‘I Never Believe It’s Better to Kill a Terrorist Than to Detain Him’
Brennan told Chambliss that he did not take steps to stop the CIA’s use of waterboarding that he now says he found objectionable, and even slipped in a blame-Bush moment.
“I had expressed my personal objections to my — some agency colleagues about certain of those EITs such as waterboarding, nudity, and others, where I professed my personal objections to it, but I did not try to stop it because it was, you know, something being done in different part of the agency under the authority of others,” he said. “And it was something that was directed by the administration of the time.”
No one has come forward, though, to confirm that Brennan indeed voiced concern about the program, and in fact his former boss told the Wall Street Journal he had a role in setting the parameters of the program.
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) tried unsuccessfully to get Brennan to call waterboarding torture.
“The attorney general has referred to waterboarding as torture. Many people have referred to it as torture,” Brenna responded. “And as you well know and as we’ve had the discussion, Senator, the term ‘torture’ has a lot of legal and political implications. It is something that should have been banned long ago. It never should have taken place in my view. And, therefore, it is — if I were to go to CIA, it would never, in fact, be brought back.”
“Do you have a personal opinion as to whether waterboarding is torture?” Levin asked again.
“I have a personal opinion that waterboarding is reprehensible and it’s something that should not be done. And, again, I am not a lawyer, Senator, and I can’t address that question,” Brennan said.
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) followed this up a bit later with a waterboarding joke.
“I’m gonna try to be brief, because I’ve noticed you’re on your fourth glass of water, and I don’t want to be accused of waterboarding you,” he told the nominee.
On the controversial subject of drone strikes, Brennan told Feinstein her committee should want to protect certain covert activities.
“The president has insisted that any actions we take will be legally grounded, will be thoroughly anchored in intelligence, will have the appropriate review process, approval process before any action is contemplated, including those actions that might involve the use of lethal force,” he said.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) predicted “the drones are going to grow.”
“There’s going to be more and more of that warfare, not just by us, but by other countries, including perhaps by people from within our own country,” he said.
The most anticipated drone critic of the day, though, was Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
“What do you think needs to be done to ensure that members of the public understand more about when the government thinks it’s allowed to kill them, particularly with respect to those two issues: the question of evidence and the authority to use this power within the United States?” Wyden asked.
“What we need to do is make sure we explain to the American people what the thresholds for action, what are the procedures, the practices, the processes, the approvals, the reviews,” Brennan said. “…And, in fact, I think the American people would be quite pleased to know that we’ve been very disciplined and very judicious, and we only use these authorities and these capabilities as a last resort.”
“If the executive branch makes a mistake and kills the wrong person or a group of the wrong people, how should the government acknowledge that?” Wyden continued.
Brennan said acknowledging that publicly “would be ideal and that would be the objective of the program.”
Wyden has been seeking a full list of countries in which the intelligence community “has used its lethal authorities.” If confirmed, Brennan said, “I would get back to you.”
“If I were to go to CIA and the CIA was involved in any type of lethal activity, I would damn well make sure that this committee had that information,” he eagerly added. “Absolutely.”
Greetings:
Back during my short stay in the Federal bureaucracy, I came across a bit of folk-wisdom that went, “Where you stand depends on where you sit.”
Earlier, while employed by a more robust and action oriented part of the same establishment, I had come across a different bit of folk-wisdom that went thusly:
The POW calculus:
1) You don’t ever want to fight anyone twice;
2) Some POWs may have useful information;
3) Capture, relocation and detention of POWs requires the
use of scarce resources.
If I catch them, I’ll do the math.
Re:
“John Brennan’s artificially earnest, overly agreeable performance….”
Not so fast…..that’s a widely mistaken observation.
The vibes I got from my Outsider Chair in front of those C-Span images on the computer screen was of a New Jersey bred street-wise guy who’s areddy-yet been through a twenty five year career with our C.I.A. and is probably, if the Senate sensibly consents, the new Director…..a badly needed career man as the Boss and not a dilettante political appointee, here for a while, gone after a while…Next!Please!….type of rotation. cf: Goss and his Goslings. Petraeus would’ve been just fine without that woman problem; he’s certainly not the only guy entangled with the wrong woman. Petraeus should’ve known better? Certainly, just as for all the rest of us in similar maneuvers.
A man like Brennan here has absolutely no need to “implore” his teacher for a better grade. A man like Brennan does not “implore” anything of anyone.
Picture yourself standing in front of his desk with sweaty palms trying to explain – - -.
‘I Never Believe It’s Better to Kill a Terrorist Than to Detain Him’ ^ Except When We Can Use Drones And Get the Kiddies Too’
FIFH
Even ol’ Osama bin Laden?
Only the deformed braincells of a Left Wing moonbat a Lame Stream EneMedia reporter a Democrat and of course the USURPER -in- Chief himself could hold such disparate thoughts as ‘dripping water on Terrorists faces is evil torture’ and ‘ killing people, including American Citizens, with rockets from 30,000 feet regardless of collateral damage without any due process of Law is OK’.
Don’t get me wrong I don’t disagree with drone strikes I just disagree with the collosal illogical HYPOCRISY of calling water boarding evil TORTURE and THEN illogically at the SAME time agreeing with drone strikes,
Maybe we should cut out all the delay and shout out now to the USURPER ‘Seig Heil Meine Führer” and have done with it.
Dempsey is a worthless slug and should resign. He folded his sorry ass tent and is down with the cause with Obama. If I was a soldier and had to work under these losers, I could not take it. Imagine your son or daughter abandoned on the battlefield and all we get are these punk excuses for the biggest baddest military in the world. Why the Secretary of State (she said she was responsible–remember?) would send unharmed diplomats into a hell hole place like Benghazi should be instructive of the kind of mindless, reckless, stupid behavior when executing the dumb ass lead from your ass foreign policy of thsi two bit administration. I am sick and tired of these hearings. Who is going to get fired and when? That is the operative questions you fools. So far I see no one paying the ultimate price except the four who lost their lives.
Obama,Clinton, Brennan, Dempsey et al are clearly war criminals. The drone program targets people for execution without even the pretense of a trial. The collateral damage of these attacks wipes out untold numbers of civilians, many of them children. So the leader of the Americans spend their time exoriating the NRA for being the cause of a maniac who killed young children while they sit in their well padded seats in their sumptuous offices sending out order that result in the untold number of children’s deaths. The fact that these leaders of the americans are not seen for what they are by the great unwashed, uninformed, sleazy americans is definite proof that the americans are no better than all the other supporters of totalitarian governments in the previous century. The American world state under Obama and Clinton is a criminal enterprise and anyone with a brain knows it.
Targeted killing, whether by drone or by JDAM, results in less collateral damage and fewer civilian casualties than traditional bombing. I don’t read how you think we should deal with illegal combatants, who don’t observe Geneva conventions as they wage war on both our military forces and our civilians. If they can be snatched, perhaps we can derive intelligence from them, but that’s not always possible, and always requires putting our forces at risk doing so. But doing so we rarely get justice. At worst, they sit in a cell at Guantanamo, where they’re well-fed, well cared for, and get to play soccer. Then they’re freed so they can rejoin the fight.
It does cause much more collateral damage than the old style cloak and dagger assasination though.
Right now we are getting away with it because we are the only ones who can do this sort of thing. That is fine with me but as the technology becaomes more widespread I think we will see some new rules, written or otherwise.
“It does cause much more collateral damage than the old style cloak and dagger assasination though.”
It is also much more possible than cloak and dagger.
There is no insufficiency in the rules of warfare, with respect to war by robot. All the rules of war apply to it, and in and of itself it violates none of them.
There is no more a trial required to kill a terrorist legitimately than there is a guilty verdict required for an infantryman to fire on the enemy, or more analogously, for artillery to fire on direction from credible reports from surveillance. I see no evidence the use of drones is less discriminate or less proportionate than that.
Uninterrupted the terrorists kill civilians by tens and hundreds, and when they can by thousands, and this is their intent. “Civilians” are killed by remotely operated drone operators only by accident and happenstance when in fact it happens, certainly doesn’t happen every time, and many of those “civilians” are fully aware of the danger they invite on themselves and their loved ones, as they shelter those they know to be terrorists.
This is a video I found disturbing and believe most here will be as well!
DHS Practices Mowing Down Civilian “Zombies” During Anti-Terror Training Exercise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwKSJQI3tco&feature=g-user-a&list=PLNhTos49Oq4JHZ5PmBe42JDzhEV97v97z
Remember all of their ammo purchases?
Ron Paul: I’m Waiting for the Fed to Self-Destruct
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH-YmO73sgEfeature=player_embedded#
Maxine Waters: Obama Has a Database on Everything About Every Individual
http://conservativebyte.com/2013/02/maxine-waters-obama-has-a-database-on-everything-about-every-individual/
Well, someone should inform him that he is at odds with the current administration. They have solved the Gitmo problem by making sure no one survives to have to be sent there.
One of the problems with ‘detaining’ terrorists is that when they are incarcerated is that they TEACH and spawn MORE TERRORISTS in prison.