salon.com
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
In November, 2008, media reports strongly suggested that President Obama intended to name John Brennan as CIA Director. But controversy over Brennan’s recent history — he was a Bush-era CIA official who expressly advocated “enhanced interrogation techniques” and rendition — forced him to “withdraw” from consideration, as he publicly issued a letter citing “strong criticism in some quarters” of his CIA advocacy.
Undeterred by any of that unpleasantness, President Obama instead
named Brennan to be his chief counter-Terrorism adviser, a position with
arguably more influence that he would have had as CIA chief. Since
then, Brennan has been caught peddling serious falsehoods in highly
consequential cases, including falsely telling the world
that Osama bin Laden “engaged in a firefight” with U.S. forces entering
his house and “used his wife as a human shield,” and then outright lying when
he claimed about the prior year of drone attacks in Pakistan:
“there hasn’t been a single collateral death.” Given his history, it is
unsurprising that Brennan has been at the heart of many of the
administration’s most radical acts, including claiming the power to
target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA without due process
and the more general policy of secretly targeting people for death by drone.
Now, Brennan’s power has increased even more:
he’s on his way to becoming the sole arbiter of life and death, the
unchecked judge, jury and executioner of whomever he wants dead (of
course, when Associated Press in this report uses the words “Terrorist”
or “al-Qaida operative,” what they actually mean is: a person accused by the U.S. Government, with no due process, of involvement in Terrorism):
White House counterterror chief John Brennan has seized the lead in choosing which terrorists will be targeted for drone attacks or raids, establishing a new procedure for both military and CIA targets.
The effort concentrates power over the use of lethal U.S. force outside war zones within one small team at the White House.
The process, which is about a month old, means Brennan’s staff
consults with the State Department and other agencies as to who should
go on the target list, making the Pentagon’s role less relevant,
according to two current and three former U.S. officials aware of the
evolution in how the government goes after terrorists. . . .
Brennan’s effort gives him greater input earlier in the process,
before making final recommendation to President Barack Obama. Officials
outside the White House expressed concern that drawing more of the
decision-making process to Brennan’s office could turn it into a pseudo military headquarters, entrusting the fate of al-Qaida targets to a small number of senior officials. . . .
Full story HERE
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