Scahill talks wars, backfires, beneficiaries and Team Blackwater-Clinton-Obama

US in Iraq

UNCONSCIONABLE US FOREIGN RELATIONS

Editing by Carolyn Bennett 

Journalist and author Jeremy Scahill is founding editor of the online news publication The Intercept and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and  book and documentary Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield. 

Scahill appeared today on the New York-based Democracy Now program. These thoughts were particularly on point.  

Pakistanis protest
USA

Deniability and Impunity

Currently at trial on charges of murder and manslaughter are four former Blackwater operatives who were “allegedly involved in a 2007 massacre” in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead when a Blackwater unit indiscriminately opened fire. The four mercenaries have been charged with killing 14 of the 17 Iraqis.

In answering Amy Goodman’s question on this matter, Jeremy Scahill said the incident at Nisour Square in Baghdad “was the worst massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of mercenaries (private contractors) that we know of in Iraq.” But, he said, “It is always the people down the chain that face the consequences.”

Pakistanis protest
USA

While the four accused “should be prosecuted, should be convicted, for what they did and should be in prison, the leadership of Blackwater should also be there.”  Blackwater founder and chief operating officer Erik Prince held these positions when Blackwater was “essentially ‘Murder Incorporated’ in Iraq and when there was a company environment” in which mercenaries “were encouraged to view every Iraqi as the enemy” and when Blackwater operatives “committed many massacres” beyond the massacre at Nisour Square. Scahill takes the view that Prince should also stand trial.

Wikipedia note: The American private military company founded in 1997 by Erik Prince was originally named “Blackwater.” In 2007 the company gained notoriety “when a group of its employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians and injured 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad [Iraq].” In 2009 Blackwater was renamed “Xe Services.” In late 2010, a group of private investors purchased the company and installed a board of directors and new senior management. In 2011 the former Blackwater assumed the name “Academi.” The company founder, Erik Prince, reportedly “retained the rights to the name Blackwater and has no affiliation with Academi.” In 2014, the company became a division of Constellis Holdings along with Triple Canopy and other security companies that were part of the Constellis Group as the result of an acquisition.

Despite the notoriety of this ever name-changing private military company, the United States federal government continues to employ and partner with it. “The Obama administration contracted the group to provide services for the CIA for $250 million.” Academi subsidiary International Development Solutions in 2013 “received an approximately $92 million contract for State Department security guards.”

Scahill summed up, “Until we as a society stop cutting off who’s held accountable at the lowest ranks, nothing is ever going to fundamentally change.” In other words, no one should be above the law.

Dark Shadows

Libyans protest
USA

As if current President Barack Obama’s ruthless performance were not enough, shadowing in the wings toward the next U.S. presidency is a character “more hawkish” than the current second-term president who, Scahill says, “has emerged as a pretty significant hawk … [in] a totally militarized presidency.”

But the Clintons, Hillary Clinton and her husband, the former president, “are two of the most fierce projectors of the politics of the American empire and they [enjoy] very close relationships with some of the most nefarious characters from the [George W., Jeb and George H.W.] Bush family.”  The families together constitute something like a monarchy, Scahill said. (Ah, the perks of cronyism, nepotism, corruption, Yale, Harvard, and legacy hires.)

When she was head of the State Department of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton “acted as though she was also sort of Secretary of Defense.” During her tenure as Secretary, the “State Department,” he reports, “was deeply involved with plotting covert action around the world, using the State Department as cover for CIA operations.”

Hillary Clinton, Scahill said, “is a fierce neoliberal who believes in backing up the so-called ‘hidden hand of the free market’ with merciless, iron-fisted military policies.”

Libyans protest
USA

Backfire

“For many, many decades … U.S. policy has been its own worst enemy in one sense – We have created the very threats we claim to be fighting.”

Every time we kill civilians in drone strikes, Scahill said, “al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula becomes stronger in the sense that they have a greater propaganda movement that they can roll out.” But beyond this obvious creation and perpetuation of enemies and violence, the big beneficiary of war is “the war industry.…

Middle East

“Under Mr. Transformative Presidency Barack Obama,” Scahill said, “the administration has been an incredibly great friend to the war industry,” which is the greatest beneficiary of the Obama policy. 

Middle East
Camps

Every Tomahawk cruise missile launched – and coming soon a next-generation- longer-airborne-sustaining jet-propelled drones – ensure that major beneficiary (and major political campaign financing) military industrialist Lockheed Martin and like brands never stop making “a killing off killing.”

Sources and notes

“Jeremy Scahill on Obama’s Orwellian War in Iraq: We Created the Very Threat We Claim to be Fighting,” October 3, 2014,  http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/3/jeremy_scahill_on_obamas_orwellian_war

Journalist and author Jeremy Scahill is founding editor of the online news publication The Intercept; author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield and the documentary of the same title, both released in 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Scahill

Blackwater brief at Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi

Blackwater Baghdad shootings at Wikipedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “On September 16, 2007, Blackwater Security Consulting (since renamed Academi) military contractors shot at Iraqi civilians killing 17 and injuring 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad. The killings outraged Iraqis and strained relations between Iraq and Washington. Blackwater guards claimed that the convoy was ambushed and that they fired at the attackers in defense of the convoy. The Iraqi government and Iraqi police investigator Faris Saadi Abdul alleged that the killings were unprovoked. The next day, Blackwater Worldwide’s license to operate in Iraq was temporarily revoked.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_Baghdad_shootings

The Clintons

William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton (originally named William Jefferson Blythe III) was the 42nd president of the United States (1993–2001) who in his second term (1998) became the second U.S. president to be impeached.

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton was a lawyer by training who became a member of the U.S. Senate (2001–09) and a U.S. Secretary of State (2009-2013). As wife of the 42nd president of the United States, she was “First Lady” (1993-2001).

Britannica and Wikipedia biographical briefs on the Clintons

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent books in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora

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Don’t amend; END sweeping, open-ended military force ─ U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee

Legislative branch must assert responsibility

Rein in unchecked executive

Editing, re-reporting, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

Nation under rule of law 

Adjudication in "just" courts of law

Governed by ethically principled people

Or by belligerently lawless barbarians

Dozen years ago

On the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives

Congresswoman Barbara Lee

Mr. Speaker, I rise today really with a very heavy heart, one that is filled with sorrow for the families and the loved ones who were killed and injured this week. Only the most foolish and the most callous would not understand the grief that has really gripped our people and millions across the world.

This unspeakable act on the United States has forced me, however, to rely on my moral compass, my conscience, and my God for direction. September 11 changed the world. Our deepest fears now haunt us. Yet I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States. This is a very complex and complicated matter.

This resolution will pass, although we all know that the President can wage a war even without it. However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint. Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, let us step back for a moment. Let us just pause for a minute and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control.

I have agonized over this vote, but I came to grips with it today and I came to grips with opposing this resolution during the very painful yet very beautiful memorial service. As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, ‘As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore.’

2009 ─ forward

Maintaining murderous status quo or searching for an elusive savior

“Once elected as savior,” Infowars.com editor Kurt Nimmo wrote early last month, U.S. President Barack “Obama not only continued [former President George W] Bush’s war policies – in fact, the war policies of the global elite – he also expanded them.

Iraq

“Troops remain in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Pentagon and the CIA stepped up the terror campaign in Pakistan. Gitmo remains open.”

[Further, it should be noted that this regime is at war or is engaged in some form of hostility with more than a dozen nations and peoples of the world: Somalia, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Korea, Iran, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, Mali, Iraq, North Korea, China, Russia, Egypt, Venezuela] 

“Democrats [were] so enthusiastic about the murder campaign in Libya,” Nimmo writes, “that they didn’t even bother to vote on it ─ not that Obama gave them a chance. Like Bush before him, he used the unchecked power of a unitary presidency to attack the African country. 

Drone Strikes
Yemen

“Both Republicans and Democrats love mass murder and military conquest,” Nimmo writes. Former President William Jefferson “Clinton attacked Yugoslavia and Democrats and liberals cheered him on. Congress was silent. Only four Democrats objected: Barbara Lee in the House and Russ Feingold (Wisconsin), Fritz Hollings (South Carolina) and Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico) in the Senate….”

Drone strikes
Pakistan

Silenced opposition

In 2003 as the Bush government “prepared to attack Iraq, President Bush dismissed the antiwar movement as a focus group.” As war criminal President Clinton coined when he bombed the former Yugoslavia with depleted uranium ─ “Democrats deem their war(s) ‘humanitarian.’…  Democrats and other liberal supporters of the establishment are not opposed to mass murder and wanton slaughter by the state. They merely oppose it when Republicans do it. Opposition is a partisan formality.” And with help from across the spectrum, President Obama “demobilized the antiwar movement.”

 

Referencing a recent study by Michael Heaney and Fabio Rojas of the University of Michigan and Indiana University, respectively, Kurt Nimmo says, “As Democrats took over the Congress and White House,” the U.S. “antiwar movement demobilized.”

Drone strikes
Somalia

Today a murderous regime

Term two

The journalist, film maker and author, Jeremy Scahill, spoke today on Democracy Now about the rising Obama Government assassination program and the state’s repeated attempts at justifying extrajudicial targeted killing and the destruction of any person or thing that is in the path of these attacks. This is some of what Scahill had to say regarding the U.S. Attorney General’s latest letter text in advance of today’s scheduled speech on the subject by the president.

They play with words and meanings and change them at will. The attorney general refuses to call what they are doing “assassination” but admits they are targeting and killing U.S. citizens without due process of law. Scahill called it assassination and cited among the murdered U.S. citizens by the U.S. government, Anwar al-Awlaki.

“

[Beginning] in mid-2009,” Scahill said, “the Obama administration had made a decision that it was going to try to take him out. After numerous attempts to kill him with drone strikes, the Americans succeeded in killing him on September 30, 2011.”

A letter by the U.S. Attorney General “talks about how Anwar Awlaki was actively involved in imminent (imminent is variously and conveniently defined) plots against the United States; that he had directed the so-called underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a U.S. airplane over Detroit, Michigan, on Christmas Day 2009.” But Eric Holder makes “these allegations … [without] actual evidence ever having been presented against Awlaki to indicate that he played the role that Eric Holder is asserting.”

 

Awlaki’s “trial was basically litigated through leaks in the press; he was never indicted on any of the charges.” Yet Holder claims to have all of this evidence,” which is conveniently “too dangerous to be made public.” What persist are “posthumous trial by leaks” and the published content of this recent letter by the U.S Attorney General.

Anwar Awlaki is not the only victim of a denial of justice under law. There have been other killings: people targeted and people around them, for whatever reason, who have been destroyed.

“It could mean,” Scahill comments, “…that these people were killed in the signature strikes”…, in a kind of “pre-crime,” that is when ─

The United States determines that military-aged males in a targeted area are terrorists and their deaths [U.S. extrajudicial assassinations] are then recorded as having killed ‘terrorists’ or ‘militants.’ …

“Despite … [the Obama government’s] overtures to the anti-targeted-killing or -assassination crowd ─ where they are trying to say, ‘We’re going to do this in a cleaner way’ ─ the whole thing [drone-attack, targeted extrajudicial killing program] has just been one massively dirty operation”

Callousness oozes from the public record

When faced with survivor lawsuits “trying to compel the government to present actual evidence” that their relatives were involved with terror plots, “the Obama administration and the Justice Department intervened in the case and filed briefs saying that the evidence is too sensitive to be made public.”

Pakistan's
dead

The government supplied “declarations from CIA Director Panetta, from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, from then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates” all echoing the “too sensitive,” “national security threat” claims. This, Scahill comments, is “Classic Cheney/Bush,” a tactic now being used by U.S. President Barack Obama, Nobel Peace laureate and constitutional lawyer.

E

xtralegal politically expedient targeted killing is wrong whether or not targets are U.S. citizens.

Scahill continued by stating the obvious, which is well overdue: that the legislative branch of government should insist on answers to, among other questions, “how these Americans were killed.” Equally important as impetus for Congress to do its job is that moral principal as well as U. S. law and international convention assert an essential blindness, which means that whether the victims (and they are clearly victims) of the U.S. government’s lethal dragnet or fishing expedition or entrapment are “Americans or not” is irrelevant.

“

How a society treats its own citizens is a good indicator of how it’s going to treat non-citizens around the world [and] we have a Congress that largely is failing to ask the right questions,” Scahill said. “If the basic standards of due process are not being afforded to American citizens, then they certainly are not going to be afforded to non-American citizens.”

U.S. Militarized 

Converse also true 

Scahill does not go further in affirming what I believe to be equally true and that has been clearly demonstrated in the actions of successive U.S. regimes. If this government or any government treats other nations and the lives of other peoples with such contempt, belligerence, violence ─ and if a regime is allowed to get away with it ─ then it will surely treat the lives of its “own people” with the same contempt, belligerence and lawlessness.

U.S. Congresswoman 
Barbara Lee
California

Loyal Opposition

Honorable Barbara Lee

Today at her website, Congresswoman Lee in recalling that she was the only Member of Congress who in 2001 who opposed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) and “warned about the state of perpetual war that our nation has now entered” complimented the president’s words in his speech today. She described it as “a bold step” to call for ‘efforts to refine and ultimately repeal’ the AUMF’s mandate.”

B

ut, she said, “It is far past time to repeal this overly broad, blank check for war.”

In January of this year ─ long before today’s presidential words, long before the death toll and refugees mounted, before anti-American protests and lawsuits, before  hunger strikes and domestic protests erupted ─ U.S. Congresswoman Lee had introduced H.R. 198 to end [not amend] the AUMF. She has also introduced the “Drones Accountability Act.” Today she linked the abuses of power reflected in the Executive’s widespread breaches of international sovereignty and human rights and domestic civil liberties as flowing from the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

The lawmaker said she continues to be gravely concerned about “the use of lethal drone strikes and the current lack of Congressional involvement and oversight. The lethal use of drones,” she said, “is but one example in the disturbing expansion of war powers that have been justified under the AUMF.

This includes wire tapping, indefinite detentions at the Guantanamo prison facilities, and the deployment of troops in dozens of countries without sufficient Congressional oversight. 

H.R. 198 introduced by Congresswoman Lee in January 2013: CONGRESSIONAL FINDING

“Congress finds

that the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note), signed into law on September 18, 2001, has been used to justify a broad and open-ended authorization for the use of military force and such an interpretation is inconsistent with the authority of Congress to declare war and make all laws for executing powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States.”

Congresswoman Lee said today, “For the integrity of our Constitution, we must ensure that we have full accountability and sufficient transparency in our nation’s war powers.” She pledged to continue fighting “for a full and public debate” on these issues.

Prescient almost a dozen years on

Recalled in a Guardian article, U.S. Representative Barbara Lee said in 2001: “‘we are not dealing with a conventional war.  We cannot respond in a conventional manner. … If we rush to launch a counterattack, we run too great a risk that women, children and other noncombatants will be caught in the cross-fire … We must be careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target. We cannot repeat past mistakes.’”

T

he published 2012 interview ends: Congresswoman “Lee believes that as America prepares to move on it should not neglect its responsibility to right those things it has done wrong.

‘We bombed the heck out of these countries.

We shattered lives.

The refugee numbers are horrendous.

We’ve unfortunately killed innocent civilians.

We have a moral responsibility to figure out how to help.’

Sources and notes

Member of the U.S. House of Representatives Barbara Lee (CA) September 14, 2001, the Floor of the House addressing the matter of

AUTHORIZING USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES AGAINST THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR  RECENT ATTACKS AGAINST THE UNITED STATES September 14, 2001, The Library of Congress (THOMAS Home: Congressional Record107th Congress (2001-2002, Page: H5643, GPO's PDF

“Obama Successfully Demobilized the Antiwar Movement” (Kurt Nimmo, Infowars.com), April 8, 2011, http://truth11.com/2011/04/09/obama-successfully-demobilized-the-anti-war-movement/

Truth11.com  dedicates itself “to the truth, true journalism, the truth movement.” Kurt Nimmo is editor of Infowars.com, http://truth11.com/2011/04/09/obama-successfully-demobilized-the-anti-war-movement/

“Killing Americans: Jeremy Scahill on Obama Admin’s Admission 4 U.S. Citizens Died in Drone Strikes, Thursday, May 23, 2013, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/5/23/killing_americans_jeremy_scahill_on_obama

“Congresswoman Barbara Lee: once the lone voice against the Afghanistan war” ( This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 14.24 EDT, Friday July 27, 2012, last modified at 14.26 EDT, Friday July 27, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/27/barbara-lee-congresswoman-interview

H.R. 198 LEE, JANUARY 4, 2013

Summary: H.R.198 — 113th Congress (2013-2014)

One summary of the bill: Introduced in House (01/04/2013)

H.R.198: Latest Title: Repeal of the Authorization for Use of Military Force
Sponsor: Rep Lee, Barbara [CA-13] (introduced 1/4/2013) Cosponsors (12)
Latest Major Action: 1/4/2013 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

H.R.198 -- Repeal of the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Introduced in House - IH)

HR 198 IH - 113th CONGRESS 1st Session, Congressional Record References

 H. R. 198: To repeal Public Law 107-40 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, January 4, 2013

Ms. LEE of California (for herself, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. ELLISON, Mr. GRIJALVA, and Ms. EDWARDS) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs

A BILL: To repeal Public Law 107-40.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1 SHORT TITLE

This Act may be cited as the `Repeal of the Authorization for Use of Military Force'.

SECTION 2 CONGRESSIONAL FINDING.

C

ongress finds that the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note), signed into law on September 18, 2001, has been used to justify a broad and open-ended authorization for the use of military force and such an interpretation is inconsistent with the authority of Congress to declare war and make all laws for executing powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States.

SECTION 3 REPEAL OF PUBLIC LAW 107-40.

Effective 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Authorization for Use of Military Force 

(Public Law 107-40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note) is hereby repealed.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c113:H.R.198:

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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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U.S. extrajudicial killing okay when partisan’s partisan holds presidency

Bankrupt partisan politics, deadly U.S. foreign relations

Editing, excerpting by 

Carolyn Bennett

Director,  writer, producer Richard Rowley and Jeremy Scahill appeared yesterday on Pacifica’s Democracy Now program their documentary film at Sundance “Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield.”  I was interested particularly in the journalist’s view of the first four and coming four of war president, Barack Obama. This is some of what Scahill had to say.

Sobering reality

Killing outside rule of law

My understanding from sources within the intelligence and military world is that President Barack Obama “has really micromanaged [the drone program, extrajudicial killings] process,” Scahill said.

And John Brennan, now the second term president’s nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, “was the architect of the drone program and its expansion… basically the hit man of this administration, except he [Brannan] never has to go out and do the hitting himself. He orders planes and missile strikes and AC-130 strikes to … hit in Somalia, in Yemen, in Pakistan.”

 The reality we are seeing, Scahill said, is the Obama government’s extension of “the very policies that many of his supporters once opposed” under the George W. Bush government.

And this “says something about the bankrupt nature of partisan politics in [the United States]: 

The way we feel about life-or-death policies around the world is determined by who happens to be in office.

“That to me,” he said, “is a very sobering reality.” Indeed. 

Killing as for sport

“The most disturbing part of this policy,” he said, “is that there are regions of Yemen or Pakistan where President Obama has authorized the U.S. to strike ─ even if they do not know the identities of the people they are striking, the so-called ‘signature strike’ policy.

“The idea that being a military-aged male in a certain region of a particular country around the world, that those people become legitimate targets based on their gender and their age and their geographic presence” is unconscionable even criminal (my words not Scahill’s).

In his reporting, Scahill came across members of the Bush team who found the Obama team’s killing beyond the pale.

“The irony,” Scahill said, is that members of the Bush team ─ “former Bush legal advisers and national security team ─ who have no moral standing to talk about these issues, are saying:

‘Obama is just killing these people.

At least we stuck them in some sort of a prison.’

What they are alleging about President Obama “is devastating,” he said.

 All that glitters

In the first term of this presidency, “you had this very popular Democratic president” whose campaign rhetoric promised “to transform the way the United States conducted its foreign policy around the world.”

Then in office he “proceeded to double down on some of the greatest excesses of the Bush administration:  the use of the state secrets privilege; expanded the drone wars and empowering special operations forces (including from JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command) to operate in countries where the United States is not at war; essentially boxing Congress out of any effective oversight role of the covert aspects of U.S. foreign policy.”

This has been “a war presidency…, a president who has normalized … the policies [liberals] once opposed under the Bush administration.”

 

The second inaugural rhetoric “how we don’t need a state of perpetual war” rings hollow, as Scahill recounts international news reports, when there have been “multiple U.S. drone strikes in Yemen,” a country with which the United States is not officially (legally) at war but “where the United States has killed a tremendous number of civilians.”

U.S. drone launch

President Obama’s nomination of John Brennan to CIA, Scahill says, “is the greatest symbol of how deeply invested his government is in covert war and an expansion of wars around the world ─

… Execution of the notion that the United States of America may strike any country in the world ─ wherever the U.S. determines ‘terrorists’ or suspected ‘militants’ reside.

Sources and notes

Dirty Wars: Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley’s New Film Exposes Hidden Truths of Covert U.S. Warfare, January 22, 2013, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/22/dirty_wars_jeremy_scahill_and_rick

Jeremy Scahill

Journalist, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, producer and writer of documentary “Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield,” premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.

Richard Rowley

Independent journalist with Big Noise Films and director of documentary “Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield,” premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.

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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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