Transparency, and that

Posted by lex, on December 28th, 2011

Interesting article up in the WaPo on the Obama administration’s development and use of a robust UAV capability to surveil, track and kill suspected terrorists overseas:

In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents.

Other commanders in chief have presided over wars with far higher casualty counts. But no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation’s security goals.

I’ve got no beef so far, but:

Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of lethal force.

In Yemen, for instance, the CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command pursue the same adversary with nearly identical aircraft. But they alternate taking the lead on strikes to exploit their separate authorities, and they maintain separate kill lists that overlap but don’t match. CIA and military strikes this fall killed three U.S. citizens, two of whom were suspected al-Qaeda operatives.

The convergence of military and intelligence resources has created blind spots in congressional oversight. Intelligence committees are briefed on CIA operations, and JSOC reports to armed services panels. As a result, no committee has a complete, unobstructed view.

Congressional oversight of the executive branch is among the implicit constitutional privileges of the legislature, and inherent to our system of checks and balances.

You can’t fight a war by committee, even a clandestine one. I get that. But if this were being done by George W. Bush, you could bet that the Nobel committee would be wanting their Peace Prize back.

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