Mendacity, murderous spinelessness, indifference: real horrors abroad
Editing by Carolyn Bennett
With
drone strikes in Pakistan having accelerated since 2008, the CIA has been transformed
into a quasi-military force and as a spy agency, CIA instincts are to wage war
the way it runs covert actions – in secret, by its own rules. Therefore, U.S. president’s
nomination of his architect of the secretive deadly drone program to head the
CIA should not be confirmed ─ if at all − until the nominee publicly commits to
getting the CIA out of the killing business. [Naureen Shah writing in the Guardian]
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| U.S. Drone destruction in Yemen |
Proven lies qualify high public office
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Reports that drone strikes having killed more than 100
children “have sullied the international reputation of the United States” and led
the United Nations to call for an investigation; but within the United States, “there
is little if any public interest in debating the cost of drones on civilian
lives.”
In yesterday’s Guardian, Glenn Greenwald recounted that
before Barack Obama’s first inauguration, a controversy had erupted over
reports that the president-elect intended to appoint John Brennan as CIA
director and that opposition to this man had “centered on the fact that Brennan,
as a [George W.] Bush-era CIA official ─
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| Yemenis protest U.S. drone strikes |
had
expressly endorsed the Bush programs of torture
(other than water boarding) and rendition and also was a vocal advocate of
immunizing lawbreaking telecoms for their role in the illegal Bush NSA
eavesdropping program.
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he opposition caused Brennan to withdraw his name from
consideration but the president pushed aside the concerns of the people of the
United States. The Obama government, Greenwald recalls, then appointed Brennan as
top counter-terrorism adviser, a position in which Brennan “exerted at least as
much if not more influence as he would have done as Director of the CIA.” As top
counter-terrorism adviser, Greenwald wrote ─
Brennan last year got caught outright
lying when he claimed Obama’s drone
program caused no civilian deaths in Pakistan over the prior year.
He also spouted complete though
highly influential falsehoods to the
world in the immediate aftermath of the Osama bin Laden killing, including
claiming that bin Laden ‘engaged in a firefight’ with Navy SEALS and had ‘used
his wife as a human shield.’
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| Pakistanis protest U.S. drone strikes |
Brennan has also been in charge of
many of Obama’s most controversial and radical policies, including ‘signature
strikes’ in Yemen - targeting people
without even knowing who they are - and generally seizing the power to
determine who will be marked for execution without any due process, oversight
or transparency.
In his nomination announcement on Monday, Naureen Shah
recalls, the U.S. President “complimented Brennan on recognizing the
responsibility to be as ‘open and transparent as possible’ about
counter-terrorism policies and Brennan himself pledged ‘full and open discourse’
– though only with ‘appropriate elective representatives.’” However, Shah writes,
it would be naive to expect the CIA, too accustomed to secrecy and under a Brennan
directorship, to engage fully with the American public about the drone program.
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If Brennan and Obama were serious about transparency over
killing, they would extract the CIA from the drone program altogether. America’s
premier spy agency should no longer also be its chief assassin.” But this will
not happen.
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| Somalis suffer U.S. drone strikes |
Signature character of a head of state
“The reason the
president needs a new CIA chief, Greenwald writes, “is because David Petraeus
was forced to resign. Here we see the ethos and morality of imperial
Washington:
Past
support for torture and rendition does not disqualify
one for a top national security position; only an extramarital affair can do
that.
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It is a perfect illustration of the Obama legacy that a
person who was untouchable as CIA chief in 2008 because of his support for [the
Bush government’s] most radical policies is not only President Obama’s choice
for the same position”; but this nomination “will encounter very little
resistance.
“Within this change one finds one of the most significant
aspects of the Obama presidency:
His
conversion of what were once highly contentious right-wing policies into
harmonious dogma of the D.C. bipartisan consensus.… The eagerness to deceive
and his long record of supporting radical and unaccountable powers make Brennan
the perfect person to run the CIA [and] it seems clear that this is Obama’s
calculus.
Sources and notes
“New director John Brennan must kill the CIA's drone
assassination policy ─ Brennan’s nomination is the time to restore the CIA to
being a spy agency and end its role as a remote-control death squad” (Naureen
Shah), January 8, 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/08/john-brennan-cia-assassination-drones
“John Brennan's extremism and dishonesty rewarded with CIA
Director Nomination ─ Obama’s top terrorism adviser goes from un-confirmable in
2008 to uncontroversial in 2013, reflecting the Obama legacy” (Glenn Greenwald,
guardian.co.uk), January 7, 2013,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/07/john-brennan-dishonesty-cia-director-nomination
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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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