Obama Adviser Discusses Using Military on Terrorists

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — John O. Brennan, the top counterterrorism adviser to President Obama, on Friday defended a broad conception of where the United States can use military force against members of Al Qaeda and its allies.

Mr. Brennan also denounced a proposal in Congress to mandate military detention of terrorism suspects — even those captured on United States soil. His remarks were part of a speech on the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policy and the rule of law, delivered before a conference at Harvard Law School.

Mr. Brennan’s remarks about the ability to use military force came against the backdrop of a debate, reported on Friday by The New York Times, between lawyers at the State Department and the Pentagon over the limits of military force in places like Yemen and Somalia.

In that region, the State Department has argued, the United States may — as a matter of self-defense — lawfully kill high-level militants who are involved in plots to attack the United States, but not low-level militants who are focused on parochial concerns. The Defense Department has argued that it can attack members of Al Qaeda and its allies, although the dispute has remained latent so far because the policy has been to strike at only “high-value individuals.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/us/john-o-brennan-on-use-of-military-force-against-al-qaeda.html

[NBachers]

1. The republican party is terrorists

[jakeXT]

2. Time to bomb Washington ?

Bosnia, Kosovo, and Now Libya: The Human Costs of Washington’s On-Going Collusion with Terrorists

Peter Dale Scott

Twice in the last two decades, significant cuts in U.S. and western military spending were foreseen: first after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But both times military spending soon increased, and among the factors contributing to the increase were America’s interventions in new areas: the Balkans in the 1990s, and Libya today.1 Hidden from public view in both cases was the extent to which al-Qaeda was a covert U.S. ally in both interventions, rather than its foe.

U.S. interventions in the Balkans and then Libya were presented by the compliant U.S. and allied mainstream media as humanitarian. Indeed, some Washington interventionists may have sincerely believed this. But deeper motivations – from oil to geostrategic priorities – were also at work in both instances.

In virtually all the wars since 1989, America and Islamist factions have been battling to determine who will control the heartlands of Eurasia in the post-Soviet era. In some countries – Somalia in 1993, Afghanistan in 2001 – the conflict has been straightforward, with each side using the other’s excesses as an excuse for intervention.

But there have been other interventions in which Americans have used al-Qaeda as a resource to increase their influence, for example Azerbaijan in 1993. There a pro-Moscow president was ousted after large numbers of Arab and other foreign mujahedin veterans were secretly imported from Afghanistan, on an airline hastily organized by three former veterans of the CIA’s airline Air America. (The three, all once detailed from the Pentagon to the CIA, were Richard Secord, Harry Aderholt, and Ed Dearborn.)2 This was an ad hoc marriage of convenience: the mujahedin got to defend Muslims against Russian influence in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, while the Americans got a new president who opened up the oilfields of Baku to western oil companies.
http://japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3578

[Beam Me Up]

3. +1 n/t

[No Elephants]

4. Take note, all of you who expect Tahrir Square in D.C.

In the U.S., law enforcement, state, local and federal, has long loved to identify activists as a threat to the Homeland.

[ixion]

5. More Obama Admin holding up neocon policy BS

just f'n ducky. :grr: :argh:

[Hugabear]

6. I see the War against Islam is still going strong

If we're serious about going after terrorists, why not go after the terrorists who are the biggest threat to the US - the far-right, extremist Christian groups here in the US?