I am bone-tired defending President Barack Hussein Obama...

[OnyxCollie]

32. Were you giggling

Last edited Thu Jan 10, 2013, 03:39 AM - Edit history (1)

when Obama picked John Brennan to head the CIA? I bet you were, because in your mind Obama can do no wrong.

That's scary.

5 terrifying facts about John Brennan
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/08/5_terrifying_facts_about_john_brennan/

He’s also a serial misleader on the drone program. “There hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities we’ve been able to develop,” Brennan said in June 2011. But as Micah Zenko points out in Foreign Policy, there have been many “public reports — from Pakistani and Yemeni reporters and anonymous administration officials — of civilians killed by U.S. drone strikes.”

~snip~

In 2008, as the debate over telecom immunity raged, Brennan said: “I do believe strongly that they should be granted that immunity, because they were told to do so by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context, and so I think that’s important.” This line of reasoning, later implemented into the law, shields corporate communication companies from lawsuits from customers who may have been unlawfully spied on.

Brennan is opposed to waterboarding, the most infamous torture tactic of the Bush years. But on other aspects of the torture program, he’s more supportive. “A lot of information… has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has in fact used against the real hard-core terrorists. It has saved lives,” he said in 2007, while he was a CIA aide. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer described Brennan as a “supporter” of the CIA’s torture program.

~snip~

In 2005, Brennan described extraordinary rendition as “an absolutely vital tool” that “without a doubt has been very successful as far as producing intelligence that has saved lives.” What Brennan left out is that rendition often delivered people to brutal regimes where they were tortured at the behest of the U.S. And, while it certainly nabbed extremists trying to attack the U.S., innocent people were also caught up in the operation. Maher Arar is the most visible face of how the rendition program went wrong: a dual Syrian and Canadian citizen, Arar was detained by the U.S. in 2002 and then deported to Syria where he was tortured on suspicion of being a member of Al Qaeda. Turns out he was nothing of the sort, and the Canadian government has since apologized to Arar.

Democracy Now! HEADLINES JANUARY 08, 2013
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/8/headlines#180

U.S. Drone Strike Kills 8 in Pakistan

A U.S. drone attack has killed eight people in the Pakistani region of North Waziristan. Pakistani officials say the dead are suspected militants, including an al-Qaeda operative. Three people were injured. The attack follows another strike in Pakistan that killed up to 18 people on Sunday.

McChrystal, Ex-Commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan, Questions Drone Warfare

Speaking to Reuters, the former commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, retired General Stanley McChrystal, became one of the highest-ranking former military officials to publicly question the drone attacks, saying: "The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes ... is much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who’ve never seen one or seen the effects of one."

Former Adviser: Obama "As Ruthless and Indifferent to the Rule of Law" as Bush

A former adviser to Obama on security issues has forcefully come out against drone warfare, saying it is encouraging arms proliferation worldwide while causing unknown civilian casualties. Writing in this month’s issue of International Affairs, La Salle University’s Michael Boyle, an adviser on the Obama campaign’s counterterrorism expert group in 2007 and 2008, writes: "[Obama] has been just as ruthless and indifferent to the rule of law as his predecessor. ... The consequences can be seen in the targeting of mosques or funeral processions that kill non-combatants and tear at the social fabric of the regions where they occur. No one really knows the number of deaths caused by drones in these distant, sometimes ungoverned, lands."

A distinguishing feature of the mass public is the limited comprehension of democracy,
along with its attendant logical inconsistencies, and the ease to which one may be susceptible to
its manipulation by elites (Selznick, 1951). “The readiness for manipulation by symbols,
especially those permitting sado-masochistic releases, is characteristic of the mass as a crowd (p.
324). In its defense of democracy, the mass public may take action against its enemies which are
contrary to the democratic principles they are defending. The mass public will dismiss proper
social conduct and established channels of action and resort to the most immediate forms of
response (including force) to gain immediate relief from intolerable situations.

Selznick, P. (1951, January). Institutional vulnerability in mass society. American Journal of Sociology, 56(4), 320-331.