic. The order prohibited the agency from operating detention facilities, closing once and for all the secret overseas “black sites” where interrogators had brutalized terrorist suspects.
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Mr. Craig assured him that the new president had no intention of ending rendition — only its abuse, which could lead to American complicity in torture abroad. So a new definition of “detention facility” was inserted, excluding places used to hold people “on a short-term, transitory basis.” Problem solved — and no messy public explanation damped Mr. Obama’s celebration.
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A very long and worthwhile article to read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&
If a GOP president was revealed to be doing this, DU would explode.
Yes, Al Qaeda was and is? a problem. However, how many enemies are we making with our 'precise' drone strikes? How many complicatons are we creating in areas around the world when we kill innocent people even though we are oh so sorry?
President Obama never has and never will like the messy business of dealing with Congress. While it's true this group on Capitol Hill is a loathsome meshegas, he isn't the only President who has faced intractable idiots.
Bush began using 'signing statements' that were issued many times after laws were passed. They were signed to supersede parts of those laws through an extremely dubious process. Trying to check this power is difficult because what is really in those signings is hard to find out.
President Obama has continued to use them. He is leading a defacto drone war against gawd knows who in gawd knows where. He has in effect made himself judge, jury, and executioner. It troubles me that he is using information from our intelligence agencies that has proven to be fallible over and over. They have their own agendas that do not necessarily align with what the US is espousing.
Where are the checks and balances? Who sits and advocates for those on those 'macabre terrorists cards' and provides a voice of skepticism? If you only listen to warriors and hardliners, you will only get war and Oh So Sorry Deaths.
President Obama is winding down the war we see and hear about albeit in small and circumscribed doses. He is trying to end the deaths that require knocks on some doors by those bearing the unbearable news of loss. However, he is winding up the war we rarely hear about. That war increases the unbearable losses for people in how many places?
This is not how this country should be run by anybody. It is wrong on multiple levels. I do not pretend that there are no enemies and that they must be engaged. However, this is being done in our names and in black hole secrecy.
Who speaks for us about these actions? Who is in that black hole with some light to at least provide enough clarity so that what is ultimately done can be seen by those there?
AND rendition is rendition. It is by its nature abuse. You can't moderate the abuse of abuse.
We have gone down the rabbit hole after following a Black Rabbit with a watch shouting 'Too late, too late!' Will we ever return?
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sits in these meetings. He needs his political adviser sitting there to what? Does he let somebody live if the death will create too much of a stink? Axelrod may be a very wise man, but having him there is not a wise decision.
What a fricking mess!
