Thursday, June 25, 2015

Obama Administration On Plan To Take Away CIA's Drones: Never Mind, Keep 'Em

via George Jefferson: "Promises made, promises broken."

Huffington Post

President Barack Obama has abandoned his two-year push to consolidate his controversial targeted killing program under Pentagon control and has spent the past several months finalizing a new plan that would give the Defense Department and the CIA joint control of drone strikes, sources tell The Huffington Post.

Two years ago, Obama promised during a speech at the National Defense University that he would move the CIA's controversial drone program out of the covert shadows and into the relative sunlight of the Defense Department. Drone critics greeted the announcement with cautious optimism, hoping that a Pentagon-run drone program would be more transparent and allow more oversight of targeted killings. 

The CIA and its allies on the congressional intelligence committees resisted Obama's proposal. But until recently, the Obama administration was still publicly pushing forward, saying as recently as April that it wanted to take the trigger out of the CIA's hands for good.

Behind closed doors, all of that has changed. On June 10, administration officials gave a classified briefing to lawmakers laying out a blueprint for a new transition plan that would involve a dual command structure. That blueprint is all but complete, U.S. officials briefed on it said.

2 comments:

  1. Obama bashing

    Should the lying, murderous swine not be "bashed"?

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  2. "Behind closed doors, all of that has changed. On June 10, administration officials gave a classified briefing to lawmakers laying out a blueprint for a new transition plan that would involve a dual command structure."

    Dual command can work when common goals and a willingness to work together are shared. When they aren't, there can be problems.

    "The White House's stark departure from its promises isn't sitting well with everyone. Although the CIA and Pentagon have both backed the new plan, lawmakers aren't convinced that the two bureaucracies -- each of which has long charged that the other isn't qualified to manage the drone program -- can finally cooperate.
    "[The White House] was almost laughed out of the room," said another official in the June 10 briefing. "It was just totally unworkable. It was dual command... that's not what the president's direction was."

    "This is the classic example of the bureaucracies resisting even the president of the United States," the first official said. "They've reached some unholy Faustian bargain... it's unworkable."

    The problem is, is that this isn't a situation where the disagreements result in the delay of a project, or a cost overrun. This is something that kills people. My opinion is that dual command will likely not work well.

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