Jay Carney, the chief spokesman for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, wants you to know that President Barack Obama's controversial use of drones isn't just sort-of borderline defensible. Nope:
"These strikes are legal, they are ethical and they are wise," Carney said. The government takes "great care" when deciding where and whom to strike, he added.
How much care does the White House take in assessing who it wants to bomb (often in countries with which the U.S. is not officially at war)? So much care that it doesn't feel a need to get legal authorization from either the judicial or legislative branches of the federal government. And in case you want to rest easy that Obama has top men on it, here's a summary of the process written by NBC News' Michael Isikoff, who leaked the confidential memo the administration didn't want you to see:
[T]he confidential Justice Department "white paper" introduces a more expansive definition of self-defense or imminent attack than described by Brennan or Holder in their public speeches. It refers, for example, to what it calls a "broader concept of imminence" than actual intelligence about any ongoing plot against the U.S. homeland.
Instead, it says, an "informed, high-level" official of the U.S. government may determine that the targeted American has been "recently" involved in "activities" posing a threat of a violent attack and "there is no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or abandoned such activities." The memo does not define "recently" or "activities.
What else is in the news today regarding the most transparent administration in history? A report documenting that 54 countries around the globe have played along with the CIA when it comes to torturing suspects in such a way that the U.S. can pretend it doesn't do that sort of thing anymore.
There is a darkly comic aspect to this, I suppose: Here's a president who once taught classes in constitutional law and swore up and down that America doesn't torture, that he was against "dumb wars" waged by his predecessors, that he was more transparent than a glass of triple-filtered water, and who won a goddamned Nobel Peace Prize! And he turns out to be not just a little iffy when it comes to being constrained in his willingness to break all sorts of rules but downright godawful.
And his main mouthpiece is a former MSM drone whose babyface is quickly turning into a map of wrinkles brought on by working for an administration which has manifestly failed to live up to even the mediocre standards of the previous occupant of the White House.
If it wasn't for all the dead people scattered around the nations of the world, the incursions into basic rights of Americans, the torturing of innocents along with the occasional interrogation of actual terrorists, and the failure to accomplish much of anything other than adding to the store of human misery and suffering around, this all would be worth a few bitter laughs.
But it's not.
Watch "3 Reasons Drone Policy is Really Freakin' Scary":
