FUTILE WORK
  • Home
  • News
    • Articles Of Interest
    • Numbers In The News
    • Life and Humanity
    • Quotes
    • Futile Updates
  • Curio
    • The Wonder of Lasers
    • Japan 2011 Psyop
    • Know Your Rights
    • Masonic Symbols and the LDS Temple
    • The Nun's Story
    • Special Edition
    • Explosion On The Launch Pad
  • Archive
    • COVID Charts Quiz
    • Dave McGowan
    • Document Archive
    • Multi Media
    • Time For A Laugh
  • Blog

Brennan: Government Goes Through ‘Agony’ Before Launching Drone Strikes

2/8/2013

 
BY SPENCER ACKERMAN
Picture
During a contentious and at times raucous Senate hearing, John Brennan, President Obama’s nominee to run the CIA, said the government agonizes over authorizing lethal drone strikes.

The deadly strikes have attracted such acrimony at home and abroad that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) ordered the public removed from Brennan’s nomination hearing after protesters yelled out their objections to the program. For the first time in public, Brennan expressed frustration that “the people standing up today” did not understand the government’s dilemma.

The public should understand “the care we take, the agony we go through, to make sure we do not have any collateral injuries and deaths,” Brennan said. “People are reacting to a lot of falsehoods out there.”

Yet the strikes are officially classified, preventing the public from knowing much about them. Feinstein, echoed by other senators, said that the rationale for the level of secrecy overhanging the centerpiece of U.S. counterterrorism efforts is “long gone.”

Picture
Protesters angry with U.S. drone strikes interrupted John Brennan’s Senate nomination hearing to become CIA director. Photo: Spencer Ackerman/Wired.com
Feinstein said the total civilian casualties caused by the strikes each year are in the “single digits.” That’s disputed by numerous studies by nongovernmental organizations, although their ability to investigate is strongly limited by the secrecy of the drone program and the dangerous terrain in which it operates. In 2011, Danger Room published photographs from Pakistan purporting to show the aftermath of drone strikes, which included dead children. A United Nations inquiry into the strikes has recently begun.

Brennan said the public was under the “misimpression” that drone strikes were launched to punish “past transgressions.” Instead, they are “only to save lives when there is no other alternative to mitigate that threat.” Yet the government has never described the alternatives it must exhaust before launching the strikes overseas. A Justice Department “white paper” leaked on Monday asserted the U.S. government can authorize a drone strike when it considers other methods to represent too great a danger to U.S. personnel.

Brennan, currently President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, said he hoped he could “optimize transparency” while at the same “optimiz[ing] secrecy” for the classified elements of the drone program. “It’s not one or the other, we have to optimize both of them,” he said. Brennan suggested the Obama administration ought to make more speeches explaining to the public what the targeted program is and isn’t.

Under questioning from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the Senate committee’s lead civil libertarian, Brennan said the government ought to acknowledge when it had mistakenly killed civilians during the targeted killings. “We can acknowledge it to our foreign partners” and “acknowledge it publicly.”

That acknowledgement has never happened in the 11 years since the United States first successfully weaponized a Predator drone.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/brennan-agony/

Editor's Note:
"The public should understand “the care we take, the agony we go through, to make sure we do not have any collateral injuries and deaths,” Brennan said"

Well, that makes me feel a lot better.

jump to top | return to articles home

Comments are closed.
    Articles Home

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    March 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    June 2020
    November 2019
    October 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    May 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    July 2011
    May 2010
    April 2010
    May 2006
    December 2004
    October 2003
    June 2002
    September 2001
    February 2001
    February 1998

New Here?

Updates
About

Miscellany

​Contact
Disclaimer

Search

  • Home
  • News
    • Articles Of Interest
    • Numbers In The News
    • Life and Humanity
    • Quotes
    • Futile Updates
  • Curio
    • The Wonder of Lasers
    • Japan 2011 Psyop
    • Know Your Rights
    • Masonic Symbols and the LDS Temple
    • The Nun's Story
    • Special Edition
    • Explosion On The Launch Pad
  • Archive
    • COVID Charts Quiz
    • Dave McGowan
    • Document Archive
    • Multi Media
    • Time For A Laugh
  • Blog