The CIA and the Drones: How the Agency Became 'One Hell of a Killing Machine'

[Octafish]

Like Wall Street banksters and tax dodging corporate warmongers,
some governmental organizations seem to be above the law...

One, in particular, seems more than 50,000 feet above the law.

How the Agency Became "One Hell of a Killing Machine"

The CIA and the Drones

by GARETH PORTER
CounterPunch
Aug. 6, 2011

When David Petraeus walks into the Central Intelligence Agency today, he will be taking over an organisation whose mission has changed in recent years from gathering and analysing intelligence to waging military campaigns through drone strikes in Pakistan, as well as in Yemen and Somalia.

SNIP...

A CIA official was quoted by the Post as saying that the CIA had become “one hell of a killing machine”, before quickly revising the phrase to “one hell of an operational tool”.

The shift in the CIA mission’s has been reflected in the spectacular growth of its Counter-terrorism Center (CTC) from 300 employees in September 2001 to about 2,000 people today – 10 percent of the agency’s entire workforce, according to the Post report.

SNIP...

But Leon Panetta, Obama’s new CIA director, was firmly committed to the drone war. He continued to present it to the public as a strategy to destroy Al-Qaeda, even though he knew the CIA was now striking mainly Afghan Taliban and their allies, not Al-Qaeda.
CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/06/the-cia-and-the-drones/

I didn't know democracies the bureaucracy could continue to make war in secret, as if We the People didn't even exist.

[amborin]

1. kr and somewhat relatedly, alternet art today showing that Pepsi, FedEx, etc.. benefit from US

military engagements

no link right now

[Octafish]

2. It's not just the undertaker: War is good for Business.

FedEx and Pepsi Are Top Defense Contractors? 5 Corporate Brands Making a Killing on America’s Wars

EXCERPT...

A decade of waging wars abroad, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan and Libya to Yemen and Somalia hasn’t been kind to average Americans. As the United States poured nearly $8 trillion into national security spending, and the national debt ballooned from $6 trillion to $14.3 trillion, the official unemployment rate has more than doubled -- from 4.5% to 9.1%. Meanwhile the number of children living in poverty in the U.S. has jumped nearly 20% since 2000, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty. And for older Americans, the risk of hunger has spiked almost 80% since 2001, according to a recent report by AARP. But from car companies to candy makers and even the biggest brands in organic food, so many of the world’s favorite companies have, over these years, cashed in on America’s wars.

Gosh. Thanks for the heads-up, amborin. These are per'lous times.

[Rageneau]

3. We have become Murder Incorporated.

And we seem to be less ashamed of it than the REAL Murder Incorporated was.

[Octafish]

5. Who needs trained assassins when a fleet of robots is available for the wetwork?

No question they will fire on anybody when ordered.

And there's no question we are losing our soul to those who value property and power above human life.

The Civilian Victims of the CIA's Drone War

EXCERPT...

The BIJ reporting begins to fill in the actual numbers. It's a bleak view: more people killed than previously thought, including an estimated 160 children overall. This study should help to create a greater sense of reality around what is going on in these remote regions of Pakistan. This is precisely what has been lacking in the one-sided reporting of the issue – and it doesn't take an intelligence analyst to realize that vague and one-sided is just the way the CIA wants to keep it.

So, it's getting clear who really calls the shots for America.

[bluestate10]

4. The primary job of the CIA.

Is to identify, locate and if necessary, kill our nation's enemies. By killing terrorists who will kill americans if left alive, the CIA IS doing it's JOB.

[Vattel]

6. Then their job is to commit murder.

The willingness of the CIA and our government in general to kill innocent bystanders as a foreseen consequence of trying to kill members of Al Qaeda is morally disgusting.

[Octafish]

7. Assassination was not the CIA's primary job when the agency was started.

It was started to gather and analyze intelligence for the president. CIA since has evolved into something else entirely.

"I never would have agreed
to the formulation of the
Central Intelligence Agency
back in forty-seven, if I had
known it would become
the American Gestapo."

-- Harry S Truman

What's to stop CIA from killing anyone it classifies as a "terrorist"? Congress? The courts? The president?

A drone-fired missile has already killed an American citizen without trial.

Oh, and how'd all that CIA-directed torture help -- besides generate phony stories linking Iraq to 9-11?

[Nihil]

14. Sieg Heil!

> By killing terrorists who will kill americans if left alive,
> the CIA IS doing it's JOB.

Yeah, I thought the Gestapo always got a bad press too ...

:eyes:

[LatteLibertine]

8. Hmm

I wonder how far "the people" here would have to go for them to use those things on us.

[Octafish]

10. The USA PATRIOT Act can make anyone they want into an Enemy of the State...

"Just six weeks after the September 11 attacks, a panicked Congress passed the “USA PATRIOT Act,” an overnight revision of the nation's surveillance laws that vastly expanded the government's authority to spy on its own citizens and reduced checks and balances on those powers, such as judicial oversight. The government never demonstrated that restraints on surveillance had contributed to the attack, and indeed much of the new legislation had nothing to do with fighting terrorism. Rather, the bill represented a successful use of the terrorist attacks by the FBI to roll back unwanted checks on its power. . . . Under these changes and other authorities asserted by the Bush Administration, U.S. intelligence agents could conduct a secret search of an American citizen's home, use evidence found there to declare him an “enemy combatant,” and imprison him without trial. The courts would have no chance to review these decisions -- indeed, they might never even find out about them."

--Jay Stanley and Barry Steinhardt, "Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains:
The Growth of an American Surveillance SocietyState,"
ACLU Technology and Liberty Program, 1/15/03

Ratical.org does an excellent job of providng info and analysis on the subject: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/USAPA.html#PAanalysis

[Robb]

9. Wars suck. Still, I'd rather be a civilian in the FATA in 2011 than one in Pforzheim in 1945.

[Octafish]

12. One innocent person killed is one too many.

Agree, the chances of a civilian getting killed was higher during World War II than in Pakistan. The problem is, we shouldn't be killing any innocent people. It's not only un-democratic, it's wrong.

NPR has a nice overview on how we're making enemies, wholesale slaughter-wise:

An Open Secret: Drone Warfare In Pakistan

EXCERPT...

And the strikes aren't just against al-Qaida's leadership. In 2008, the Bush administration broadened the campaign to include lower-ranking foot soldiers. They also started targeting groups that Pakistan saw as threats. The Obama administration did the same thing.

When discussing the subject of drones and imperialism with conservatives, I ask: "How would you feel if it was your son or daughter who was killed? Would you think such a fight on 'terror' was 'worth it'?" Confronting their own hypocrisy, the questions get them very angry.

[Blue_Tires]

11. kick

[Octafish]

13. Who Can't America Kill?

Who Can't America Kill?

Since September 11, the threshold for who and where the U.S. military and intelligence community can kill has been increasingly lowered, with no end in sight

By Micah Zenko
The Atlantic
Sep 7 2011, 9:52 AM ET1

EXCERPT...

In the wake of the African Embassy Bombings in 1998, President Clinton issued three top secret "Memoranda of Understanding," which authorized the CIA to kill Bin Laden and his key lieutenants--fewer than ten people overall--only if they resisted arrest. The CIA interpreted the memoranda as insufficient by limiting the use of lethal force. As George Tenet noted in his memoir, "Almost every authority granted to CIA prior to 9/11 made it clear that just going out and assassinating would not have been permissible or acceptable."

After 9/11, President George W. Bush made the policy of targeted killing more explicit. Just six days after the attacks, Bush signed a Memorandum of Notification that authorized the CIA to kill, without further presidential approval, some two dozen al-Qaeda leaders who appeared on an inital "high-value target list."

Included on this list was Abu Ali al-Harithi, an operational planner in the al-Qaeda cell that attacked the U.S.S. Cole. On November 3, 2002, a Predator drone killed al-Hariti, four Yemenis, and Ahmed Hijazi, a naturalized U.S. citizen and the ringleader of an alleged terrorist sleeper cell in Lackawanna, New York. This was the first targeted killing outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the first such killing of a naturalized U.S. citizen.

In Pakistan, the U.S. counterterrorism approach after 9/11 focused primarily on law enforcement and intelligence exploitation through arrest and interrogation (including torture) followed by either release or imprisonment. As the State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism: 2002 report stated: "The Government of Pakistan arrested and transferred to US custody nearly 500 suspected al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists."

By 2004, however, the United States largely stopped detaining suspected operatives from Pakistan, and instead began killing them with armed Predator drones.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/who-cant-america-kill/244663/

Thank you, Blue_Tires! I very much appreciate people who appreciate democracy.