In going with the "Ends Justify the Means" mentality, the USA became NAZI-like.
Fifty Years of US Targeted ‘Kill Lists’: From the Phoenix Program to Predator Drones
Assassination Nation
by DOUG NOBLE
CounterPunch
July 19, 2012
“A broad-gauged program of targeted assassination has now displaced counterinsurgency as the prevailing expression of the American way of war.” –Andrew Bacevich (1)
This spring the US drone killing program has come out of the closet. Attorney General Eric Holder publicly defended the drone killing of an American citizen (2), while Obama’s counter terrorism czar John Brennan publicly explained and justified the target killing program (3). And a New York Times article by Jo Becker and Scott Shane chronicled Obama’s personal role in vetting a secret “Kill List.” (4)
SNIP...
Two key architects of the current Phoenix-style global counterinsurgency efforts by the US are David Kilcullen and Michael Vickers. David Kilcullen has been counterinsurgency advisor to two former Middle East commanders, General Stanley McChrystal (formerly head of Special Operations) and General David Petraeus, now CIA Director. Michael G. Vickers, made famous in the book and film Charlie Wilson’s War about the CIA’s anti-Soviet Afghan campaign of the 1980s, is currently Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, wielding such vast authority over the US war on terror that, according to a Washington Post profile, Pentagon colleagues refer to as his “take-over-the-world-plan.” (43)
Kilcullen wrote in a much-quoted 2004 paper entitled “Countering Global Insurgency” that “Counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq have reawakened official and analytical interest in the Phoenix Program.” He proposed that “a global Phoenix program … would provide a useful start point” for “a new strategic approach to the Global War on Terrorism,” one which would focus on “interdicting links … between jihad theatres, denying sanctuary areas, … isolating Islamists from local populations and … disrupting inputs” from others. (44)
SNIP...
Pentagon colleagues have said of Vickers, “he tends to think like a gangster.” (48) Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell revealed that getting Bin Laden in Pakistan was Vicker’s “baby,” and “more than anyone else in the department, he drove the issue.” (49) 2011 New York Times Vickers summarizes his strategy this: “You make a deal with the devil to defeat another devil.”(50) “I just want to kill those guys.” (51) A 2011 Such is the megalomaniacal mission underlying the US global war on terror, its kill lists and worldwide program of targeted assassination.
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/19/assassination-nation/
Which is, something else we both know, MrMickeysMom.
PS: Alexander Cockburn passed away today. While I disagreed with him regarding the Warren Commission, I will always give thanks for CounterPunch.
= new reply since forum marked as read