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Greenwald/Scahill: How the NSA Helps the US Assassinate
In their first piece written for their new media venture, journalist duo reveal shocking interplay between digital surveillance and Obama's assassination program
- Jon Queally, staff writer
Published on Monday, February 10, 2014 by Common Dreams
In the first investigative piece co-written for their new media venture, journalists Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill on Monday published a much-anticipated story—based on eye-witness accounts and leaked documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden—describing how the National Security Agency uses its digital surveillance capabilities to assist the CIA and Pentagon as they carrying out controversial overseas assassinations ordered by President Obama.
Published under the masthead of 'The Intercept' at their new First Look website, Greenwald and Scahill report:
The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.
According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.
The drone operator, who agreed to discuss the top-secret programs on the condition of anonymity, was a member of JSOC’s High Value Targeting task force, which is charged with identifying, capturing or killing terrorist suspects in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
His account is bolstered by top-secret NSA documents previously provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. It is also supported by a former drone sensor operator with the U.S. Air Force, Brandon Bryant, who has become an outspoken critic of the lethal operations in which he was directly involved in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.
The explosive story about the relationship between the NSA, CIA, JSOC, and the White Houes which executes individuals abroad—including American citizens—was first mentioned by Scahill in Septembt of last year when he announced discussions between himself, Greenwald, and eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar to launch their own journalistic enterprise.
Appearing to fulfill their goal of providing a more adversarial form of journalism than their mainstream counterparts, the NSA refused to respond to questions posed by Scahill and Greenwald for their investigation. However, Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, did release a statement explaining the government's position that “the type of operational detail that" upon which their questions were based "in our view, should not be published.”
Read the entire First Look story here.
Strikingly, on the same day as the Scahill/Greenwald article was published, an Associated Press story—citing numerous "unnamed" U.S. officials—posited as a dilemma the White House's pending decision to possibly assassinate an American citizen living overseas who the government accuses of being a member of al-Qaeda.
In contrast to not speaking with Greenwald and Scahill, the government officials—hiding behind provided anonymity—seemed very willing to give away lots of potentially telling information about the alleged U.S. target.
According to AP:
Four U.S. officials said the American suspected terrorist is in a country that refuses U.S. military action on its soil and that has proved unable to go after him. And President Barack Obama's new policy says American suspected terrorists overseas can only be killed by the military, not the CIA, creating a policy conundrum for the White House.
Two of the officials described the man as an al-Qaida facilitator who has been directly responsible for deadly attacks against U.S. citizens overseas and who continues to plan attacks against them that would use improvised explosive devices.
But one U.S. official said the Defense Department was divided over whether the man is dangerous enough to merit the potential domestic fallout of killing an American without charging him with a crime or trying him, and the potential international fallout of such an operation in a country that has been resistant to U.S. action.
Another of the U.S. officials said the Pentagon did ultimately decide to recommend lethal action.
The officials said the suspected terrorist is well-guarded and in a fairly remote location, so any unilateral attempt by U.S. troops to capture him would be risky and even more politically explosive than a U.S. missile strike.
Under new guidelines Obama addressed in a speech last year to calm anger overseas at the extent of the U.S. drone campaign, lethal force must only be used "to prevent or stop attacks against U.S. persons, and even then, only when capture is not feasible and no other reasonable alternatives exist to address the threat effectively." The target must also pose "a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons" — the legal definition of catching someone in the act of plotting a lethal attack.
The Associated Press has agreed to the government's request to withhold the name of the country where the suspected terrorist is believed to be because officials said publishing it could interrupt ongoing counterterror operations.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the classified drone targeting program publicly.
SOURCE w/more links: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/02/10-0
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stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Now I know the kinds of articles I can submit to this new venture of theirs:
Breathless headline: LINCOLN WAS SHOT IN A THEATRE! BY AN ASSASSIN!
reddread
(6,896 posts)I missed that meeting.
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)For the vast majority of the party it's called "killing terrorists".
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Party dont need no conservatives. The Republican party is the party of conservatives. They love to assassinate over there. Take the hint.
By the way, we are not at war.
dreamnightwind
(4,775 posts)
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Doesn't a secret government assassination program bother your democratic sensibilities?
Maybe I'm Old School, but I think if the nation is going to wage war across the decades, Congress should be the ones to decide.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)I discussed it on my show with Medea Benjamin almost exactly a year ago. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lesersense/2013/02/11/making-sense-with-steve-leser--drones-the-week-in-review
It can't be that secret, can it?
reddread
(6,896 posts)did you answer my question on your heavily self-promoted show?
when did the Democratic Party become the party of assassins?
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)...for fear of engaging in any "extrajudicial" killing of them.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
Octafish
(55,745 posts)http://thecounterpunch.hubpages.com/hub/The_Bush-Nazi_scandal_by_John_Loftus_former_Federal_Prosecutor
Those NAZIs were treated with "extrajudicial" kid gloves, for some reason, by the Masters of Wall Street after the war, too.
Electric Monk
(13,869 posts)but I'm sure you're quite familiar with it already. Perhaps ConservativeDemocrat (and some others) could learn a thing or two from it, though.
In the chaos following World War II, the U.S. government faced many difficult decisions, including what to do with the Third Reich's scientific minds. These were the brains behind the Nazis' once-indomitable war machine. So began Operation Paperclip, a decades-long, covert project to bring Hitler's scientists and their families to the United States.
Many of these men were accused of war crimes, and others had stood trial at Nuremberg; one was convicted of mass murder and slavery. They were also directly responsible for major advances in rocketry, medical treatments, and the U.S. space program. Was Operation Paperclip a moral outrage, or did it help America win the Cold War?
Drawing on exclusive interviews with dozens of Paperclip family members, colleagues, and interrogators, and with access to German archival documents (including previously unseen papers made available by direct descendants of the Third Reich's ranking members), files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, and dossiers discovered in government archives and at Harvard University, Annie Jacobsen follows more than a dozen German scientists through their postwar lives and into a startling, complex, nefarious, and jealously guarded government secret of the twentieth century.
In this definitive, controversial look at one of America's most strategic, and disturbing, government programs, Jacobsen shows just how dark government can get in the name of national security.
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)...which kind of makes a big difference when talking about this "extra-judicial" business.
The whole concept of "extra-judicial killing" means killing people you could easily detain and bring up on charges, not people hiding out in the badlands of a third-world nation building IEDs.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
grasswire
(50,130 posts)nt
Rex
(65,616 posts)I agree, what a pathetic post.
phleshdef
(11,936 posts)ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)It is your assertion that U.S. military killing someone on the battlefield actively plotting to kill Americans is "assassination". It is mine that they are simply acts of war.
As far as I'm concerned, this applies equally to both terrorists, who you apparently are an apologist for, and NAZI soldiers, who you're apparently not an apologist for. (Thank heaven for small favors.)
If you want to assert that comparing NAZIs to terrorists is "ridiculous", you need to actually explain what distinguishes the two. I mean, other than the fact that at least the NAZIs generally wore uniforms, bore their arms openly, and reported to a commander who was responsible for their subordinates (three steps closer to being a lawful combatant according to the Geneva conventions than your typical terrorist).
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
reusrename
(1,716 posts)The only "crime" they are guilty of is talking to one another.
They "belong" to certain social networks.
Nobody has a clue or even gives a damn about terrorism.
It has nothing to do with that type of threat.
You're completely ignoring the facts.
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)Are you seriously attempting to say that this is "guilty of talking to one another"?!? That "Nobody has a clue or even gives a damn about terrorism" ?!?
The officials said the suspected terrorist is well-guarded and in a fairly remote location, so any unilateral attempt by U.S. troops to capture him would be risky and even more politically explosive than a U.S. missile strike.
Under new guidelines Obama addressed in a speech last year to calm anger overseas at the extent of the U.S. drone campaign, lethal force must only be used "to prevent or stop attacks against U.S. persons, and even then, only when capture is not feasible and no other reasonable alternatives exist to address the threat effectively." The target must also pose "a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons" — the legal definition of catching someone in the act of plotting a lethal attack.
When the Seals/Army-Rangers say "nope too hot - too dangerous to go in" these are not innocent little Bronies with puppies, hearts, and rainbows, we're talking about. And when terrorist activities keep being tracked back to these places, frankly only killing their leader(s) is nothing compared to what we would have done in WW2. (Which would have included a lot of artillery.)
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
reusrename
(1,716 posts)That's it.
Nothing else.
They don't give a damn about terrorists. The the science does not work that way.
The science is what is. You can't just pretend that it's something that it's not.
They admit they have "no human intelligence."
What do you think that means?
stillwaiting
(3,795 posts)… of privacy. The government/corporations can't really glean much information from the metadata that they collect from American citizens we're told, BUT
the U.S. Gov't. apparently uses metadata as a basis to KILL people from other nations. Doesn't that seem a little incongruous?
I don't believe that both can be true unless you're willing to admit that the U.S. Gov't. is killing quite a few innocent foreigners abroad.
And, while I believe a lot of information is, in fact, revealed by metadata, thus making the collection of this data a clear violation of our civil rights, I do not think it's very rational, or sane, to use metadata as a sole basis in making targeted drone strike decisions. A lot of innocent people are surely being killed, and we are creating more terrorists than we are killing in all likelihood.
*** A proud member of the reality based community (and it's a liberal one).
reusrename
(1,716 posts)We know that political opposition to the XL pipeline in this country has been targeted using this technology.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=509942
If you don't support the status quo, you are a potential target. You're a terrorist, basically.
Rex
(65,616 posts)
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)What you're writing isn't actually a counterargument. I suspect that's because you don't actually have any.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
malokvale77
(4,879 posts)
G_j
(40,366 posts)—By H.H. Bhojani| Tue Feb. 4, 2014 3:01 AM GMT
---snip
Obama made a brief reference to the drone campaign in last week's State of the Union address, assuring Congress that "I've imposed prudent limits on the use of drones." This wasn't the first time the president had acknowledged the need for a clear drone policy. Last May, Obama remarked at the National Defense University, "This new technology raises profound questions—about who is targeted, and why." Yet the answers the administration has provided to these profound questions and the prudent limits it has put in place remain vague.
Here are six major questions about the US drone program that remain unanswered a decade after the first strike:
1. Who's being targeted?
<snip>
2. What constitutes an "imminent threat"?
<snip>
3. What about signature strikes?
<snip>
4. Does Congress really know what's going on?
<snip>
5. How are civilian casualties avoided—and counted?
The Presidential Policy Guidance states that lethal strikes may be carried out only with "near certainty that non-combatants will not be injured or killed." However, the Obama administration counts all military-age males killed by drones as militants. That explains why official counts of civilian deaths vary widely from independent counts. While in Sen. Feinstein stated last year that annual civilian casualties from drones fall in the "single digits", the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that total civilian casualties since 2004 in Pakistan alone have ranged from 416 to 951.
6. How does the administration justify the targeting of American citizens?
<snip>
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)keep it a secret though, and we remember that. So please do not insult the intelligence of the average DUer by implying it was never 'secret'. NPR, Scahill, Greenwald, among other actual journalists pursued this 'secret' program until they could no longer deny it. All people have to do is Google to see how secret it was until real journalists exposed it to the point it could no longer be denied.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Starring journalist bio: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm6108785/resume?ref_=nm_ov_res
----------------------------------
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
-- William Shakespeare
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)And let alone a fairness doctrine.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)the information has been used in locating terrorist. Here's the proof they have been asking. Probably will be a new problem for them now. I guess this is the first time they have heard about drones.
The more information released the more it convinces me it has never been about revealing to American citizens about phone call collection or use of drones, much deeper conspiracy.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)...The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” And because Americans’ emails, phone conversations, Web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This information waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant.
CONTINUED...
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)bad for bringing it up.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)
bobduca
(1,763 posts)yeah drones are so passe, like last year and stuff. Move on nothing to see here.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Much later than others.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)was exposed, although even Schahill admits that what he and others exposed, due to his inside contacts, his real investigative journalism like actually spending time at the scenes of the crimes, there is a lot more to be exposed.
Seymor Hersch, among other investigative journalists around the country and the world, have credited the few real journalists, who actually still do the work of a journalist not just post their opinions on the internet, with the exposure of what he titled 'American's Dirty War'.
I have been following their work for over ten years now, and I KNOW for a FACT that they could not get anyone to acknowledge the extent of the use of drones to kill people, until about two years ago when even MSM reporters were forced to begin to ask the questions real journalists had been asking for years.
Dirty Wars
[div class="excerpt"
ABOUT THE BOOK:
In Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill, author of the New York Times best-seller Blackwater, takes us inside America’s new covert wars. The foot soldiers in these battles operate globally and inside the United States with orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture, or kill individuals designated by the president as enemies.
Drawn from the ranks of the Navy SEALs, Delta Force, former Blackwater and other private security contractors, the CIA’s Special Activities Division, and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), these elite soldiers operate worldwide, with thousands of secret commandos working in more than one hundred countries. Funded through “black budgets,” Special Operations Forces conduct missions in denied areas, engage in targeted killings, snatch and grab individuals, and direct drone, AC-130, and cruise missile strikes. While the Bush administration deployed these ghost militias, President Barack Obama has expanded their operations and given them new scope and legitimacy.
Dirty Wars follows the consequences of the declaration that “the world is a battlefield,” as Scahill uncovers the most important foreign policy story of our time. From Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia, and beyond, Scahill reports from the frontlines in this high-stakes investigation and explores the depths of America’s global killing machine. He goes beneath the surface of America’s covert wars, conducted in the shadows, outside the range of the press, without effective congressional oversight or public debate. And, based on unprecedented access, Scahill tells the chilling story of an American citizen marked for assassination by his own government.
As US leaders draw the country deeper into conflicts across the globe, setting the world stage for enormous destabilization and blowback, Americans are not only at greater risk — we are changing as a nation. Scahill unmasks the shadow warriors who prosecute these secret wars and puts a human face on the casualties of unaccountable violence that is now official policy: victims of night raids, secret prisons cruise missile attacks and drone strikes, and whole classes of people branded as “suspected militants.” Through his brave reporting, he exposes the true nature of the dirty wars the United States government struggles to keep hidden.
And from of the most credible and knowledgeable reporters and students of our SECRET WARS, praise for one of today's best investigative journalists:
“There is no journalist in America, in the world, who has reported on what the war on terror actually looks like under the Obama administration better than ... Jeremy Scahill. His amazing, comprehensive chronicle of the Obama war on terror [is] the new book Dirty Wars.. .. A film, which is incredible and a must-see, of the same name will be in theaters in early June. Dirty Wars is probably the most comprehensive account to date of what America’s global battlefield looks like, a battlefield that was constructed with each new mission and the deployment of special forces and each new drone strike and each new frontier, the product of hundreds of individual decisions made under duress in reaction to an uncertain world that now add up to a global battlefield without frontlines or clearly marked boundaries… This book is an unbelievable accomplishment. The movie is an incredible accomplishment ... Whatever your politics, you should read this book. It is incredibly carefully reported book. People who come to this book expecting a polemic, I think will be surprised to a find a book that really in many ways lets the facts speak for themselves. What this book does is show a side of our unending wars that we haven’t seen. ... I think every member of Congress should read this book.”
Chris Hayes, All In, MSNBC
“Dirty Wars is not politically correct. It is not a history of the last decade as seen from inside the White House, or from the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post. Scahill’s book takes us inside Dick Cheney’s famed ‘dark side’ and tells us, with convincing detail and much new information, what has been done in the name of America since 9/11.”
Seymour Hersh
“Dirty Wars is the most thorough and authoritative history I’ve read yet of the causes and consequences of America’s post 9/11 conflation of war and national security. I know of no other journalist who could have written it: For over a decade, Scahill has visited the war zones, overt and covert; interviewed the soldiers, spooks, jihadists, and victims; and seen with his own eyes the fruits of America’s bipartisan war fever. He risked his life many times over to write this book, and the result is a masterpiece of insight, journalism, and true patriotism.”
Barry Eisler, novelist and former operative in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations
The Drone War as they call it, has been and still is being conducted in secret, and the only reason we know anything about it at all is because of the rare few people who understand that journalism is not about trying to protect the government, it is about finding out facts, sometimes putting your life on the line, and then informing the public, no matter what politician's reputation may be at stake. It is about the COUNTRY.
Your attempt to dismiss the work of these journalists is sad. I will take their reporting, their credentials over anything someone who has FORGOTTEN how secret the Drone was has been until their work forced it out into the open, at least some of it.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Mr. McFarlane said a United States aircraft attacked the Taliban soldiers about 4 a.m. yesterday. The C.I.A. and the Pentagon declined to comment, and it is possible that it was an unmanned predator drone equipped with anti-tanks missiles, an aircraft that is used by the C.I.A. as well as the United States military.
Here is another NY Times article in 2002 that talks about innocent people being accidentally killed by drones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/17/world/a-nation-challenged-the-manhunt-us-leapt-before-looking-angry-villagers-say.html?ref=unmannedaerialvehicles
Scahill's book, published in 2013 is 11 and 12 years later. The NY Times has tons of articles on drones in 2002, 2003, 2004, etc.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)and there was so much outrage, that the story DIED in the MSM. Jeremy Schahill's book was the END RESULT of YEARS of investigative journalism.
You must not have been around when the drone killings were first hinted at, but I was.
And fyi, the NYT was not the first to alert the world to the fact that drones were being used to kill innocent people. British Journalists who were actually PRESENT during a drone strike wrote about the HORROR of what they saw.
And throughout all those years, the US Govt remained silent. While some, a very few, reporters were trying to get more information, the US Govt refused to 'discuss it because of, 'guess what', National Security.
Moreover the rare times when it was discussed, the US Govt ASSURED the public that they would never, ever, ever kill an American Citizen without charges and trial.
And then, suddenly out of the blue, they were doing it. And for the first few years of this administration whenever reporters asked about the Drone program, WH spokespeople claimed they could not address the isssue because of, yes once again that same old excuse, National Security.
It's clear to me you are not at all familiar with the history of this issue. YES we knew about drones, THANKS TO INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS, NOT to transparency by the US Government.
No one SAID we didn't know about it, what has been a fact is that the US Govt has refused to reveal details about it until it was too difficult to do so anymore.
I can link you to several articles going back to 2001. What that has to have to do what the US Govt trying desperately to keep it all secret??
The fact that people knew about them, was no thanks to the US Govt, but thanks to some great journalists, some risking their lives to try to get information on this horrific program. And to the victims who were witnesses to the horrific devastation wrought on innocent people.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)dont care. Kill for democracy.
MyNameGoesHere
(7,638 posts)via a leak.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)MyNameGoesHere
(7,638 posts)of what I posted. I framed it this way because I KNOW there have been artciles on it since 2001. However the depth and depravity of it has not been thoroughly reported on. But thanks for not understanding.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)But nice try
cali
(114,904 posts)not even close.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)hits. Most of them discussing and debating their use.
Maybe I'm Old School too, as I'm agree with you on this.
Autumn
(45,026 posts)Yeah, folks DO know about it and it's a damn good thing to discuss.
reddread
(6,896 posts)the times they sure are a changing
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)WITHOUT even identifying the person, not to mention the crime? I doubt the new media will be interested in your articles if you are unaware of just how explosive these crimes against the Constitution are, now confirmed. I know I don't read unsubstantiated defenses of Bush policies anymore.
The American people are only becoming aware, thanks to real journalism in the New Media, Jeremy Scahill is one of the best, that they are fast losing their Democracy.
Even Bush was afraid to publicly slaughter without charges, a US Citizen.
In fact, you must not have been around during the Bush years, we were assured that no US Citizen would be killed without charges and trials, that our murder inc. program was only for foreigners.
Love Jeremy Schall's work, and I'm glad these great journalists have been given a forum to publish some real, actual journalism mostly CENSORED in this once upon a time democracy.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Did you not know that the intelligence community worked with the military during military actions?
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)that opinion. I'll take Scahill's factual reporting over the opinions of defenders of these policies any day.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)a thread is one of the definitions of the term "internet troll."
If you hijack a thread, like you just did, you are behaving like a troll.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)believed that is the end of their credibility on whatever it is they have been attempting to defend.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)And are you calling me a 'troll'? Just say so directly, I have a thick skin have battled with right wing Bush supporters for years during the actual Bush era so nothing anyone calls me has the slightest effect on me. I know who I am and so do all those whose opinions matter.
However, since I do not name call as I consider it childish and a sign someone cannot defend their positions, I despise efforts to violate the rules here by doing so in underhanded ways. If you are calling me a troll, do so openly or apologize for your 'implication'.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)decide military targets.
You threadjacked that to discuss something totally different.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)Do you understand the meaning of 'threadjacking'?? You hi-jacked the thread, or tried to, with a snide comment in the #1 post. I and others brought the subject back to the topic of the OP. Your first snide comment did NOT address the topic of the OP. Just so you know from now on, snide comments to an OP that do not address the topic, is CLASSIC thread jacking.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)reusrename
(1,716 posts)The "OP" establishes the topic of the "thread."
Every thread has an OP. Subthreads occur inside the main thread and those are called subthreads.
In any event, no one hajacked this thread yet, afaict. Everybody is talking about the same basic subject, the surveillance state, just with different points of view.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)of being the ones to hijack. Hilarious! Are you serious, really?
When someone goes to the trouble of starting a THREAD, an OP, and then someone jumps in with the first post, mocking a topic, which to MOST PEOPLE is extremely important, that is CLASSIC HIJACKING.
You did not start an OP, Octafish started this OP and the topic is Journalists Greenwald and Jeremy Schahill whose integrity and reputation are well known, both top notch truth tellers, and you did not address the topic but attempted to make fun of those, now Internationally respected journalists? Then accuse those who were on topic of hijacking.
We are fortunate to have some great Journalists, free of the propagandized corporate media, with the courage to do what journalists are supposed to do, TELL THE TRUTH without all the now thoroughly boring, inane talking points which people are frankly sick to death of.
If I wanted to be a journalist, I would look for those who have gained and earned International and National respect and try to emulate them, rather than attempt to undermine their work, which would be a fruitless effort particularly on a Democratic Forum where people tend to be pretty informed about these issues.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)
troll behavior is funny when you're on the side of the troll.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)You want to lecture the folks here about how RIGHT you are?
Barely a month ago you said this:
View profile
The software has to pick out a few hundred or a few thousand people to be concerned about. The NSA/CIA/FBI cannot followup on more than that. You can have the best data mining software in the world. It can spit out all kinds of data.
You still eventually have to get to where humans have to start investigating and following up on the data. Each person the data mining software spits out means a lot of time and money invested in an investigation on that person if it is warranted.
Think about all the time and manpower and money that goes into a single murder investigation and that is a crime that is usually straightforward. Trying to parse all of this metadata into something that targets the right folks who are terrorists is a lot of work for a huge group of people.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024230672#post5
I don't know if it's against the rules here to call you out on this crap or not. Frankly I don't care.
How dare you lecture us?
Is this all some kind of joke to you? These are REAL PEOPLE being KILLED!
on edit> fixed link
bobduca
(1,763 posts)thought-leader & wanna-be gatekeeper.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Please feel free to quote more of my posts.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)I guess I should start by explaining my motives a little bit. I’m deeply concerned about our future. It may seem like I’m just looking for someone to argue with or someone to ridicule but that really isn’t it at all. I need people to understand exactly what we are up against. That’s all there is to it. Sure, I do like the discussions, but there are only a few subjects I take very seriously and this one is at the top of that list.
Secondly, I’m going to stroke your ego a bit in the hopes that you’ll understand that I’m being sincere. This whole subject of surveillance, you’re definitely sharp enough to get it. Not everyone is. I’m confident that you can follow the technology if you just study it for a few hours/days/weeks/whatever. I don’t know how long it would take, but I guarantee you it would be worth your while.
I hope your not thinking that you already know more than you ever wanted to know about this crap, why bother? If that's the case, maybe you should consider dialing back your comments a little bit and just admit that you’re no expert until you do the work.
There are literally hundreds of doctoral and masters theses about this stuff that can be found online. Plus there are lots of folks here that can help. I hope you give it a try.
I started a thread on it here:
Science is science, metadata is metadata.
Response to stevenleser (Reply #42)
Post removed
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)The issue is that the information used to determine targets is cell phone metadata analysis rather than human intelligence. I'm surprised you missed it - it's right there in the OP:
According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.
The major issue with drone strikes is not the technology of the drones but the rules of engagement, such as "signature strikes" in which targets are selected based upon behavioral analysis from remote surveillance. The identity of the target is not being confirmed. We're blowing people up because they look like they are acting like "terrorists."
Targeting individuals based upon analysis of their cell phone metadata is likewise problematic. We're blowing up people because of who they may have called on their phone. Worse than that, we know that the NSA is playing "three degrees of separation" with the data they collect, so these people are quite possibly being blown up because they called someone who called someone who called someone who may have given material support to someone who is a "terrorist."
But you know all this. That's why you're choosing to nitpick a semantic point rather than discuss the information in the article.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)Have some fucking respect.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts) rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)it up.
arely staircase
(12,482 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)reusrename
(1,716 posts)Socrates prolly did it too.
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)
great white snark
(2,646 posts)Again team Greenwald/Snowden belches out nothing new and the usual suspects claim recent discoveries
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)...should be entitled to challenge any designation as en enemy combatant. For known U.S. Citizens, the admins should have to apply to the courts to designate the citizen an enemy combatant. The citizen should be able to challenge the assertion, and if they do not, an advocate should be appointed by the courts.
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)I like your headline but I think O'Reilly preempted Glen with his book "Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever"
reusrename
(1,716 posts)Was this known or unknown?
A little over a month ago he pretended that this was all just conspiracy theory; it was impossible.
Now he says he's always known it.
Which is it?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024230672#post5
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)I see no contradiction and I don't think that most readers would.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)A month ago this was not possible, we were all just conspiracy theorists.
Today this stuff is not new at all, he's always known it to be the case.
No contradiction?
Why can't you give any honest commentary on anything?
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)You aren't making sense, when you do I might comment.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)Up until this last revelation about how they are using the metadata in order to pick out who to kill next with the drones, many people here argued that the metadata wasn't very useful for anything.
It's exactly what many of us tried to warn folks about. The metadata is THE ONLY EVIDENCE that is needed in order to put people on a KILL LIST.
Up until now, it was being argued by some people here that this kind of data mining was impossible. Now those same people here are saying that they knew it all the time and it's not a big deal.
I just cannot fathom how some of the members here are continuing to try and lecture us about how smart they are. They honestly don't have a clue. They are so clueless they don't even know how stupid they are behaving.
For more on how the metadata is used:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4478300
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)a group of cellphones that are part of a terrorist chat group in Pakistan or Yemen, has much to do with metadata from "supposedly" all the phone calls in the US.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)It's the technology itself that is being discussed.
Cell phones in Yemen use the exact same technology as the cell phones here. Everywhere, for that matter.
The same science that works in Yemen is also the same science that works in the US.
Science is science. Metadata is metadata.
It is either possible or impossible.
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)The post you linked to says
The possible uses of the technology is what is being discussed.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)It's too big a challenge or something.
He said that there would be too much information or something.
The thing is, many of us are aware that there are are petabyte and even zetabyte facilities that were built to handle this particular workload and nothing else. Many of do understand and have understood for quite a long time now, for YEARS what is at stake in this debate. And we are being lectured to by know-nothings who seem very proud of their ignorance.
In any event, now he claims that not only is it possible, but he's known they were doing it all along.
Shocking news, he says. Lincoln shot, he says.
This is not a drill. This is not some video game. REAL PEOPLE are being targeted and killed.
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)there would be too much information to process. He is right. His original post addressed the problem of spying on all electronic communications of 300 million people. Anyone paying attention knows that Osama and others were tracked by their satellite phones in 2001/2002 until
Yes, military forces do kill people sometimes. Hopefully they do it based on good intelligence, so fewer innocents are killed. It is important when the enemy hides among a civilian population.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)You don't see the doublethink in saying that it's not happening because it's scientifically impossible so nobody should believe it, while at the same time saying that of course it's going on and everyone has always known about it so there's nothing new here?
If you don't see it, fine, I don't think I can explain it any better than that. Other than to say that it was the prophet Orwell who came up withdoublethink .
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)I've read 1984, too. I read it as the fiction it is.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)As for the doublethink, I wouldn't expect you to see it. That's the whole point I was trying to make.
Either this stuff is impossible or it isn't. If it's actually happening, then it isn't impossible. To argue that it's both impossible and that it's actually happening, to make both arguments at the same time, it's sort of the definition of that phenomenon.
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)The NSA can't track all U.S. cellphones, it is impossible.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)These calls don't happen through magic or anything.
You have to have a carrier, right? The calls run through dedicated hardware, right? Even Skype has metadata associated with each call.
I don't understand why you would say something like that. The metadata exists. For all calls.
As for Orwell being a prophet, that was a separate calling from being a novelist. There's nothing that requires them to be mutually exclusive. It's interesting how false dichotomies and doublethink seem to go hand-in-hand with each other.
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)Let me ask you a question you won't answer: Does killing innocent abroad create more terrorists?
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Autumn
(45,026 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Everything the secret state has done overseas, they've done to the people at home. I mean, Homeland.
ACLU is trying to get the word out, but they don't get invited on FOX News to talk about it, for some reason:
https://www.aclu.org/blog/tag/domestic-drones
randome
(34,845 posts)Under new guidelines Obama addressed in a speech last year to calm anger overseas at the extent of the U.S. drone campaign, lethal force must only be used "to prevent or stop attacks against U.S. persons, and even then, only when capture is not feasible and no other reasonable alternatives exist to address the threat effectively." The target must also pose "a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons" — the legal definition of catching someone in the act of plotting a lethal attack.
If the military has the chance to take someone out according to the guidelines above, they should simply not bother? They should sit back and let some imminent threat unfold because...well, because we shouldn't be mean to murderers.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]A 10% chance of rain means the same as a 90% chance of rain:
It might rain and it might not.[/center][/font][hr]
Octafish
(55,745 posts)No public investigation. No trial. No jury. Just executioner.
Team Obama's Justification For Killing A 16-Year-Old American In A Drone Strike Is Stunning
MICHAEL KELLEY
Business Insider, OCT. 24, 2012, 2:04
Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to President Obama's reelection campaign, recently became the first person on Team Obama to address the killing of 16-year-old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, Conor Friedersdorf of the The Atlantic reports.
Abdulrahman was the son of New Mexico-born cleric and al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki. Both were killed in separate drone strikes last year.
A reporter asked Gibbs: "Do you think that the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, who was an American citizen, is justifiable?"
Here is Gibbs' answer:
"I'm not going to get into Anwar al-Awlaki's son … I would suggest that you have a far more responsible father if they're truly concerned about the well being of your children. I don't think becoming an al-Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business."
CONTINUED...
http://www.businessinsider.com/alwaki-son-yemen-16-drone-2012-10
That bothers me. Does it bother you, randome?
treestar
(82,383 posts)and avoid mistakes like that.
Careful lest your ODS get out of control. Here, we have an example of the data being useful to make more accurate targets.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Do sufferers get to call him, "Barack"?
Anyway, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that President Obama is making it possible for future presidents to make war and kill people, including American citizens, unilaterally.
If a President Jebthro were to start dropping drone bombs on enemies of the state, defined by him as someone who points out the criminality of a leading political family, would that bother you?
Rex
(65,616 posts)The sheer desperation on their part makes them only slightly amusing. You are RIGHT, their worship of the POTUS does not matter nor their robot like babbling about who is and is not an Obama hater. As if they are even sincere or honest about the POTUS! Nothing but shit stirrers.
That is the kind of level of debate one would expect on FR imo.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)swore to defend and protect. Even Bush assured the public that NO US CITIZEN, let alone a teenager, would be killed without due process. Even his policy of doing this to foreigners was HUGELY OPPOSED BY DEMOCRATS back then.
ODS? Is that what is causing some people to actually defend these policies? Thanks, I like to know what causes the defense of Bush policies when at one time, they were considered to be crimes against the Constitution.
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)Yes indeed, killing foreigners and US citizens engaged in hostilities against our nation on the battlefield is utterly Unconstitutional. Which is why Lincoln was summarily impeached and hung for murder after the Gettysburg address.
Normally I don't post smileys, but this one is just for you: 
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)fact that nowhere in the Law of this Land, in the US Constitution does it permit our elected officials to dispense with Due Process. No need to be a SC Justice to know that elementary fact.
mindwalker_i
(4,407 posts)Don't like drone executions? ODS.
Don't like getting spied on? ODS.
Think the TPCC is going to be bad for America? ODS.
Don't want the tar sands pipeline? ODS.
There's a group of people here who's love of Obama is, essentially, faith. The symbol they have, with the Obama campaign symbol and the dove above it has some heavily religious overtones, which explains why, when anybody disagrees with anything Omaba does, they blame it on ODS. Unfortunately, just like having faith in a religion causes one to accept and justify all sorts of really messed up thing, like priests abusing children, having faith in a politician or party leads this group to support policies that are just nasty.
Furthermore, arguing with people of faith by using facts and logical arguments will get you nowhere. It generally takes something really big to shake people's faith, and if drone-based assassination and domestic spying don't do it, I don't know what will.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)reddread
(6,896 posts)just dont call it torture.
neverforget
(9,436 posts)interpretation of the Constitution. 
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)then who are we to complain?
reddread
(6,896 posts)wait, what?
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Must make sense, in a way. Yet, they're two separate questions: Death by Drone using NSA data, and the supposed Congressional approval of the loss of attorney-client privilege.
Although you are correct if assuming when the client is dead, it's too late to remind him or her that his or her rights were violated in the process of being terminated.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)SCOTUS.
The courts and SCOTUS say that the rights are being observed and they are not what you say they are.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The same SCOTUS led by one conservative John Roberts, who helped George W Bush in Florida in 2000?
The same John Roberts who helped Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush avoid impeachment for their roles in the Iran-Contra treason?
The same John Roberts who, until three days ago, had appointed no one but ultra-rightwing and neo-conservative GOP judges to the secret courts, such as FISA?
That would be something.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)that as a branch, the judicial branch is now completely defunct?
If that is your point, then this debate is over since we have no one to determine exactly what the Constitution and amendments mean and what our rights are.
The constitution and amendments have a very long record of judicial review that is not all that difficult to follow. And your interpretation is wrong at just about every turn.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)My point is that the matter has not been decided, not by the courts, nor by Congress, nor by the Executive, nor by plebiscite.
Your point was that it had been decided, which is wrong.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)grasswire
(50,130 posts)Bush v. Gore was not a "mistake". It was a coup.
Is a coup now constitutional?
reddread
(6,896 posts)theres a thread running through here, somehow...
you are so right, how anyone could mistake a coup for a mistake
beggars the imagination
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)They were decided with specific goals in mind. The SCOTUS has lost all credibility.
bobduca
(1,763 posts)plonk
Vattel
(9,289 posts)hasn't ruled on it.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)Look...I get what you are saying. And I don't like the use of drones. But they are authorized...and there's a way to make them not so.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)DiFi's concerned that control of the drones is being handed off to the Pentagon.
Under new guidelines Obama addressed in a speech last year to calm anger overseas at the extent of the U.S. drone campaign, lethal force must only be used "to prevent or stop attacks against U.S. persons, and even then, only when capture is not feasible and no other reasonable alternatives exist to address the threat effectively." The target must also pose "a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons" — the legal definition of catching someone in the act of plotting a lethal attack.
SNIP...
Lawmakers like Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have also objected to the shift to the Pentagon, arguing that the CIA has more experience flying drones.
EXCERPT from Drone Attack Against U.S. Citizen Being Considered
http://www.cbs12.com/news/top-stories/stories/vid_13119.shtml
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)9/18/2001. This was passed by an overwhelming majority of Congress, and while SCOTUS has defined some parameters of the AUMF, particularly with respect to custodial combatants, non-custodial combatants are still pretty much within the purview of the military and the Executive Branch.
Bush chose not to use drone warfare routinely, (such as at Tora Bora) preferring ground invasion, like Iraq. Obama's targeting of Al Qaeda and its affiliates has been more surgical, and you've seen not just the use of drones, but the covert movements in Africa against extremism.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Reading what you wrote, it sounds all legal like.
Knowing what it means, it doesn't make a lick of sense.
Bush at Tora Bora let Osama go free, with or without drones. John Kerry wrote about it in 2009.
BTW: I don't recall being at war with any nation in Africa, although I do read about drone airstrips opening all the time there. The only thing they've managed to accomplish is create more enemies, which may be their point, seeing how profitable the program and policy have become.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)msanthrope
(37,549 posts)practice in.
Indeed...Bush decided not to use weapons at his disposal, like drones, because they did not serve his purpose. But he coukd have used them quite efficiently at places like Tora Bora.
We aren't at war with any 'nation' in Africa...and that's the point, isn't it?
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)I haven't either. That's why I listen to people who have.
Most of the things in professions are hard to understand if you are not part of that profession.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)What is your profession?
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)As for what you do, great. I read you're also an actor. That must help pay the bills.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Five lawyers on the Supreme Court said Bush won in 2000. They were wrong, weren't they?
Anyway, if you value a lawyer's opinion more, that's your business. Not mine.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)In order for your claim to be true, there would have to be some connection to the attacks on the WTC.
First off, legally, no one has ever been accused of that crime. So what's the connection?
The whole charade is a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)responsible, those afilliated, and those planning current strikes. Read it. In the speciifc cae of Anwar Awlaki, the BA bomb plot was enough, though there was plenty more. Membership in AlQaeda will.get you killed.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)But that isn't what the AUMF says, is it?
You can't have it both ways, can you?
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)AUMF...thus Iraq required a different AUMF.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)No one has ever been charged, so legally, everyone is just as guilty as the next person. Right? It's completely arbitrary, right?
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)non-custodial?
reusrename
(1,716 posts)And don't tell me no one is in custody.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)reusrename
(1,716 posts)Therefore you claim that there is no need to have any method for identifying these people.
Who are they?
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)targets are established, it is unfortunate that Anwar Awlaki did not join his father's suit to challenge his JSOC designation under 31 CFR 595.311 and his inclusion on order 12947....but he certainly had notice his was a target.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)It's like trying to nail down jello.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)people and I'll try to answer them?
reusrename
(1,716 posts)who are they, specifically?
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)of declarations of war, and highly inefficient. That wasn't your question, was it?
An AUMF is a declaration of military force, invoking the War Powers Act. Targeting under the authority of that AUMF apparently comes from JSOC.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)Ok, I'll bite one more time.
War against WHOM?
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)the AUMF of 9/18/2001 covers those persons and organizations responsible for WTC, anyone affiliated with those persons or organizations, or anyone providing material support to them. The President is further empowered to take such steps as would prevent future attacks under the War Powers Act.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)I think we're back where we were several posts ago.
I think you are arguing for a different legal status for persons and organizations responsible for WTC, etc.
Let me ask you a simple question:
Do they, as individuals, have any rights at all?
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)who come under the AUMF have a different legal status that those who do not.
As individuals, they have many rights. Even Anwar Awlaki had rights....he chose not to exercise them.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)at least that would be consistent. I did not come across you during those years so wondered if you were supporting his policies which we elected Democrats to END. Such as extra judicial assassinations, and Bush was only murdering foreigners in secret not US Citizens, at least according to him.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Only the worst abuses. Did you not know this?
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)crimes?
How about assassinations of US Citizens, did Bush assassinate any US Citizens? Airc, there was quite a debate over this and the American people were assured that no US Citizen would be extra judicially assassinated by this government.
So can you point us to the Congressional Vote that overturned those laws and assurances that now permits Americans to be murdered without charges or trials, by the US Government? Who voted for this extreme violation of the US Constitution, I want to know as I'm sure so do others, so we get rid of these people before the move on to some other violation of their Oaths of Office?
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)No US President in history has prosecuted a predecessor.
Its interesting that you think that lack of prosecution implies what someone did was legal.
That is a dazzling logic fail.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Response to stevenleser (Reply #11)
neverforget This message was self-deleted by its author.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)The executive branch has, in effect, claimed the unchecked authority to put the names of citizens and others on “kill lists” on the basis of a secret determination, based on secret evidence, that a person meets a secret definition of the enemy. The targeted killing program operates with virtually no oversight outside the executive branch, and essential details about the program remain secret, including what criteria are used to put people on CIA and military kill lists or how much evidence is required.
Outside of armed conflict zones, the use of lethal force is strictly limited by international law and, when it comes to U.S. citizens, the Constitution. Specifically, lethal force can be used only as a last resort against an imminent threat to life. Even in the context of an armed conflict against an armed group, the government may use lethal force only against individuals who are directly participating in hostilities against the U. S. Regardless of the context, whenever the government uses lethal force, it must take all possible steps to avoid harming civilian bystanders. These are not the standards that the executive branch is using.
Can you post a link to the Legislation that permits this violation of International Law AND our own Constitution. I want to see a list of who voted for such an egregious piece of legislation so that we can work to get rid of them as soon as possible.
I have searched for the Bill but couldn't find it.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)who have proven themselves to know what they are talking about, people who have earned the respect and credibility that makes their words worthy of attention. Qualified iow.
I also never take advise from people who support the destruction of our Constitution in any way.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)nerve to tell me or anyone else here, how they should 'think' about strangers on the internet. I know plenty of excellent lawyers in RL, some in my family. If I want advice I will ask for it from lawyers who have proven themselves to ME that they actually understand the US Constitution and who are not busy trying to interpret it to match policies that are in total violation of that document. I am confident in the Civil Liberties take on Constitutional Violations.
randome
(34,845 posts)What happens if, in the crossfire, an innocent bystander is killed? Was the cop justified in shooting? Most juries -most people- would say 'Yes'.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]A 10% chance of rain means the same as a 90% chance of rain:
It might rain and it might not.[/center][/font][hr]
Octafish
(55,745 posts)He wasn't pointing a gun at anyone.
http://www.emptywheel.net/2011/10/18/as-al-awlaki-family-mourns-abdulrahman-16-us-develops-kamikaze-drones-targeting-single-humans/
randome
(34,845 posts)He was probably an innocent bystander. He was 'caught in the crossfire'. Maybe that's not justified but is it at least understandable when it happens? Do you think the military is purposely trying to kill American teenagers? For what purpose?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]“If you're not committed to anything, you're just taking up space.”
Gregory Peck, Mirage (1965)[/center][/font][hr]
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)was on a convoy of vehicles al-Banna was driving in....in the wee hours of the morning. I've often wondered whythe family didn't file a wrongful death suit...but I suspect discovery would complicate things.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)murder when they shoot someone, often without real cause btw, but let's say even with cause, can you give us an example of cop shootings where babies and small children are also blown away?
It's a silly question, but then it was a silly example especially since cop shootings are pretty controversial especially when they shoot people who were after all, only carrying toy guns eg.
But it was your example so I'm just trying to stay in tune with your reasoning.
randome
(34,845 posts)But what would you do if you had reliable intelligence that a terrorist planned to give the 'Go' order in half an hour? Sit back, relax and sip another glass of wine? Or do your best to stop a planned atrocity from happening?
And what if the 'mastermind' could not be reached by boots on the ground? You'd still do nothing?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]If you don't give yourself the same benefit of a doubt you'd give anyone else, you're cheating someone.[/center][/font][hr]
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)lepracauns, would you be able to follow them and find a pot of gold'?? What we know is crimes have been committed by this government against innocent people, both here and elsewhere. Unless of course you don't support the Constitution. And unless our elected officials whose oaths of offices demand that this is their main job, to protect and defend the Constitution, just take those oaths for show.
Is it all just for show, this pretext that we are Democracy which respects human rights and the rule of law? If so, then just say so and my arguments would be based on THAT. But so long as we are pretending to be a Democracy, there is no defense for the policies of this government.
And no need to make up false scenarios. We ARE killing innocent people around the world. There has been NO accountability for the crimes committed. And people are demanding it, and will continue to do so until we are told outright, 'your democracy is a myth'. I haven't heard that officially yet so I'm still arguing under the belief there has not been a coup yet.
randome
(34,845 posts)No more implausible than that the military is blowing up people for fun or for money. Neither of us has evidence of why the military conducts each and every operation but until evidence surfaces of what the 'true' motive is, I'm comfortable with seeing things as they appear.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]You have to play the game to find out why you're playing the game. -Existenz[/center][/font][hr]
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)CHILDREN. But as you say, and this is the heart of the problem:
A few questions:
1) Were you comfortable with it when it all started under Bush?
2) The most important question re your comment. WHY do we not have any evidence after all these years, of WHY these human beings were killed?
3) Will you be 'comfortable' with these murders if a Republican gets into the WH again? Or will you all go back to running around yelling how illegal and terrible it all is like you all used to do? Because we will be here to remind you that much of it is now YOUR fault, for being so 'comfortable' with all this extra judicial killing of innocent people.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)The people we are killing with our drone strikes are tribal warriors with relatively primitive munitions is isolated regions of third world countries. They have no ability to project their power beyond their immediate surroundings.
Imaginary "imminent threats" do not justify the collateral deaths resulting from our drone strikes. That's why it's atrocious that the U.S. is relying on bullshit like phone metadata analysis to pick targets - we're killing people based upon algorithms, when they pose no threat to American citizens, when they are far from any battlefield, in the absence of war conditions.
randome
(34,845 posts)The guidelines are public. If they are not being adhered to, we should know why. In fact, we should know a lot more about why these targeted killings take place, justifications, etc.
All the 'collateral deaths' of the past decade don't measure up to what would happen if we put boots on the ground. We saw what happened with the pointless invasion of Iraq. If you have to practice triage -and that's often what the President has to do- which would you prefer? Targeted killings or an invasion? Or do nothing and let people die?
I don't envy anyone having to make this kind of decision.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Precision and concision. That's the game.[/center][/font][hr]
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)We don't need either one.
randome
(34,845 posts)I don't think I could do that. I would opt for the drone program, be as surgical as possible and hope for the best.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]TECT in the name of the Representative approves of this post.[/center][/font][hr]
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)There is no evidence that an absence of drone killing is a causal factor in people dying. There is also no basis for placing on the U.S. the responsibility for deaths at the hands of tribal insurgents.
The assumption that the drone campaigns are necessary is in error.
Rex
(65,616 posts)All they can do is make up imaginary scenarios.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)the "Ticking Time Bomb" scenario used to justify any number of horrific things under Bush?
Now we have so-called "progressives" and "liberals" on DU using the "There Might Be A Ticking Time Bomb At Some Time In The Future Unless We Have Signature Strikes" scenario to defend American Imperialism.
Strange days indeed.
questionseverything
(9,646 posts)According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.
The drone operator, who agreed to discuss the top-secret programs on the condition of anonymity, was a member of JSOC’s High Value Targeting task force, which is charged with identifying, capturing or killing terrorist suspects in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
His account is bolstered by top-secret NSA documents previously provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. It is also supported by a former drone sensor operator with the U.S. Air Force, Brandon Bryant, who has become an outspoken critic of the lethal operations in which he was directly involved in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.
///////////////////////////////////////////////
again in case you missed it...... Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.
////////////////////////////
4 different sources confirm what you "doubt"
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)mushroom clouds or something equally and imminently threatening? You say that as if there is some need for 'boots on the ground' ANYWHERE. There isn't. We are not at war anywhere.
How amazing, doesn't it strike you as odd, the ease with which some Americans simply accept that we need to be constantly at war. No wonder war mongering criminals get away with their crimes. They can always count on support from one side or the other here, depending on which 'team' is in power.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)Police officers have the authority to enforce the law within their jurisdiction.
The United States has no jurisdiction in the places in which we are using drone strikes.
randome
(34,845 posts)Like it or not, the U.S. is the world's police force. That's reality. If we want to withdraw from that position and ignore the rest of the world, it won't be long before we pay a price for that.
Many of the countries actively invite our participation or turn a blind eye as we operate, knowing that we are better equipped to get the job done.
That's not intended as a cheerleading call for America, it's just reality. If we know an attack is imminent and we do nothing, are we guilty of murder then? If you could save someone's life by doing something illegal, would you do so?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]All things in moderation, including moderation.[/center][/font][hr]
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)and shoot down who we want, is the root cause of "terrorism" directed against us.
That may be the status quo, but I'm for changing it. I'll leave defending the status quo to the conservatives and imperialists.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)So what we view as simply wrong policy, your reference to CAUSING terror attacks by continuing to kill people, may not be 'wrong' policy at all, it may be the goal.
Considering the more than a decade of destroying one nation completely, and contributing to the destruction of a few others, not to mention the numbers of dead people, I am amazed there are not more 'terrorists'. Imagine if what WE are doing in other countries, were done to US?
War profiteers need enemies, we the people do not. Unfortunately too many people feel the need to support their particular team no matter how wrong they are, so the war profiteers always have support to continue using 'national security' to justify their unnecessary, criminal wars.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)That was established by Col. John M. Chivington to explain whey they killed children.
All morality is forgoten...just like the constitution by some people.
questionseverything
(9,646 posts)when potus speaks now...I just can not get it out of my head that he let a 16 year old American child be executed
wish I could k & r a 1000 times for ur ops
in your op neither of the links to greenwald/jeremys article works...I get a 503 message.....tried to read it thru the commondream link same 503 message
if I was the suspicious type I might think this article was being censored
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Your kind words and active support are most appreciated.
I'll repair the durn links.
As for Agent Mike: Gen Alexander is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life
questionseverything
(9,646 posts)arely staircase
(12,482 posts)
SomethingFishy
(4,876 posts)273 civilians have become "collateral damage" in Pakistan and Syria from drone strikes. Are you telling me that all the people who were supposed to be killed by those drone strikes were an imminent threat and about to attack the United States.. from their undisclosed cave in Pakistan? Dangerous enough to accidentally kill women and children?
randome
(34,845 posts)But the question I posed above is appropriate, I think.
What happens when a cop sees someone pointing a gun at someone and has no recourse but to shoot? What happens if, in the crossfire, an innocent bystander is killed? Was the cop justified in shooting? Most juries -most people- would say 'Yes'.
I would guess -and it's only a guess- that the order to detonate is about to be given over the cell phone and that's when the military decides to strike.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
Leonard Cohen, Anthem (1992)[/center][/font][hr]
SomethingFishy
(4,876 posts)We are supposed to just blindly trust that this is all well and good. And we are supposed to trust that whoever controls this power in the future won't abuse it either.
I'm not that trusting. And this article only confirms my suspicions.
randome
(34,845 posts)For the most part, yes, we do trust the bureaucratic infrastructure to take care of itself. We don't have citizen's brigades in every police, CIA, FBI, NSA, military office checking to make sure all the T's are dotted and all the I's are crossed.
We don't personally inspect all the traffic signals to be sure they're reliable.
Drone strikes may bring a visceral reaction to the concept of intelligence operations-slash-war, but it's still better than boots on the ground and there really are terrifying people trying to murder innocent human beings.
There is always a balancing act to these type of concerns. I can't honestly say if this is the right balance but I don't have a better alternative, either.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Sometimes it seems like the only purpose in life is to keep your car from touching another's.[/center][/font][hr]
bobduca
(1,763 posts)Because your glad-handing of drone warfare is simply sublime!
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)randome
(34,845 posts)[hr][font color="blue"][center]Everything is a satellite to some other thing.[/center][/font][hr]
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)surrounding the target. Yes.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)constitute an imminent threat to U.S. persons. The targets of our drones are tribal warriors with AK-47s in isolated regions of third world countries and have no means of projecting power beyond their immediate surroundings.
But for some reason we need to keep killing these people. I'm pretty damned sure that reason has more to do with corporate profit than protecting U.S. persons.
randome
(34,845 posts)I agree we should have more information, more justification for our operations outside our borders. Just to keep an eye on things.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"If you're bored then you're boring." -Harvey Danger[/center][/font][hr]
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)bobduca
(1,763 posts)Obama moved forward, and looked ahead and would never allow his administration to alter the NEO-CON's post-911 global secret war footing.
Drone killings are more intelligent and progressive under Obama. A variation on the Smart Bomb meme from the first gulf war.
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)hit list, using their own pretzel logic.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)... if anyone wants to run over and listen to it. What I found alarming is that the dronsters are targeting CELL PHONES!
K&R
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Will listen, if not viddy, as the morning progresses.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)... but might not have it up yet...
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The horror from violence is unbelievable.
http://www.livingunderdrones.org/
Verizon, a short time back, lost a good employee to DV, so they opened a place to drop off phones for recycling as emergency-use only.
http://www.verizonwireless.com/aboutus/hopeline/index.html
Don't give 'em any ideas. You're right. What a perfect way to turn the drones against the American public. Of course I would never buy a phone on e-bay, but imagine if one of those phones got into a soldiers hands off e-bay. Or a soldier's wife.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts) ReRe
(10,597 posts)... I never use e-bay or any other auction site. Never buy cell phones online.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)One problem, he explains, is that targets are increasingly aware of the NSA’s reliance on geolocating, and have moved to thwart the tactic. Some have as many as 16 different SIM cards associated with their identity within the High Value Target system. Others, unaware that their mobile phone is being targeted, lend their phone, with the SIM card in it, to friends, children, spouses and family members.
Some top Taliban leaders, knowing of the NSA’s targeting method, have purposely and randomly distributed SIM cards among their units in order to elude their trackers. “They would do things like go to meetings, take all their SIM cards out, put them in a bag, mix them up, and everybody gets a different SIM card when they leave,” the former drone operator says. “That’s how they confuse us.”
ReRe
(10,597 posts)High-tech Keystone Cops. 
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)From the people who bring you home care products right to your door...
C.I.A. Said to Use Outsiders to Put Bombs on Drones
By JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI
The New York Times
August 21, 2009
WASHINGTON — From a secret division at its North Carolina headquarters, the company formerly known as Blackwater has assumed a role in Washington’s most important counterterrorism program: the use of remotely piloted drones to kill Al Qaeda’s leaders, according to government officials and current and former employees.
The division’s operations are carried out at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. They also provide security at the covert bases, the officials said.
The role of the company in the Predator program highlights the degree to which the C.I.A. now depends on outside contractors to perform some of the agency’s most important assignments. And it illustrates the resilience of Blackwater, now known as Xe (pronounced Zee) Services, though most people in and outside the company still refer to it as Blackwater. It has grown through government work, even as it attracted criticism and allegations of brutality in Iraq.
SNIP...
In interviews on Thursday, current and former government officials provided new details about Blackwater’s association with the assassination program, which began in 2004 not long after Porter J. Goss took over at the C.I.A. The officials said that the spy agency did not dispatch the Blackwater executives with a “license to kill.” Instead, it ordered the contractors to begin collecting information on the whereabouts of Al Qaeda’s leaders, carry out surveillance and train for possible missions.
“The actual pulling of a trigger in some ways is the easiest part, and the part that requires the least expertise,” said one government official familiar with the canceled C.I.A. program. “It’s everything that leads up to it that’s the meat of the issue.”
CONTINUED...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21intel.html?_r=0
Not that there's anything wrong with agencies designed to gather intelligence turning into unaccountable covert action arms of secret government's privatized killing programs. Ask Allen Dulles and Richard Helms, if we could.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Some days, when the pollution is down, I can still remember when being a Democrat meant opposing those who corrupt the Constitution of the United States.
I am so naïve. Things have changed.
xiamiam
(4,906 posts)aware. DU is filled with a handful of progressives and a handful determined to derail meaningful conversation. The rest are caught in the crossfire and distraction. Late breaking news is the real solution and ignore of course.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)
Octafish
(55,745 posts)January 9, 2006
Bob Fitrakis
What do we make of the President boldly proclaiming that he has “spy powers?” Does he have X-ray vision too?
When he and his cronies crawl up into Cheney’s bunker with the sign on the door “He-man Woman-haters Club. No Girls Allowed (except Condi),” do they synchronize their spy decoder rings and decide what new absurd folly to unleash on the world?
Illegal invasion of Iraq, suspending writs of habeus corpus, secret CIA torture dungeons, or election rigging? Most people outgrow such childish games and fantasies by the time they’re ten years old. And by age twelve, most understand that the President is not a king. Or a dictator. That U.S. citizens have inalienable rights.
That there are such things as search warrants. If the executive branch of government is going to conduct surveillance on the American people, they have to get a warrant from the judicial branch specifying what they’re looking for and the reasons for the search.
The Bush administration’s utter contempt for the U.S. Constitution and the specific information we now know about its use of the National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance network should further call into question Bush’ 2004 presidential “election.” In a recent revelation, we have learned that the NSA shared the fruits of its illegal spying on behalf of Bush with other government agencies.
What are e-voting machines and central tabulators that pass the voting results over electronic networks from the internet to phone lines? No more than data easily spied on and tapped into. The Franklin County Board of Elections, for example, tells us that it was a “transmission error” in Gahanna Ward 1B, where 638 people cast votes and Bush, the Wonder Boy, received 4258 votes. It’s not magic, nor is it an accident or an act of God. If the vote total wasn’t so hugely illogical, no one would have caught it.
CONTINUED...
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2006/1294
Now there's some light on a darker aspect of secret government beneficiaries, the patriotic election stealers who'll do whatever it costs to defend America in her darkest hour. In 1980, similarly, the CIA was all-in for Poppy Bush.
The 1980 campaign: Agents for Bush
by Bob Callahan,
Covert Action Information Bulletin, No. 33, Winter 1990
George Bush owed his recent political fortune to several old CIA friends, chiefly Ray Cline, who had helped to rally the intelligence community … and started … "Agents for Bush."
Bill Peterson of the Washington Post wrote in a March 1, 1980 article, "Simply put, no presidential campaign in recent memory – perhaps ever – has attracted as much support from the intelligence community as [has] the campaign of former CIA director George Bush."
George Bush’s CIA campaign staff included Cline, CIA Chief of Station in Taiwan from 1958 to 1962; Lt. Gen. Salm V. Wilson and Lt. Gen. Harold A. Aaron, both former Directors of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Also included were retired Gen. Richard Stillwell, once the CIA’s Chief of Covert Operations for the Far East, and at least 25 other retired Company directors, deputy directors and, or, agents.
… Angelo Codevilla, informed a congressional committee that was "aware that active duty agents of the CIA worked for the George Bush primary election campaign.
… Ray Cline claimed that he had been promoting the pro-CIA agenda that Bush had embraced for years, and that he had found the post Church-hearings criticism had died down some time ago. "I found there was a tremendous constituency for the CIA when everyone in Washington was still urinating all over it," Cline said. … "It’s panned out almost too good to be true. The country is waking up just in time for George’s candidacy. …
In July 1979 George Bush and Ray Cline attended a conference in Jerusalem. … (with) leaders of Israel, Great Britain and the United States. … The Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism was hosted by the Israeli government and … most of Israel’s top intelligence officers … were in attendance. …
… The Israelis were angry with Carter because his administration had recently released its annual report on human rights wherein the Israeli government was taken to task for abusing the rights of the Palestinian people on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. …
The Republican delegation was led by George Bush. It included Ray Cline and Major Gen. George Keegan (former USAF intelligence chief) and Harvard professor Richard Pipes.
Looking for a mobilizing issue to counter the Carter-era themes of détente and human rights, the Bush people began to explore the political benefits of embracing the terrorism/anti-terrorism theme.
… Ray Cline developed the theme that terror was not a random response. … but rather an instrument of East bloc policy adopted after 1969 when the KGB persuaded the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to accept the PLO as a major political instrument in the Mideast and to subsidize its terrorist policies by freely giving money, training, arms and coordinated communications. …
… Within days after the conference the new propaganda war began in earnest. On July 11, 1979, the International Herald Tribune featured a lead editorial entitled "The Issue is Terrorism," which quoted directly from conference speeches. …
Claire Sterling, who had also attended the conference, would create the first "bible" of this new perspective with the publication of her highly controversial book, The Terror Network. … Eventually, it would be Bush’s own task force – the Vice President’s Task Force on Combating Terrorism – which would provide Oliver North back channel authorization through which he would bypass certain dissenting administration officials in his ongoing management of the Reagan-Bush secret war against Nicaragua. …
… William Casey convinced Ronald Reagan to choose Bush as his running mate. …
… In 1962, for example, Casey and Prescott Bush – George’s father – co-founded the National Strategy Information Center in New York City. The elder Bush and Casey were both leading Republican conservative members of the New York’s Wall Street community, and both could claim a background in intelligence matters while members of the U.S. military.
… In subsequent years, … the … Center … funded a series of Forum World Features publications until it was publicly revealed that the Forum was a CIA proprietary operating out of London and was engaged in a variety of anti-left disinformation campaigns.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University, was in many ways an outgrowth of the original Bush/Casey think tank, CSIS’s illustrious faculty included Henry Kissinger, George Carver Michael Ledeen and Ray Cline.
William Casey’s relationship with young George Bush culminated in 1976 when Casey was appointed to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and George Bush was appointed Director of the CIA.
George Bush and William Casey … forme(ed) their own study group to provide the CIA with some competitive analysis. – a Team B analysis. … (Team B’s argument, of course, (was) the primary justification for the massive U.S. arms build-up under Reagan. Team B was led by George Bush’s future adviser, Professor Richard Pipes and by General Daniel Graham, who later became a leader in the fight to develop Star Wars technology. …
SOURCE (scroooooll down a bit): http://mediamayhem.blogspot.com/2004_04_11_archive.html
I used to own the original article, lost after loaning it out to a good friend. If needed, I will look for a copy that may reside on the old old computer.
The point is none of these GOP bedwetters can win an election without cheating or engaging in treason.
grasswire
(50,130 posts)...for Bush's statement that he had spy powers? I'd sure like to see the context of that.
Thanks for these articles. Fitrakis was right on, way back then.
grasswire
(50,130 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Here's what I'd found:
The phrase may've started 'round the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2005.
On the way out the door, a reprise from the final until Jebthro Smirko SOTUS.
NSA spy powers may also explain how impeachment got left off the table, reading it was Steny Hoyer who gave Baby Doc Bush retroactive immunity.
The Blogger MyLeftWing adds lots of insight and suggested avenues of investigation.
I'm trying to remember who, but there're a couple of DUers who're pals with Fitrakis. Michael Collins may be one. I'm trying to GOOGLE up the other.
In the meantime, I'll also head for the WSWS. Like you, grasswire, they do something rare these days, which is tell the truth.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)DUer Botany
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4694564
and DUer Cliff Arnebeck
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=3122345
TOPS in every way!
ProSense
(116,464 posts)...slow? Seriously, this is breaking news? The "assassinations" is a nice touch. Oooh, Obama is killing terrorists. Why can't he ignore them like Bush did? Much better to start a war and kill people who are not terrorists.
SomethingFishy
(4,876 posts)Really, if you are going to attack something at least read it so you are attacking what's actually in the story...
ProSense
(116,464 posts)"Didn't bother to read it did you."
...this has nothing to do with domestic surveillance. I suppose Greenwald thinks this is helping Snowden's case: proving that he took and released information on foreign counterterrorism operations.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)One of the key questions in all of this has been "Why did Snowden steal, and then leak, so much information that had nothing to do with Domestic Surveillance?"
Is it possible that the information on Domestic Surveillance wasn't really the primary target?
Could Snowden's real target have been something in the other, larger set of information?
Imagine you are a foreign government and you want to steal some very specific info about the US's foreign programs, but you don't want it to be obvious that you did so. Why not hide your needle in a haystack. Steal the info you want, along with a ton of other stuff, so the real purpose is obscured. Then, have some one leak bits and pieces unrelated to the primary target.
As you suggest, why would Greenwald start throwing out information about counter-terrorism information that Snowden took, if the primary target was really the Domestic Surveillance information?
In any case, Greenwald isn't helping Snowden here. But now that Greenwald has the all the information, Snowden's future might be even less of a concern for him.
TheMathieu
(456 posts)As long as we're the party of resolving income inequality, I give my full support to eliminating assholes like this.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)in this article does make one go...hmmmm. Coincidence or is someone in Obama Administration {or Obama himself} thinking about whether assassinating this "suspected terrorist" by Drone (without declaring an act of war on the country) might be a step too far now that the "Intercept" article is revealing more about killing by "sim card" tracking?
I'm probably overthinking...but it is interesting speculation whether it's coincidence or planned.
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)by Glen and friends.
I wonder how they found Osama Bin Laden.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)posted by Scott T. Smith / CBS12 News
WASHINGTON (AP) — An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaida is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say, and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year.
The CIA drones watching him cannot strike because he's a U.S. citizen and the Justice Department must build a case against him, a task it hasn't completed.
Four U.S. officials said the American suspected terrorist is in a country that refuses U.S. military action on its soil and that has proved unable to go after him. And President Barack Obama's new policy says American suspected terrorists overseas can only be killed by the military, not the CIA, creating a policy conundrum for the White House.
Two of the officials described the man as an al-Qaida facilitator who has been directly responsible for deadly attacks against U.S. citizens overseas and who continues to plan attacks against them that would use improvised explosive devices.
But one U.S. official said the Defense Department was divided over whether the man is dangerous enough to merit the potential domestic fallout of killing an American without charging him with a crime or trying him, and the potential international fallout of such an operation in a country that has been resistant to U.S. action.
Another of the U.S. officials said the Pentagon did ultimately decide to recommend lethal action.
CONTINUED...
http://www.cbs12.com/news/top-stories/stories/vid_13119.shtml
Don't know why, I don't get breathlessly excited seeing which American citizens get zapped without trial. It does bother me -- as a Democrat, a democrat and as a citizen.
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)terrorists because of where he was born? Should we let him hide and continue plotting against US citizens? If he's innocent, all he has to do is turn himself in to US authorities and stand trial.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)From Christopher Simpson, details on how Poppy Bush started the big ball of surveillance wax after he pried control of the spyworks out of the bed-ridden Pruneface, back in 1981:
George Bush Takes Charge: The Uses of "Counter-Terrorism"
By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58
A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.
During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.
Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.
The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.
SNIP...
Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.
CONTINUED...
http://is.gd/FtMipm
While it's important to protect the nation from enemies foreign and domestic, my worry has more to do with the loss of the Bill of Rights and the undermining of the Constitution than worrying about someone plotting in Yemen or Afghanistan. The government now spends a trillion dollars a year to defend us from the latter. It only took passage of the USA PATRIOT Act to do more damage to the Constitution and the American way of life than all of the nation's enemies.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)Is "Progressive Dog" a slur, like "Capitalist Pig" or something?
I get the feeling that you actually despise Progressives, because we tend to be abhorred by indiscriminate killing and you seem to always defend it.
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)Progress is the root of Progressive. Most Progressives actually want to accomplish something, not just whine about how the government has a spy agency. When do you think we didn't have a spy agency?
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)Pointing out how it is being misused.
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)and the Iraq war, trump the claims of the actual Democratic elected President of the United States, the one who didn't support Bush's war.
Sounds like whining to me.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)However, you and all of your NSA-defending cohorts steadfastly refuse to address the evidence -which, by the way, the veracity of which hasn't even been refuted by the NSA.
Show us some evidence that the documents Snowden revealed aren't legitimate, and we'll discuss it.
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)illegal. Yup, we have evidence that the NSA does spy stuff. So what?
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)At least, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board thinks so:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/23/nsa-barack-obama-phone-data-collection-illegal-privacy-board
Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)I don't need Greenwald, the Pauls, Fox News, or even Snowden to tell me what to think. Spying is what the NSA does.
If the NSA overstepped their authority, it will eventually be handled, hopefully in a way that does no harm to the USA.
Electric Monk
(13,869 posts)Progressive dog
(6,900 posts)Supreme Court that gets to say what that amendment means.
They've done that, many times, you can actually look it up You should.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)So when Bush calls the Constitution "just a piece of paper" it's a bad thing ...but when the NSA under the control of a Dem POTUS violates that Constitution then it's a nice generic response like "spying has always been going on ...did you just realize that?" These people deserve the penalty they are receiving ...I just don't want to suffer the same penalty along with them. A wise person will respect the wisdom of the forefathers of the Constitution ...the stupid will discard it as if it doesn't apply anymore ...just because that was then and this is now. History should be valued and its warnings heeded lest the same mistakes be made once again.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)I expect that eventually and hopefully this one will get the pizza.
90-percent
(6,828 posts)One of the best citizen journalists on the internet.
Hopefully the end of Net Neutrality will finally silence him so we all think what we are told to think!
-90% Jimmy
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Your trust and friendship mean the world.
Before the curtain comes down, here's one I'd like to see passed around:
Nothing funny about mocking people interested in learning and sharing the Truth.
Isn't the Truth the essence of Democracy?
That's why, when it comes to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, I would think DUers in particular, would be interested in learning what's new, particularly in light of all that's been learned since the CIA and FBI lied to government investigators about their relationships with Oswald, as well as in regards to their own negligence in protecting the life of the liberal Democratic president.
For those who want to learn, here's what I brought back from ''Passing the Torch'' at Duquesne:
Octafish to attend JFK assassination conference. Do you think JFK still matters?
JFK Conference: Amazing Day of Information and Connecting with Good People
After JFK Conference, when I got home, I felt like RFK.
JFK Conference: Bill Kelly introduced new evidence - adding Air Force One tape recordings
JFK Conference: Rex Bradford detailed the historic importance of the Church Committee
JFK Conference: Lisa Pease Discussed the Real Harm of Corrupt Soft Power
JFK Conference: James DiEugenio made clear how Foreign Policy changed after November 22, 1963
JFK Conference: Mark Lane Addressed the Secret Government’s Role in the Assassination
JFK Conference: David Talbot named Allen Dulles as 'the Chairman of the Board of the Assassination'
JFK Conference: Dan Hardway Detailed how CIA Obstructed HSCA Investigation
Noah's Ark - Nov. 22, 1963
JFK Remembered: Dan Rather and James Swanson talk at The Henry Ford
Seven Days in May -- tonight on TCM
Machine Gun Mouth
One important thing I learned on DU since Duquesne that I've never seen any of my critics on DU address is that ever since Dulles hired NAZIs and contracted the Mafia for his secret agenda, there's been corruption within the government of the United States.
When Jim Garrison pointed out its relevancy to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B Johnson said he agreed that there was a conspiracy and CIA had something to do with it (note last paragraph):
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=57085&relPageId=112
I would think this, too, would be on the front page and leading the newscasts every day until the surviving traitors, warmongers and banksters who've benefited were imprisoned. However, those interested in Justice for JFK are told to "Move on" and it's business as usual; meaning the rich get richer, our rights continue to vanish, and democracy falls victim to wars without end.
In my opinion, the biggest cowards are those who go along with that in silence, hoping they will survive another day as the servants of traitors. The bravest are those who stand up to them -- in person or on the Internet.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)Originally posted here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024436677
February 3, 2014 by Jack Serle
There were no reported drone strikes in Pakistan in January. This is the first calendar month without a drone strike in more than two years.
The last drone attack was reported in the country on December 25 2013 – 40 days ago. At least three people were killed in this strike, the only Christmas Day strike reported in Pakistan in 10 years of drone attacks.
It is not clear why there has been such a pause. Last year, although the number of strikes dropped considerably, Bureau data shows that there was on average a strike every two weeks.
The longest gap between strikes in 2013 lasted for 42 days between April 17 and May 29 2013. This pause ended with the death of Wali Ur Rehman, the deputy leader of the TTP. The gap in strikes coincided with Pakistan’s general election, in which drones were a major campaigning point, and also with the run-up to President Obama’s speech at the National Defense University, in which he announced new policy guidelines around covert lethal actions.
- more -
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2014/02/03/first-month-without-a-us-drone-strike-in-pakistan-for-over-two-years/
Think Progress:
However, it’s not obvious what would be causing a similar problem today. There hasn’t been an incident between the United States and Pakistan on that level of late, and, by one metric (high-level official meetings), there’s been something of an uptick in recent relations.
Another possible explanation is that the Administration is, for whatever reason, winding down aggressive use of drones in Pakistan. Last year, President Obama committed to scaling down the targeted killing program, arguing that “we cannot use force everywhere that a radical ideology takes root,” remarks he echoed in this year’s State of the Union. Secretary of State John Kerry has been even more conclusive, saying during a 2013 visit to Pakistanthat “the program will end,” purportedly “soon,” because “we have eliminated most of the threat.” It is possible, then, that the break in strikes is simply a reflection of the broader decline in targeted killings. The less U.S. policymakers rely on the strategy, the less frequent strikes are likely to be.
- more -
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/02/03/3239111/drones-month-january-2014/
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024377570#post4
Octafish
(55,745 posts)February 3, 2014 by Jack Serle
There were no reported drone strikes in Pakistan in January. This is the first calendar month without a drone strike in more than two years.
The last drone attack was reported in the country on December 25 2013 – 40 days ago. At least three people were killed in this strike, the only Christmas Day strike reported in Pakistan in 10 years of drone attacks.
It is not clear why there has been such a pause. Last year, although the number of strikes dropped considerably, Bureau data shows that there was on average a strike every two weeks.
The longest gap between strikes in 2013 lasted for 42 days between April 17 and May 29 2013. This pause ended with the death of Wali Ur Rehman, the deputy leader of the TTP. The gap in strikes coincided with Pakistan’s general election, in which drones were a major campaigning point, and also with the run-up to President Obama’s speech at the National Defense University, in which he announced new policy guidelines around covert lethal actions.
Breaks in the campaign in the past have usually reflected a deterioration in diplomatic relations between the US and Pakistan.
The last time Pakistan saw a calendar month without a drone strike was in December 2011, at a moment when relations between the two countries had become particularly fraught.
CONTINUED...
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2014/02/03/first-month-without-a-us-drone-strike-in-pakistan-for-over-two-years/
ProSense
(116,464 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Especially this part:
Breaks in the campaign in the past have usually reflected a deterioration in diplomatic relations between the US and Pakistan.
Sharif and Hussain want to make sure they're doing all they can in public to keep the foreigners at bay. Once the current crisis is over, who knows what will happen.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)
Octafish
(55,745 posts)I'd say "Left Out," but you might not get it.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)"Yeah. Because you cut out the most important part."
Easy enough to read the whole thing at the link provided, but I guess you only want to focus on the parts you like.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Again:
Breaks in the campaign in the past have usually reflected a deterioration in diplomatic relations between the US and Pakistan.
SOURCE: http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2014/02/03/first-month-without-a-us-drone-strike-in-pakistan-for-over-two-years/
Gee, ProSense. Reading your posts makes me think everyone has all day to spend on your, ah, writing.
Thanks for keeping it truthful and accurate. Seems to be impossible for some around here for some unknown reason.
bobduca
(1,763 posts)still fucking obnoxious
DesMoinesDem
(1,569 posts)Pay no attention to the drone strikes in Yemen.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)"Obama didn't kill any people in Pakistan for a whole month?! Give that man a peace prize."
...reading is fundamental.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024474152#post88
DesMoinesDem
(1,569 posts)I know better than to follow your never ending links to yourself, but I thought I would give you a chance this time. Bad move on my part.
Anyway, when any military age male is considered a terrorist it's not too hard to say you haven't killed any innocent people. I guess innocent until proven guilty no longer applies. And of course this is only in Pakistan. Obama is now killing innocent people in Yemen and other countries. Killed a bunch of people at a wedding a couple months ago. That should be good for a second peace prize.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)DesMoinesDem
(1,569 posts)ProSense
(116,464 posts)Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)a purpose, suspense has been solved.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The Last Gasp of American Democracy
By Chris Hedges
TruthDig.org, Posted on Jan 5, 2014
EXCERPT...
The most radical evil, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is the political system that effectively crushes its marginalized and harassed opponents and, through fear and the obliteration of privacy, incapacitates everyone else. Our system of mass surveillance is the machine by which this radical evil will be activated. If we do not immediately dismantle the security and surveillance apparatus, there will be no investigative journalism or judicial oversight to address abuse of power. There will be no organized dissent. There will be no independent thought. Criticisms, however tepid, will be treated as acts of subversion. And the security apparatus will blanket the body politic like black mold until even the banal and ridiculous become concerns of national security.
I saw evil of this kind as a reporter in the Stasi state of East Germany. I was followed by men, invariably with crew cuts and wearing leather jackets, whom I presumed to be agents of the Stasi—the Ministry for State Security, which the ruling Communist Party described as the “shield and sword” of the nation. People I interviewed were visited by Stasi agents soon after I left their homes. My phone was bugged. Some of those I worked with were pressured to become informants. Fear hung like icicles over every conversation.
The Stasi did not set up massive death camps and gulags. It did not have to. The Stasi, with a network of as many as 2 million informants in a country of 17 million, was everywhere. There were 102,000 secret police officers employed full time to monitor the population—one for every 166 East Germans. The Nazis broke bones; the Stasi broke souls. The East German government pioneered the psychological deconstruction that torturers and interrogators in America’s black sites, and within our prison system, have honed to a gruesome perfection.
[font color="red"]The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” And because Americans’ emails, phone conversations, Web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This information waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant. [/font color]
The object of efficient totalitarian states, as George Orwell understood, is to create a climate in which people do not think of rebelling, a climate in which government killing and torture are used against only a handful of unmanageable renegades. The totalitarian state achieves this control, Arendt wrote, by systematically crushing human spontaneity, and by extension human freedom. It ceaselessly peddles fear to keep a population traumatized and immobilized. It turns the courts, along with legislative bodies, into mechanisms to legalize the crimes of state.
CONTINUED...
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_last_gasp_of_american_democracy_20140105
From stealing elections to torturing children, all the Secret Government types have done overseas, they've brought home to wage upon the People.
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)As to the information being used to locate terrorist. Some have been wanting proof the phone call records has been used to thwart terrorism and now this has been supplied.
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)and that it should be reposted every damned day.
Every single American needs to think about the real purpose of vacuuming and storing this information.
Octafish, you are a treasure to DU.
myrna minx
(22,772 posts)wildbilln864
(13,382 posts)wildbilln864
(13,382 posts)maybe we'll hear more...
here's a snip/
"A United States citizen accused of being an overseas “Al-Qaeda facilitator” could soon be killed by an American drone, the Associated Press reported on Monday, but first the US government must find a way to legally launch such a strike." more here
not able to buy you a heart, so ..
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thanks for all you do!
johnnyreb
(915 posts)No problem.
G_j
(40,366 posts)one of those who makes DU still worth reading.
KoKo
(84,711 posts) 
jazzimov
(1,456 posts)War sucks. I won't argue that.
Some tactics make it suck a little less. But it still sucks.
eridani
(51,907 posts)If that's a worthwhile thing to you, why not start holding bake sales to promote this noble goal, and let the rest of us work on upgrading our infrastructure?
bobduca
(1,763 posts)Fuck you, pro-empire pro-nsa trolls.
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)arely staircase
(12,482 posts)next from GG - water is wet.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)... either willfully ignorant to an astounding degree or a hopeless sycophant of Greenwald.
The idea that a country's intelligence apparatus helps inform the military of most countries of targets should not be news to anyone participating on this website.
wildbilln864
(13,382 posts)idendoit
(505 posts)Here's Greenwald's claim from his commentary:His account is bolstered by top-secret NSA documents previously provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. It is also supported by a former drone sensor operator with the U.S. Air Force, Brandon Bryant, who has become an outspoken critic of the lethal operations in which he was directly involved in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.
Notice he doesn't supply a copy of said top-secret documents.
Here's a part of a transcript of Brandon Bryant's interview with Democracy Now (was this guy even vetted?):
Yeah, we’re like—there’s like a chat program. Like so, that’s the easiest way to communicate because of the satellite delay. But we weren’t in radio communications with anyone except for the guys that were on the ground, so we heard them asking for air support.And so, we got confirmation to fire on these guys. And the way that they reacted really made me doubt their involvement, because the guys over there, the locals over there, have to protect themselves from the Taliban just as much as armed—us—we do, as U.S. military personnel. And so, I think that they were probably in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the way that—I’ve been accused of using poetic imagery to describe it, but I watched this guy bleed out, the guy in the back, and his right leg above the knee was severed in the strike. And his—he bled out through his femoral artery. And it—
Anyone with a nodding acquaintance of modern military communications will see this clown is clearly out of his depth.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)Fwiw, I'll contribute an intriguing Who What Why Original Investigation article by Christian Stork that was posted August 7, 2013 to this information warfare in progress thread you started, my friend.
What Was Hastings Working On?
"At the time of his death in a mysterious one-car crash and explosion, journalist Michael Hastings was researching a story that threatened to expose powerful entities and government-connected figures. that story intersected with the work of two controversial critics-the hacktivist Barrett Brown and on-the-run surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Any probe into Hastings untimely death needs to take into account this complex but essential background..."
http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/08/07/connections-between-michael-hastings-edward-snowden-and-barrett-brown-the-war-with-the-security-state
avaistheone1
(14,626 posts) 
Kurovski
(34,655 posts)As is the sinking feeling when it is pushed on us as an A-OK method.
K&R
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)malokvale77
(4,879 posts)I always look forward to your posts.
WillyT
(72,631 posts)