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President Obama would rather succumb to Republican extortion than release the targeted killing memos to select members of Congress.
The New York Times reports that the Obama administration is working on a deal to give Senate Republicans on the Intelligence Committee more information on the Benghazi embassy attack in exchange for the confirmation of CIA Director John Brennan, without having to release the targeted killings memos to the committee first as he promised.
This bargain will leave Congress in the dark about the President’s so-called authority to execute anyone, anywhere – including American citizens – without charge or trial. It will set back efforts to make the memos fully public and further obscure the most controversial executive program since torture and rendition under the Bush administration.
Click here for phone numbers and a script: http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/sen-memo-call
The confirmation of John Brennan, whose career spans working on George W Bush’s torture regime to being the ‘architect’ of Barack Obama’s kill list, will be the product of a shadow effort to keep the targeted killing memos secret unless we speak up now.
President Obama has consistently promised to be more transparent. Working behind closed doors to appease Lindsey Graham in order to keep legal opinions on the President’s supposed extrajudicial killing powers secret does not meld well with the administration’s frequent claims of exceptional transparency.
It is the job of the Senate Intelligence Committee to oversee the intelligence community. The idea that any senator on that committee would vote to confirm John Brennan without seeing these memos is truly amazing. We must demand that these senators carry out this most basic charge.
Please call your Senators immediately to oppose the President’s deal.
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I’d suggest you re-write that – you are calling for the same thing the Republicans are doing, just on a different subject. I think what the Republicans are asking for is far less significant than the memos and you can make a case on those grounds. Seeing your title “No Targeted Killing Memos, No Brennan Confirmation” immediately followed by your negative comment about “extortion” for Brennan to get the vote reminded me of the Life Of Brian: “We point out that they bear full responsibility when we chop her up, and that we shall not submit to blackmail!”
On many, many levels you can make a case for the release of the memos and withholding the vote, but when you insult the very tactic you propose using, it just looks silly.
We demand confirmation is denied because of his involvement in torture and assassination program. We don’t need documents. We already know enough! We don’t need to review clownish lawyers trying to put lipstick on a pig.
This is all very well, but my prediction: Brennan’s IN. This is all Kabuki Show… sad to say.
The sadistic Torturer in Chief will become Chief Torturer Spook in Chief.
Exactly. No Brennan confirmation period. “You can put the torture guy in charge of the CIA, but only if DiFi gets a peek at the OLC memos”? Really lowering the bar there.
“President Obama has consistently promised to be more transparent.”
After about the 30th or 40th promise the only thing transparent is the fact that he’s lying through his teeth.
I can imagine a legal brief with some kind of argument as lawyers advocate on all sides of many questions every day. Judges then mull through, pick and choose, and finally interpret. The end point is NOT truth or right. It is resolution, at least for a time. I do not personally doubt that someone somewhere has written up a ditty and everyone involved is accepting it because it works to do so. The whole rationale for targeted killing is based on distinctions that are unimaginable to me, or at least, unacceptable. I certainly would not make those distinctions. I don’t want the courts making them. I am appalled that the executive branch believes that it is empowered to do so and without oversight. So I agree with the group that says we don’t ONLY want to see the opinion letter.
So,if the Prez thinks he has the authority to kill any American any place,
Does it also follow that he has the authority to RAPE any American in the interest of national security ?
It’s only a matter of time before these occurences become normal,it’s only a matter of time before some EU-American Presidents thinks he has the right
to kill ethnic minorities in the interest of national security,(I think this concept has already been frosted upon us,WACO,TX.MOVE,Philadelphia)
Well so there,If Obama thinks he has the right to kill any one person forget American label,Does he also has the right to RAPE any person in the interest of national security ?
Fact of the matter,they are already raping prisoners at GITMO,so we have started down this hell hole already.
Nobody here is endorsing Brennan for the job. Nobody here is suggesting that Brennan deserves confirmation even if the memos are released. Our point is that the intelligence committees at bare minimum have the right to know about this program, and if they are expected to confirm brennan they have every right to demand them as they already have been, and folks should know about Obama’s latest backroom dealings on principle. Yes the program should be stopped, memos or no memos, and yes Brennan is an evil man who should not be confirmed for any place in government. I agree. Seems to me it would be harder to stop him and/or the program without the memos in-hand than with them, though.
Please let me be clear: this isn’t about Brennan. This is about another opportunity to possibly expose information on the drone program.
I tend to think theres more to Benghazi than either side wants to make public. Petraeus girlfriend Paula Broadwell claimed that the attack was actually an attempt to free militants held in a secret CIA prison near the consulate. Next thing you know, their little romance is a big scandal: the general gets the boot and Ms. Broadwells claim is dismissed by the CIA.
Neither party wants to complain about CIA secret prisons or drone assassinations. They are absolutely bipartisan on such tactics and only pretend to have any serious disagreements on foreign policy.
Neither party is exactly right.But you know members of the DNC love to pretend that there is an ocean’s worth of difference between the DNC & GOP.Fact of the matter our foreign policy has been a complete failure,a bipartisan approach,mind you.
I wouldn’t say our foreign policy has been a failure from the point of view of those who direct it and support it in congress. Access to oil and the flow of trade proceeds without hindrance, creating vast profits. The American dollar remains highly valued, assuring a steady flow of capital and imports. Huge amounts of money are funneled into military industries. And as a bonus, domestic attention is focused on a shifting series of imaginary threats.
The issue is not whether Republicans are extorting information from Obama about Benghazi.
Every time we make this about Republicrats versus Demlicans, rather than about the 99% versus the plutocrats, we willfully miss the point.
I understand the desire to do that. For, if the issue is only Republicrats vs. Demlicans, the solution is easy. Bash Tweedledum or Tweedledee until power in D.C. changes hands (or at least seems to, until someone invokes the Senate 60 vote rule).
If, however, the issue is the wealthy and powerful against the 99%, the search for solutions is that much harder.
Fuck our intelligence committees, even “at a minimum.”
American voters have a right to know about the program and how it allegedly satisfies, first, the requirements of the Constitution of the United States and, second, international law, both treaties and international common law.
That is what I, as a voter and a taxpayer paying the salaries and expenses of all the three branches in D.C. have a right to know, at a minimum.
I am not interested in blueprints for drones, which Iran has now anyway, or the names on the hit list, but I am very interested in knowing just how rogue the government for which I pay is.