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Olbermann on Obama's Assassination Program
There are many legitimate criticisms voiced about Keith Olbermann, but he deserves substantial credit for his coverage [Wednesday] 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:
UPDATE: Here's the segment I did yesterday on Al Jazeera -- along with The Weekly Standard's Bill Roggio and GWU Professor of Media and International Affairs Steven Livingston -- regarding the WikiLeaks/Iraq video:
UPDATE II: The American Prospect's Adam Serwer has an interesting post reporting that civil rights groups have issued a joint letter opposing the closing of Guantanamo if it means -- as the Obama administration has suggested -- that Guantanamo and its defining injustices will simply be re-located to U.S. soil. As part of his reporting, Serwer writes this:
[B]road assertions of executive power haven't even been limited to the last administration. Instead, we've seen the powers of the president expand, with the Obama administration asserting the right to assassinate American citizens without any due process or finding of guilt whatsoever.
From a civil libertarian point of view, we're in a much worse place than we were during the Bush administration, when Democrats were willing to oppose Bush's expansive claims of executive authority. Now we have only muted criticism from Democratic legislators and hysterical cries from Republicans that Obama isn't going far enough.
As far as I'm concerned, that's the point that cannot be stressed enough. And it's particularly good to see its being highlighted in a liberal publication like the Prospect (though Serwer has been pointing out such things there for quite some time).
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Show AllHere's what the 111th Congress has done:
Pro-Spying: Nuclear Forensics and Attribution Act - Extended certain provisions of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 and Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 until February 28, 2011
Pro-War: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization_Act_for_Fiscal_Year_2010
Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010
Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2009 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Appropriations_Act,_2009
Let's not forget that Obama has supported continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, supports the Patriot Act, voted in favor of retroactive immunity for telecom spying, supports offshore drilling, and practically encourage Democrats to vote in favor of pro-insurance and pro-pharmiceutical measures in the recent health bill.
This is the sort of hypocrisy you live with? This is what you consider the higher ground? And you really think writing letters will change their minds? It hasn't yet and it never will.
I don't like the choices we're stuck with but even Nader and Mckinney would have gone along with it if they were in office thanks to Congress. I said nothing to imply my support of their actions. You still didn't tell us your third party and how they're planning on winning. You can't fight for something until you win an election first.
I never said what my third party is because I don't have one. Did you not read that in my reply?
You don't like our choices, yet you passively take what you're given and make no effort to change things. It figures.
The Democratic Party wins elections, but all they do is preserve the status quo.
I know some Democrats like Max Baucus are status quo assholes but not all Democrats do it. Kucinich tried to change the health care system but he was outnumbered and had to settle for the compromise. The Republicans have been in control most of the time since 1981 so I don't expect big changes to come overnight.
Kucinich didn't try, he surrended. It doesn't matter if the Republicans have been in control since 1981, the Democrats are supposed to be the opposition and they haven't been acting like it.
Big changes don't happen over night, but apparently they don't happen over 30 years either.
Kucinich didn't try? He did try on health care to bring up single payer but the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats wouldn't let him. If you're mad about Kucinich voting yes on the bill, I understand that the bill is fatally flawed but we got to start somewhere on health care reform and it may take a while to get to single payer but please be patient and try to make Congress listen next time around.
Yeah, he didn't try. He gave up when the Party Establishment started threatening his seat.
This bill is NOT a good start at all. It favors the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. I won't be patient when people are being charged an arm and a leg for health care. I won't be patient when this bill is going to punish people for not having private insurance.
You keep calling me a Republican, but you sound more like them than I do. You're seriously advocating for a bill that sets us back rather than forward. That's sounds like Republican talk to me!
There is a big difference between "authorizing an execution" and authorizing assassination.
A governor authorizes an execution when he implements a jury's verdict. Obama is ordering an assassination on his own without a jury verdict, or any other concurring authority.
Big Difference.
Don't be an apologist for Obama's murders.
After the way he sold us out on "healthcare reform", not a chance.
This guy is an American! And as everyone knows, American lives are far more valuable than say Iraqi, or Haitian, or Indonesian lives. What unexamined knuckleheadedness.
Oh well, at least the story is getting some exposure in the MSM.
Actually another important aspect of this story is to link USAan oppression at home and abroad. The oppression crosses the boundaries between empire and homeland.
Perhaps it creates some possibility for solidarity.
"Here in America what lurks behind the marvelous sweetness of the little squirrels, which a nice ecologist has not forgiven me for casting doubt on, is mental cruelty, consensual atrocity. The people here let you know you are free to do anything, except not to one of them. Retaliation is immediate. Among other things, this makes America more like a primitive society; anathema and consensus. They don't have to actually pronounce the verdict. It's like a puritan time– bomb, like a virus implanted in the software of every brain."
–(Jean Baudrillard, "Cool Memories II.")
"The war machine is exterior to the state apparatus."
–(Gilles Deleuze/Felix Guattari, "Nomadology: The War Machine.")
Retaliation is so immediate it occurs anterior to the imagination of the deed and the slaughter itself. It is not merely a function of America's being, but is the very life itself of that being, and constitutive of it. –(Vashkar)
Sadistic human predators often start abusing small animals and gradually escalate into more aggressive deviance against other people.
Thus it is with all imperialist regimes and thus it is with the United States of Global Domination. They pretend to care for their own people as long as their gratification can be achieved through the abuse of those they can portray as less-than-human (other nationalities, races, and religions), but inevitably, the thrill will require more audacity.
Perhaps, "the audacity of hope" is what feeds the current thrill, but
Obama and Bush did not make these things happen by themselves.
Why were we not so concerned before the word "citizen" became part of the sadistic perversity?
Even with our much vaunted "Jury Trial" system, we find ourselves with innocent people on Death Row thanks to DNA testing... I find it sad to learn that ANYONE thinks they know enough to make a decision about life or death for another individual on limited evidence or lack of any defense on behalf of that individual.
It is particularly sad when our leaders make that decision without due processs of law under the Constitution because then they cease to become benevolent representatives of the people and instead become tyrants.
Maybe it IS time to start over with a clean slate in this country.
Will somebody please remind President Obama that he took an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States", not, as he has repeatedly claimed to "defend the people of the United States". OK, he might have taken that oath, too, but that is NOT the task for which he is drawing his salary, nor the task for which he has been granted presidential authority. Until someone calls him out on this one he is bound to keep promoting anti-Constitutional actions, such as his proposed "preventive detention" program and the current order to execute an American citizen without benefit of a trial.
For a Constitutional scholar, he sure seems to have a lot to learn. I'd like to see his high school and college report cards in subjects related to government.
Of course, as an unswerving lackey of the globalist corporate oligarchy that determines our course of Empire, his assumption of these various powers allow dangerous precedents to be established, which will cloud the issues of legality as the trend toward autocracy accelerates.
While Barack Obama's abandonment of the Constitution, the Republic it authorizes, and the hopes and dreams of the people who voted for him are all tragic, at least more and more voices are being raised in protest against the actions of this sham democrat.
Someone needs to remind you that our ungodly constitution is
nothing more then a Manifesto for a dictatorial capitalist Republic.
Erroll April 10th, 2010 11:07 am
"Jakenewton claims, *snip* "there is 'zero' conclusive evidence that molten 'steel' was observed at the site."
Note the word *steel*. Steel is just one specific metal out of hundreds. Note also the words "molten" and "conclusive".
"Scientists, eyewitnesses and photographs prove his claim to be hasty as well as bogus."
Let's see how well the "proof" holds up.
"Dr. Jones'"
Just a man with an opinion, whose work remains *controversial* and whose conclusions are not widely held by others.
"There are several published observations of molten metal"
Note the word "metal". While steel is metal, metal is not steel unless identified as such through testing.
"'They showed us many fascinating slides... ranging from molten metal which was red hot weeks after the event,"
Note the word "metal" used, not "steel".
"4-inch thick steel plates sheared at and bent"
Notice the lack of the word "molten".
"The observation of molten metal at Ground Zero was emphasized publicly by Leslie Robertson,"
Note the use of the word "metal" used, not "steel".
"According to his report: 'As of 21 days after the attack, the fires were still burning and molten steel was still running.'"
You can not differentiate molten steel from other metals just by looking. Did Leslie's report include the diagnostic tests used to identify the material as "steel"? Were samples taken or spectrum analysis equipment used? No one says, so we can assume "no" is the answer until Leslie tells us otherwise.
"goes on to quote Sarah Atlas *snip* molten steel flowed"
Atlas is identified as search and rescue personnel. Therefore we shall assume no metallurgic expertise, and we can be quite certain she did no testing in her capacity of search and rescue.
"Dr. Jones writes of "Dr. Allison Geyh "
Did Dr. Allison Geyh's repoert indicate sampling and testing of the observed molten material towards a positive ID of steel? no
"video available on the internet"
LOL! In the presence of impurities, color alone from an "internet video" is not a reliable diagnostic for molten materials. You need sophisticated spectrun analysis equipment.
"I find the writings, questions and conclusions by people such as Dr. Jones and other scientists to be much more persuasive"
And you are entitled to your opinion and free to ignore all those scientists who do *not* subscribe to Jones ideas and those who have rejected it as having no basis. This includes the *millions* of engineers who have *not* signed the A&E troothers statement.
No molten steel. No samples, no testing, no conclusive evidence of molten steel.
Can someone please give Erroll some help?
Have a nice day.
It is obvious that no matter how much doubt is given to the official conspiracy theory you will continue to place your blind faith in what the less than credible Bush/Cheney administration has told you. Since I and others realize, unlike you, that the former regime has lied to the American people and the corporate media about just about everything, it then stands to reason that they are hardly going to start telling the truth about what happened on Sept. 11, 2001. A document for The Project For a New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses, stated that in order for the neoconservatives to achieve their agenda in the Middle East a "new Pearl Harbor" must occur. Yet, when this did indeed happen, Americans were simply shocked, shocked! that that had occurred.
Someone like April Gallop, for instance, knows that the former administration has something to hide. Ms. Gallop was inside the Pentagon the day it was hit on 9/11/01. She had stated that she did not see any plane hit the Pentagon. When she went to the hospital that day to be treated for her injuries, she was visited by a couple of men in suits who claimed to be from the FBI [though they failed to show her any idedntification]. They warned her that she should change her story by saying that she did see a plane blast a hole into the Pentagon. Ms. Gallop has courageously stood her ground and has filed a lawsuit in response to the intimidation that she has received from the government.
It should be obvious that there are so many holes in the official conspiracy theory which should warrant, unlike the biased 9/11 Commission, an open and honest investigation of what happened that day and which should be composed of professionals, intellectuals, firefighters, airline personnel, and the families of the victims who died on that day. But the goverment is counting upon people like you to make sure that any semblance of the truth becomes forever buried from any inquiring eyes that would wish to know what actually happened on that heinous day.
To reiterate your banal phrase, have a nice day.
Isn't the Pentagon a unique designed building? I think it uses up a lot of land space. Even when a plane hit one side of that building, wouldn't the other four sides not have been able to detect it?
"It is obvious that no matter how much doubt is given to the official conspiracy theory"
There is no "official" theory.
"your blind faith in what the less than credible Bush/Cheney administration has told you."
*No where* Have I told you what I believe. All I have done was attack *your* assertions. This is yet another knee jerk mistake you continue to make. We are talking about a theory *you* have asserted. I've never asserted one.
"there are so many holes"
*All* theories have holes in them. Like with Global Warming say. That doesn't mean that the general idea is unsound.
So here we go again with Erroll. After having his "proof" of molten steel ripped to shreds, he instead ignores that just like the other points and changes the subject again. Please, someone help him out.
Just focus on World Trade Center#7.......Those of us that truly believe that the money trail was never followed and that, in Italy and Germany, there are men of stature that believe that the attacks were coordinated and executed by the CIA (Off Book) and Mossad will never get a fair hearing because "The Power Elite" have total control of the Mass Media,the economy of the United States, and the government of the United States.......
"They" put Obama in power and his job is to prevent the investigation of any wrongdoing of the past administration and continue the policies of The Tri-lateral Commission (Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man who created the Jihad) and The Council on Foreign Relations (Henry Kissinger) both of whom agree that a "New World Order" is a done deal.
Now, instead of Guantanamo, if you are labelled a terrorist, your name can be placed on an assassination list and that includes Americans......Wow, and that is a liberal, socialist President? He is no different than Hamid Karzai, a puppet of "The Power Elite"
"Just focus on World Trade Center#7"
I'm sorry, I refuse. Erroll has raised a number of points:
A&Etroothers. Engineers and Architects who have signed a statement.
Nano thermite.
And the latest, the idea of "molten steel".
I have crushed all three arguments from Erroll. Erroll has ignored that and only changes the subject. If *you* wish to back Erroll on any of the three above I will discuss it. Else forget it, I've done WTC7 before, along with the Pentagon, NORAD, Silverstein, etc. In this thread we will only focus on one of the three points above, unless Erroll concedes his errors on those or makes a better argument.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, Obama is Bush#3.
Obamabots--WAKE UP!
Chelsea
I saw it coming before the election....How true!
If Obama has indeed ordered a hit on an US citizen, he has committed an impeachable offense. Not that murdering an US citizen is morally any worse than murdering anyone else, but it is slightly less Constitutional.
We need to start calling for his impeachment. We need to somehow slow down this headlong dash into dictatorship and tyranny. If Obama is doing this, you know the next Republican elected will believe he can order a hit on a US citizen on American soil.
William Rood, patriotic citizen of the world
We should investigate this and present it as a real option.
But its democracy, the 51% voting majority most wealthy in control,
and Obama is doing exactly what he was hired to do,
keep the 49% least wealthy in fearful submission.
For are not all terrorists of the 49% lease wealthy?
Unless,
Thanks for your arguments. Your debate with Shawn was a pleasure to read.
As usual, Greenwald's comments and Olbermann's questions and comments are commendable. But I'm troubled that the essential point the Wikileaks video demonstrates has been lost, not only in the article and video, but in these comments. The point is that Bush, and now Obama, engaged the U.S. in military actions based on a myth, viz., that the persons responsible for 9/11, the attack on the Cole, the embassy bombings, and other terrorist attacks are an army that we must attack with military force. The "Great War on Terrorism" isn't a war. The military industrial complex and those under its sway promote it as a war to justify spending astronomical sums, and lives, on the military effort, while neglecting or trashing things like health and civil liberties in the U.S. and abroad. Eisenhower warned against the influence of the MIC as he ended his presidency. I'm almost convinced he saw in his mind's eye what's happening today.
It bears repeating. We're going after criminals -- those who pulled off 9/11 and those working to repeat it. But we're going after them with soldiers and warships, not law enforcement personnel trained to arrest criminal suspects and turn them over for trial. The terrorists are criminal gang members, not nation states with standing armies. The mainstream media and politicians, because they're tethered to the MIC, never present things in proper perspective. Al Qaeda, which consists of some 100 individuals living in caves, is depicted as the biggest threat to U.S. security, requiring us not only to invade, but to completely reform into functioning Western-style democracies, Muslim nations like Afghanistan and Yemen. We kill hundreds of thousands of hapless Iraqis and Aghans in that cause, and thousands of our own young citizens. Meanwhile 45,000 U.S. residents died last year due to lack of medical care. They would still be living if they had been born in Britain, France, Germany, Japan, etc., none of which are devoting even a fraction of what the U.S. wastes, in money and blood, on the GWOT.
I repeat: the video should tell us that we need to cooperate with anyone we can find who will help stop the criminal acts of terrorists by using professional law enforcement with international participation, not callow American troops carrying assault rifles, not jet or helicopter jockeys and computer gamers raining bombs and bullets on innocent civilians.