OBAMA’S DRONE MAN ESCAPES SENATE UNSCATHED

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/02/the-senators-and-the-drone-man.html



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Once the first set of demonstrators was ejected, it quickly became clear that most of the Senators on the panel were much more supportive than Code Pink had been. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who heads the Intelligence Committee, seemed to see her role as making sure Brennan got through unscathed. She began by claiming that during the past few years, the annual number of civilian casualties from drone strikes has been in the single digits—a figure many intelligence experts and monitoring groups regard as laughably low. As Feinstein was speaking, more demonstrators started hooting and hollering. When it happened for a fifth time, Feinstein ordered the Capitol Hill police to clear the room and invited Brennan to join her in a back room. “I speak for the mothers,” one of the protesters shouted as she was frog-marched out. “We are killing children… the children of Pakistan and Yemen. We are making more enemies.”

That was about the last serious note of dissension about drones for a couple of hours. Although a good number of Senators seemed exercised about the White House’s tardiness in turning over its legal rationale for assassinating American citizens, few, if any, of them appeared to have any more fundamental qualms about the drone program. Brennan didn’t express any, either. “The people who were standing up here have a misleading view of what it is we do,” he said, referring to the protesters. They “don’t understand the agonies we go through to avoid collateral damage.” Under questioning from Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, the most Brennan was willing to concede was that, on occasions when American drones did kill the wrong person, or people, the United States should fess up. “We need to acknowledge it to our foreign partners,” he said. “We need to acknowledge it publicly.”

That’s all right, then. With all parties agreed on the necessity of taking out potentially dangerous Islamists, even if that might involve the odd fatal error, the toughest questions revolved about Brennan’s role, or lack thereof, in the C.I.A.’s torture program following 9/11, when he was a top official at the agency. In previous public comments, Brennan has said he disapproved of the interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, that the C.I.A. used, and that he let colleagues know of his objections. Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican, appeared skeptical. Pointing out that Brennan had been cc’d on at least fifty internal memos about the interrogation methods, Chambliss asked him what steps he had taken to stop them. Brennan conceded that he hadn’t taken any, citing the pretty lame excuse that they were being used in another part of the agency.

That wasn’t his only lame answer. Twice, Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, asked Brennan whether he believed waterboarding was torture. Brennan wouldn’t be drawn in. “I have a personal view that it’s reprehensible,” he said, before adding, “I am not a lawyer, I can’t give an answer.” In a courtroom, a sharp-witted attorney would surely have asked Brennan how, then, he could be sure that using drones to kill Americans, or, for that matter, foreigners, was legal. But this was more of a courtship than a cross-examination.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/02/the-senators-and-the-drone-man.html#ixzz2KJaM9kec


Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/02/the-senators-and-the-drone-man.html#ixzz2KJaCcBwo