Under Obama, an emerging global apparatus for drone killing
Greg Miller
Washington Post, 27 December 2011
In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents.
Phi Beta Iota: There are two obvious areas of concern for Constitutionalists as well as morally engaged citizens. First, Obama is not in charge of the national security apparatus. As occurred with what continues to appear to be a staged death of a Bin Laden look-alike, the CIA and JCS appear quite comfortable in “over-ruling” the President. Second, CIA stinks at collecting clandestine and covert intelligence against serious opponents. The assumption that the drone program deters serious opponents is naive and divorced from reality. As we have found in small wars throughout history, human cells and cut-outs, couriers, messages in newspaper advertisement in languages CIA does not read, are all easy to use to completely avoid the massive technical intelligence vapor-ware that has displaced thinking in the US secret world. The return on investment in secret war, big war, and corporate war is not there for the US taxpayer, at the same time that what is done “in our name” is a long-running series of crimes against humanity for which We the People must either be held accountable ourselves, or hold those who betray the public trust accountable–at once. In 2012. Murder by drone is possible because the two-party bi-opoly no longer represents We the People.
