US army to turn on US citizens!

[Greasy 0]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/24/army/

 

Why is a U.S. Army brigade being assigned to the "Homeland"?

 

(updated below - Update II)

 

Several bloggers today have pointed to this obviously disturbing article from Army Times, which announces that "beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the [1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division] will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North" -- "the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities." The article details:

 

They'll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.

 

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack. . . .

 

The 1st BCT's soldiers also will learn how to use "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

 

"It's a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they're fielding. They've been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it."

 

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

 

"I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered," said Cloutier, describing the experience as "your worst muscle cramp ever -- times 10 throughout your whole body". . . .

 

The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced "sea-smurf").

 

 

-----------

 

The world we live in.

[Fop 1]

I reckon it's a response to that $700 billion rescue bill.

 

 

"The rich must be protected...... they've got all the money!"

[Lazarus 0]

lots of people are pissed off at this cos its traditionally been the national guard who stay at home and the army who go abroad.

 

but as the national gurad are fighting the taleban.........

[Tom 14021]

Definitely trouble ahead.

[Happy Face 29]

Clearly preparing for a military coup when the election doesn't go how the money men want it to.

[Happy Face 29]

Just read the whole story and you missed out the juciest bits....

 

For more than 100 years -- since the end of the Civil War -- deployment of the U.S. military inside the U.S. has been prohibited under The Posse Comitatus Act (the only exceptions being that the National Guard and Coast Guard are exempted, and use of the military on an emergency ad hoc basis is permitted, such as what happened after Hurricane Katrina). Though there have been some erosions of this prohibition over the last several decades (most perniciously to allow the use of the military to work with law enforcement agencies in the "War on Drugs"), the bright line ban on using the U.S. military as a standing law enforcement force inside the U.S. has been more or less honored -- until now. And as the Army Times notes, once this particular brigade completes its one-year assignment, "expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one."

 

After Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration began openly agitating for what would be, in essence, a complete elimination of the key prohibitions of the Posse Comitatus Act in order to allow the President to deploy U.S. military forces inside the U.S. basically at will -- and, as usual, they were successful as a result of rapid bipartisan compliance with the Leader's demand (the same kind of compliance that is about to foist a bailout package on the nation). This April, 2007 article by James Bovard in The American Conservative detailed the now-familiar mechanics that led to the destruction of this particular long-standing democratic safeguard:

 

The Defense Authorization Act of 2006, passed on Sept. 30, empowers President George W. Bush to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist "incident," if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of "public order," or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result of government provocations. . . .

 

It only took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to raze one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president's ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the express permission of Congress. But there is a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act.

 

Section 1076 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 changed the name of the key provision in the statute book from "Insurrection Act" to "Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order Act." The Insurrection Act of 1807 stated that the president could deploy troops within the United States only "to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy." The new law expands the list to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition" -- and such "condition" is not defined or limited. . . .

 

The story of how Section 1076 became law vivifies how expanding government power is almost always the correct answer in Washington. Some people have claimed the provision was slipped into the bill in the middle of the night. In reality, the administration clearly signaled its intent and almost no one in the media or Congress tried to stop it . . . .

 

Section 1076 was supported by both conservatives and liberals. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, co-wrote the provision along with committee chairman Sen. John Warner (R-Va.). Sen. Ted Kennedy openly endorsed it, and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), then-chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was an avid proponent. . . .

 

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned on Sept. 19 that "we certainly do not need to make it easier for Presidents to declare martial law," but his alarm got no response. Ten days later, he commented in the Congressional Record: "Using the military for law enforcement goes against one of the founding tenets of our democracy." Leahy further condemned the process, declaring that it "was just slipped in the defense bill as a rider with little study. Other congressional committees with jurisdiction over these matters had no chance to comment, let alone hold hearings on, these proposals."

 

As is typical, very few members of the media even mentioned any of this, let alone discussed it (and I failed to give this the attention it deserved at the time), but Congressional Quarterly's Jeff Stein wrote an excellent article at the time detailing the process and noted that "despite such a radical turn, the new law garnered little dissent, or even attention, on the Hill." Stein also noted that while "the blogosphere, of course, was all over it . . . a search of The Washington Post and New York Times archives, using the terms 'Insurrection Act,' 'martial law' and 'Congress,' came up empty."

 

Bovard and Stein both noted that every Governor -- including Republicans -- joined in Leahy's objections, as they perceived it as a threat from the Federal Government to what has long been the role of the National Guard. But those concerns were easily brushed aside by the bipartisan majorities in Congress, eager -- as always -- to grant the President this radical new power.

 

The decision this month to permanently deploy a U.S. Army brigade inside the U.S. for purely domestic law enforcement purposes is the fruit of the Congressional elimination of the long-standing prohibitions in Posse Comitatus (although there are credible signs that even before Congress acted, the Bush administration secretly decided it possessed the inherent power to violate the Act). It shouldn't take any efforts to explain why the permanent deployment of the U.S. military inside American cities, acting as the President's police force, is so disturbing. Bovard:

 

"Martial law" is a euphemism for military dictatorship. When foreign democracies are overthrown and a junta establishes martial law, Americans usually recognize that a fundamental change has occurred. . . . Section 1076 is Enabling Act-type legislation—something that purports to preserve law-and-order while formally empowering the president to rule by decree.

The historic importance of the Posse Comitatus prohibition was also well-analyzed here.

 

As the recent militarization of St. Paul during the GOP Convention made abundantly clear, our actual police forces are already quite militarized. Still, what possible rationale is there for permanently deploying the U.S. Army inside the United States -- under the command of the President -- for any purpose, let alone things such as "crowd control," other traditional law enforcement functions, and a seemingly unlimited array of other uses at the President's sole discretion? And where are all of the stalwart right-wing "small government conservatives" who spent the 1990s so vocally opposing every aspect of the growing federal police force? And would it be possible to get some explanation from the Government about what the rationale is for this unprecedented domestic military deployment (at least unprecedented since the Civil War), and why it is being undertaken now?

 

UPDATE: As this commenter notes, the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act somewhat limited the scope of the powers granted by the 2007 Act detailed above (mostly to address constitutional concerns by limiting the President's powers to deploy the military to suppress disorder that threatens constitutional rights), but President Bush, when signing that 2008 Act into law, issued a signing statement which, though vague, seems to declare that he does not recognize those new limitations.

 

UPDATE II: There's no need to start manufacturing all sorts of scare scenarios about Bush canceling elections or the imminent declaration of martial law or anything of that sort. None of that is going to happen with a single brigade and it's unlikely in the extreme that they'd be announcing these deployments if they had activated any such plans. The point is that the deployment is a very dangerous precedent, quite possibly illegal, and a radical abandonment of an important democratic safeguard. As always with first steps of this sort, the danger lies in how the power can be abused in the future.

[Greasy 0]

for anyone who wishes to be blown away......

 

Bet you did not know that 100 billion of that bailout was for Bush to use without receipts for anything he wants.

 

 

Interview - Naomi Wolf - Give Me Liberty

 

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=_XgkeTanCGI

 

She's written a book called the end of america which lists ten steps to fascism and Bush has just checked the 10th by creating his own personal army division to be used against the us people.

[Happy Face 29]

for anyone who wishes to be blown away......

 

Bet you did not know that 100 billion of that bailout was for Bush to use without receipts for anything he wants.

 

 

Interview - Naomi Wolf - Give Me Liberty

 

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=_XgkeTanCGI

 

She's written a book called the end of america which lists ten steps to fascism and Bush has just checked the 10th by creating his own personal army division to be used against the us people.

 

 

The funniest part was they voted against $700B and then for $850B a few days later.

 

Especially considering "Regarding the $700 billion number, Forbes.com quoted a Treasury spokeswoman: "It's not based on any particular data point. We just wanted to choose a really large number."

 

[Happy Face 29]

NBC's Chuck Todd -- who, remember, is billed as a reporter covering the White House, not a pundit expressing opinions -- was on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Tuesday discussing reports that Eric Holder is likely to appoint a prosecutor to investigate Bush torture crimes. Needless to say, everyone agreed without question that investigations were a ridiculous distraction from what really matters and would be terribly unfair. This, along with Mika Brzezinski and Pat Buchanan, is what Todd argued after he was asked about the Holder story and the Cheney/CIA story:

 

Todd: Look, let's take all of these stories in one big thing: really, the only important thing -- the most important thing -- the President has to focus on is getting the public's trust on the economy, and pushing health care. Cheney, the CIA, and in some respects Sotomayor are cable catnip --

 

Brzezinski: Yep.

 

Todd: It's news catnip - but they're sort of clouding the two most important issues the President's got to get his arms around this week: winning back trust of the middle on the economy and pushing health care through.

 

Brzezinski: I would completely agree with you, yet the questions are being raised by news organizations like the New York Times. Pat Buchanan, chime in, because as I've been reporting [sic], and I'll say it for Chuck's benefit here: speaking to a former intelligence official yesterday on the phone for quite some time, saying that this program that Cheney was apparently blocking the CIA from giving Congressional Committees information on, was not even a program -- it was not operational -- it was not even at the stage where you would tell Congress about it or talk to high administration level officials about it.

 

Is this much ado about nothing to get the attention off what needs to be done?

 

Buchanan: Well it's exactly what Chuck said, it's a massive distraction . . . . Let me ask Chuck this: it seems to me you got a real problem for the administration if you go forward at Holder's level --

 

Todd: Right.

 

Buchanan: and they appoint a Special Counsel, the first thing the CIA guys do is say is: yeah, we did it; we waterboarded them; and here's the authorization from these lawyers who said we could do it --- the lawyers come in and say we were asked for our opinion and Cheney was the guy who asked us, and the President told us to go ahead and do it. Aren't you right into the White House of the Bush administration as soon as you appoint that independent counsel?

 

Todd: And I think that's why, in the President's gut, he doesn't want to do this. They've made that clear they don't want to do this. I think that's what you see a lot of the West Wing -- they don't want to get into this because of what you're saying.

 

Ultimately, a lawyer gets paid to not tell you what the law is -- but to interpret the law, to tell you how far you can push things until you cross a line that a judge will say is illegal. That's what lawyers get paid to do: they get paid to interpret the law, and interpret the law in a way that allows you to stretch things.

 

You are on a slippery slope - this is a very dangerous aspect to go after, because these CIA guys will say, as you said Pat, we got the letter from these lawyers in the Bush Justice Department that said we can do this. You can't suddenly change the law retroactively because there's another interpretation of this. I'm sure there are a legal minds that will fight and say I don't know what I'm talking about, but it seems to me that's a legal and a political slippery slope.

 

This is about as typical a discussion as it gets among media stars as to why investigations are so very, very wrong and unfair and unwise. Still, this discussion in particular vividly highlights several important points worth noting about the role of the establishment media:

 

(1)

In response to virtually every media criticism (at least the few they acknowledge), establishment journalists will insist that their role is to be steadfastly neutral. They simply report on the debates, not take sides or express opinions about them. Taking one side or the other is not their role. Only partisan ideologues do that.

 

Yet here is Chuck Todd -- who covers the White House for NBC News -- explicitly arguing against investigations, and adopting the Bush/right-wing mentality to do so. Investigations are a distraction from what matters. It's extremely unfair to hold lawyers accountable when they authorize criminal conduct. It's "dangerous" for one administration to investigate the prior one where that prior administration had its DOJ lawyers authorize what was being done.

 

Wouldn't the standard claim of establishment journalists maintain that Chuck Todd shouldn't have (or at least not express) opinions on these topics? Yet here he -- as so many establishment journalists routinely do -- explicitly advocating against investigations of Bush-era crimes. The arguments in favor of such investigations merit no mention whatsoever. Would anyone listening to this discussion even have the slightest idea what the arguments are in favor of investigating and prosecuting?

 

The notion that these establishment journalists don't choose sides and are mere honest brokers of debates is, rather obviously, transparent fiction. What justifies Chuck Todd becoming an advocate in alliance with those who oppose investigations of Bush crimes? Isn't he supposed to be a reporter?

 

(2)

Notice what, as always, is missing from this discussion: any reference to the fact that the conduct in question -- torture -- is illegal. What about the argument that numerous detainees died as a result of these methods? What about the argument that many interrogations plainly exceeded even the authorizations given by the DOJ? What about the argument that granting immunity to high-level political officials anytime they can find a low-level DOJ functionary to approve their behavior will destroy the rule of law?

 

Our media class literally believes that high executive branch officials have the right to break the law. For that reason, they cannot even recognize illegality as an issue worth anyone's attention. Thus, all this "torture" and "lying to Congress" and violating oversight laws is just "cable catnip," political posturing that obscures what truly matters. So sayeth NBC News' White House correspondent.

 

(3)

One aspect of journalistic corruption that receive less attention than it deserves is the servile attitude so many of them develop to those who control access to their beat. As a White House reporter, who dominates Todd's professional life and determines the access he needs? To whom does he spend much of his day speaking? Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, and their underlings ("the West Wing") -- the very Obama political advisers who, by all accounts, vigorously oppose any investigation of Bush crimes because they believe such investigations will be bad for Obama politically.

 

Todd doesn't cover them as a reporter, adversarially scrutinizing what they argue and do. Instead, he becomes their spokesman. He not only describes what they believe, but he adopts it and advocates it himself (Todd: "the only important thing -- the most important thing -- the President has to focus on is getting the public's trust on the economy and pushing health care . . . ."[investigations are] sort of clouding the two most important issues the President's got to get his arms around this week: winning back trust of the middle on the economy and pushing health care through").

 

If one wanted to be generous, one could say that a President's political strategists should be thinking in such terms -- about how to keep the President's approval ratings as high as possible. But that, quite obviously, isn't Chuck Todd's role. Yet the distinction disappears. That is how Chuck Todd thinks because it's how those on whom he depends think. He's not a journalist wanting to impose accountability or find out the truth of what our government did. Instead, he serves as an advocate for the agenda of the political strategists who determine his access.

 

(4)

Bef0re he opines on it again, can someone please explain to Chuck Todd the difference between (a) the role of a private lawyer hired by a client and (

the duties and obligations of Justice Department lawyers generally and OLC lawyers specifically? George Bush and Dick Cheney treated the DOJ as though it were their personal law firm there to serve their personal interests, so that's how Chuck Todd apparently understands it. The role of OLC lawyers isn't to "allow you to stretch things."

 

The constitutional powers of the President are quite limited and one of his only explicit duties is he "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." "Faithfully executing " the law doesn't mean "stretching" the law and it certainly doesn't mean breaking the law. I'm aware that talk of what the Constitution and the law require is just cable catnip, but ignoring that produces some rather significant consequences. I'd like to ask Chuck Todd: if Bush had John Yoo write a memo opining that it was perfectly legal for Bush to deploy hit squads within the U.S. to assassinate American citizens without any due process, would it be wrong to investigate and prosecute that, too, on the ground that everyone had permission slips from a DOJ lawyer and that's just what lawyers do?

 

(5)

Ever since it was first revealed that Dick Cheney ordered the CIA to conceal an intelligence program from Congress, there has been one anonymous leak after the next designed to defend what Cheney did. That's why I noted that laughable CNN "news article" earlier today: this is how our political debates are shaped.

 

Note how those anonymous claims now just become an unquestioned part of these discussions by "journalists." Some anonymous intelligence official chats on the phone with Brzezinkis and makes a bunch of Cheney-defending assertions; she excitedly writes it all down and goes on the TV and repeats it as Truth (and, of course, calls what she's doing "reporting"). And now, all of that is just assumed to be true by these "journalists": there was no real program, it never got off the ground, Congress was briefed anyway, Cheney did nothing wrong, there were no briefing obligations at all. Therefore, there's nothing to see here.

 

Nobody even thinks to question or challenge that. It's just accepted as true. Therefore, all of this is just petty cable catnip obscuring what truly matters, decrees NBC "reporter" Chuck Todd.

 

(6)

As I've noted many times before -- though it still never ceases to amaze me -- the most revealing fact about our political culture is that the group most opposed to investigations of high-level political officials happens to be the very same group that was supposed to lead the way in investigating: our journalist class. Thomas Jefferson said:

 

Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues of truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.

 

That's now completely reversed. It's the establishment press that stands most stalwart against investigations. They believe, as Richard Cohen so memorably put it when railing against the Lewis Libby conviction, that "it is often best to keep the lights off." Few things explain better what has happened to our political class than the fact that (with some important exceptions) it is establishment journalists who are the most aggressive opponents of investigations of high-level government lawbreaking. Trying to prevent investigations of their friends and colleagues in political power is one of the few times they're willing to explicitly turn themselves into advocates, as Chuck Todd did here.

 

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

 

I'm gay for Greenwald

[Happy Face 29]

There are many legitimate criticisms voiced about Keith Olbermann, but he deserves substantial credit for his coverage last night of a story that is as self-evidently significant as it is under-covered: Barack Obama's assassination program aimed at American citizens. He not only led off his show with this story, but devoted the first two segments to it, and made many of the key observations and asked virtually all of the right questions. The videos of those two segments, worth watching, are below.

 

What's most striking to me about all of this is that -- as I noted yesterday (and as Olbermann stressed) -- George Bush's decision merely to eavesdrop on American citizens without oversight, or to detain without due process Americans such as Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, provoked years of vehement, vocal and intense complaints from Democrats and progressives. All of that was disparaged as Bush claiming the powers of a King, a vicious attack on the Constitution, a violation of Our Values, the trampling on the Rule of Law. Yet here you have Barack Obama not merely eavesdropping on or detaining Americans without oversight, but ordering them killed with no oversight and no due process of any kind. And the reaction among leading Democrats and progressives is largely non-existent, which is why Olbermann's extensive coverage of it is important. Just imagine what the reaction would have been among progressive editorial pages, liberal opinion-makers and Democratic politicians if this story had been about George Bush and Dick Cheney targeting American citizens for due-process-free and oversight-less CIA assassinations.

 

Republicans are not going to object to any of this. With rare exception, they believe in unlimited executive authority and denial of due process. They see Obama's adoption of the core Bush/Cheney approach as a vindication of what they did for eight years (and also see it, not unreasonably, as proof that progressive complaints about Bush's "shredding of the Constitution" were not genuine but rather opportunistic, cynical and motivated by desire for partisan gain). As a result, even the most Obama-hating right-wing extremists will praise him and cheer for what he's doing. At the same time, the people who spent eight years screaming about things like this (when Bush/Cheney were doing them) are now mostly silent if not finding ways to justify and defend it (we don't need due process because the President said this is an American-Hating Terrorist). As White House servant Richard Wolffe said in the second Olbermann segment below (and Wolffe's commentary was actually fairly good), the White House is "very proud" of its presidential assassination program, which is likely why they decided to leak it to the NYT and the WP yesterday.

 

Here again, we see one of the principal and longest-lasting effects of the Obama presidency: to put a pretty, eloquent, progressive face on what (until quite recently) was ostensibly considered by a large segment of the citizenry to be tyrannical right-wing extremism (e.g., indefinite detention, military commissions, "state secrets" used to block judicial review, an endless and always-expanding "War on Terror," immunity for war criminals, rampant corporatism -- and now unchecked presidential assassinations of American citizens), and thus to transform what were once bitter, partisan controversies into harmonious, bipartisan consensus:

 

Link

[Cid_MCDP 0]

There are many legitimate criticisms voiced about Keith Olbermann, but he deserves substantial credit for his coverage last night of a story that is as self-evidently significant as it is under-covered: Barack Obama's assassination program aimed at American citizens. He not only led off his show with this story, but devoted the first two segments to it, and made many of the key observations and asked virtually all of the right questions. The videos of those two segments, worth watching, are below.

 

What's most striking to me about all of this is that -- as I noted yesterday (and as Olbermann stressed) -- George Bush's decision merely to eavesdrop on American citizens without oversight, or to detain without due process Americans such as Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, provoked years of vehement, vocal and intense complaints from Democrats and progressives. All of that was disparaged as Bush claiming the powers of a King, a vicious attack on the Constitution, a violation of Our Values, the trampling on the Rule of Law. Yet here you have Barack Obama not merely eavesdropping on or detaining Americans without oversight, but ordering them killed with no oversight and no due process of any kind. And the reaction among leading Democrats and progressives is largely non-existent, which is why Olbermann's extensive coverage of it is important. Just imagine what the reaction would have been among progressive editorial pages, liberal opinion-makers and Democratic politicians if this story had been about George Bush and Dick Cheney targeting American citizens for due-process-free and oversight-less CIA assassinations.

 

Republicans are not going to object to any of this. With rare exception, they believe in unlimited executive authority and denial of due process. They see Obama's adoption of the core Bush/Cheney approach as a vindication of what they did for eight years (and also see it, not unreasonably, as proof that progressive complaints about Bush's "shredding of the Constitution" were not genuine but rather opportunistic, cynical and motivated by desire for partisan gain). As a result, even the most Obama-hating right-wing extremists will praise him and cheer for what he's doing. At the same time, the people who spent eight years screaming about things like this (when Bush/Cheney were doing them) are now mostly silent if not finding ways to justify and defend it (we don't need due process because the President said this is an American-Hating Terrorist). As White House servant Richard Wolffe said in the second Olbermann segment below (and Wolffe's commentary was actually fairly good), the White House is "very proud" of its presidential assassination program, which is likely why they decided to leak it to the NYT and the WP yesterday.

 

Here again, we see one of the principal and longest-lasting effects of the Obama presidency: to put a pretty, eloquent, progressive face on what (until quite recently) was ostensibly considered by a large segment of the citizenry to be tyrannical right-wing extremism (e.g., indefinite detention, military commissions, "state secrets" used to block judicial review, an endless and always-expanding "War on Terror," immunity for war criminals, rampant corporatism -- and now unchecked presidential assassinations of American citizens), and thus to transform what were once bitter, partisan controversies into harmonious, bipartisan consensus:

 

Link

 

 

This guy that Keith interviews in the first video brings up some good points about our intelligence community.

 

Now, I fully realize that when those in intelligence do their job right, people like me never know they did so, but I have to tell you- based on his opening remarks regarding all the things we've thought we've had good intel on but ended up being a classic fuckup, I really have a hard time even justifying such a far-reaching intelligence community. Of all the events they "missed", I just don't see how they can keep coming back to the trough and asking for more money.

 

I've used this analogy on here before, but I was going off to my boss about how none of our suppliers seem to give a shit about the quality of the parts they send us or if the labeling on the boxes and totes is correct, if the barcodes they tag their components with (that we pay for, obviously) are readable, compliant scans. In an attempt to calm me down, he told me our supplier quality guy had called them and tried to work with them, but just couldn't get them to do their jobs. I asked my boss why in the hell we even bothered having a supplier quality guy then.

 

That's pretty much how I feel about this.

 

When the NSA, CIA, and FBI all collectively fucked up on 9/11 after admitting they had data and watch lists on every single passenger who collaborated to commit that horrible act, allegedly because of some long-standing interoffice feud about not sharing data with their supposed parters in their war or terrorism, and not a single fucking person got fired or otherwise reprimanded as a result, I strongly question the need for them.

 

What would be the alternative? I don't know, maybe relying on our allies for info outside our own country. It's not like we don't already, y'know? Hell, we went to war on the info you lot allegedly gave us. It's not like we're particularly afraid of acting on intel we didn't collect.

 

The other thought I had while watching this is how ironic it is that we observe the international ban on assassination, but apparently are fine with shooting our own people without due process, a trial, etc.

[Gemmill 47121]

I have no idea what this thread is on about. What's this about Obama ordering assassinations?

[Cid_MCDP 0]

Waitwaitwait... let me!

 

 

I have no idea what this thread is on about. What's this about Obama ordering assassinations?

 

 

Yes, Gemmill.

 

 

[Happy Face 29]

I have no idea what this thread is on about. What's this about Obama ordering assassinations?

 

It's been officially confirmed that Obama has authorised the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki. He's a US citizen.

 

They allege he was involved in planning attacks (though not actually succeeding), but he's not being afforded the due process that is enshrined constitutionally for ALL citizens, whether rapist, paedophile or murderer.