After a welcome disruption by members of CodePink who denounced him and got ejected from the hearing, Brennan said that there is a “misimpression” and a “misunderstanding” about “the care we take” and–he added obscenely–“the agony we go through” in deciding who to kill. (Compare his “agony” to the agony of the families of the innocent people he’s killed with his drones.)
“We only take such actions as a last resort to save lives when there’s no other alternative,” he said.
Well, then, what about his drone killing of 16-year-old Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, the son of Anwar Al-Awlaki? Was that really a last resort to save lives? Unfortunatley, I didn’t hear a Senator ask that question.
Nor was Brennan reassuring on full disclosure, responding with classic doublespeak: “We need to optimize transparency and at the same time optimize secrecy.”
Obama’s record on civil liberties is absymal, and as happy as I am to have him in charge on domestic policy, he really is no better than Bush on this stuff and in some cases he’s worse, screaming about leftist communist marxist Kenyans notwithstanding. And the justifications of power for why it accepts no oversight sound the same regardless of who’s mouthing them. An entrenched power structure protects itself, first last and always. Understand that, and everything else makes all kinds of sense.
Here’s Code Pink telling Brennan to get bent, and more power to them:
This witness was entitled to be heard, sure, DiFi. So were all the people pointing out that we are in fact killing people, and heaven forbid we spend six seconds asking him about them.
It’s so terribly inconvenient when people interrupt one another. Clear the room, so the grown-ups can talk.
A.