I Always Feel Like, Somebody's Watching Me

Big Brother’s eye in the sky. Coming soon to a neighborhood near you:

“Drones are mainly associated with the Predator airships that patrol the Afghanistan sky. But thanks to a bipartisan vote last week, the public can expect 30,000 domestic drones flying over the United States in the next eight years.

[...]

Yesterday, we reported how the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVS), a drone trade group, actually doubled its recent lobbying expenses. Today, we report on a PowerPoint presentation put together by top AUVS lobbyists...The lobby group — which maintains an official partnership in Congress with Reps. Buck McKeon (R-CA), Henry Cuellar (D-TX), and dozens of other lawmakers — was the driving force behind the domestic drone decision passed last week.”

Here is just one of the concerns:

– Pages 10-12: The drone industry eagerly anticipates that civil drone use, including use of drones for “suspect tracking” by law enforcement, will soon eclipse military use of drones. Under a section called “Challenges facing UAS,” the lobbyists listed “Civil Liberties.”

Civil liberties are a challenge? Since when?

TSA Peep Show at DFW Airport

The Transportation Security Administration: Keeping us safe from terrorists with “cute figures”:

"The Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) is coming under fire for allegedly doing “peep show” naked body scans of women who agents think are attractive.

Ellen Terrell told CBS 11 in Dallas that agents at DFW International Airport asked her to go through the invasive scanner three times because “[t]hey wanted a nice good look.”

A female agent at the checkpoint surprised Terrell by asking, “Do you play tennis?”

“And I said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘You just have such a cute figure,’” the Texan recalled.

Speaking to agents viewing the scans in another room, the female agent claimed the images had been “blurry” and asked Terrell to go through a second and third time. But after the third scan, the female agent appeared to get frustrated as she radioed her co-workers.

“She’s talking into her microphone and she says, ‘Guys, it is not blurry, I’m letting her go. Come on out,’” Terrell said.While only female agents are allowed to pat down female travelers, the agency does allow male agents to view body scans of females."

National security in the hands of minimum wage rent-a-cops with the maturity level of a junior high school boy. I feel safer now.

Democrats Owe President Bush an Apology

The  Washington Post has some poll numbers that sadly confirm what I've suspected for some time was the case. Suspected based on the silence of the majority of my fellow Democrats, both those who hold office as well as the rank and file of the party, as President Obama has continued–and in some cases expanded upon–the previous administration’s national security policies.  All the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth from Democrats when Bush and Cheney were running the Constitution and the Bill of Rights through the paper shredder had nothing to do with those rights and liberties being taken away, it was all about the party affiliation of the president who was doing the taking:

 "The survey shows that 70 percent of respondents approve of Obama's decision to keep open the prison at Guantanamo Bay... Even the party base appears willing to forgive that failure. The poll shows that 53 percent of self-identified liberal Democrats -- and 67 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats -- support keeping Guantanamo Bay open, even though it emerged as a symbol of the post-Sept. 11 national security policies of President George W. Bush, which many liberals bitterly opposed.
                                                                                                                                        ...The Post-ABC News poll found that 83 percent of Americans approve of Obama's drone policy, which administration officials refuse to discuss, citing security concerns...But fully 77 percent of liberal Democrats endorse the use of drones, meaning that Obama is unlikely to suffer any political consequences as a result of his policy in this election year."

Greg Sargent has more:

"The Post has just released some new polling that demonstrates very strong support for Obama's counterterrorism policies, including 83 percent of Americans approving of his use of drone strikes against terror suspects overseas.

 This finding, however, is particularly startling:

 What if those suspected terrorists are American citizens living in other countries? In that case do you approve or disapprove of the use of drones?

        Approve: 65

        Disapprove: 26

 And get this: Depressingly, Democrats approve of the drone strikes on American citizens by 58-33, and even liberals approve of them, 55-35. Those numbers were provided to me by the Post polling team."

I'm glad there wasn't a question about waterboarding in this poll, although I suspect the results would have been similar. The typical excuse you'll hear from the above mentioned 58 or 55% goes something like this one from Oliver Willis:

"They [drones] are not perfect by a long stretch, but after over a decade of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is the least bloody option that kills terrorists."

Yeah, least bloody for us and the guys with joysticks playing computer war games in Las Vegas. Not so much the innocents (including American servicemen) who happen to be in the vicinity when a drone kills those suspected terrorists. Screw 'em. Collateral damage dontcha know.

But this is number one on the Hit Parade, the old 'I trust Obama excuse':

                                                                                                                                               "I totally understand the dangers in giving the president the sole power to designate terrorist targets. I'm not comfortable with that much power residing in the executive office. I would trust Barack Obama with that power, but not George Bush, so I don't trust any president with it."

Hello? McFly? Do you think that power walks out the door with President Obama? Look into your crystal ball and tell me who the next five presidents will be. Hell, tell me who will win in November. I don't know about Mr. Willis or any of the other apologists, but I sure as hell wouldn't want President Santorum or President Gingrich to have the power to assassinate or ship off to Gitmo any American who they, for whatever reason--real or imagined--suspected of being a terrorist, or somehow affiliated with some organization which might be construed as a threat to national security. Let's see, with Santorum that might be expanded to include any doctor who performs abortions or provides contraceptives. For Newt Gingrich it could take in any member of the "liberal media" who writes something critical of his foreign policy or a federal judge who happens to hand down a decision with which Gingrich disagrees. Think that's a stretch? Willing to bet it wouldn't happen?

Glenn Greenwald cuts to the inconvenient truth:                                       

                                                                                                                                               "The Democratic Party owes a sincere apology to George Bush, Dick Cheney and company for enthusiastically embracing many of the very Terrorism policies which caused them to hurl such vehement invective at the GOP for all those years. And progressives who support the views of the majority as expressed by this poll should never be listened to again the next time they want to pretend to oppose civilian slaughter and civil liberties assaults when perpetrated by the next Republican President."

The truth will set you free, Democrats. But first it’ll piss you off.

The Obama Administration Pot and the Pakistani Kettle

From the Department of Blatant Hypocrisy, Do As I Say, Not As I Do Division:

“The Obama administration is expressing alarm over reports that thousands of political separatists and captured Taliban insurgents have disappeared into the hands of Pakistan’s police and security forces, and that some may have been tortured or killed.

The concern is over a steady stream of accounts from human rights groups that Pakistan’s security services have rounded up thousands of people over the past decade, mainly in Baluchistan, a vast and restive province far from the fight with the Taliban, and are holding them incommunicado without charges.”

Welcome to the Hotel Gitmo. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

“Separately, the report also described concerns that the Pakistani military had killed unarmed members of the Taliban, rather than put them on trial.

...Two months ago, the United States took the unusual step of refusing to train or equip about a half-dozen Pakistani Army units that are believed to have killed unarmed prisoners and civilians during recent offensives against the Taliban. The most recent State Department report contains some of the administration’s most pointed language about accusations of such so-called extrajudicial killings.”

Kind of like this?

“From the moment he stepped foot inside the White House, Obama set about expanding and escalating a covert CIA program of "targeted killings" inside Pakistan, using Predator and Reaper drones armed with Hellfire missiles..that had been started by the Bush administration in 2004.

On 23 January 2009, just three days after being sworn in, Obama ordered his first set of air strikes inside Pakistan; one is said to have killed four Arab fighters linked to al-Qaida but the other hit the house of a pro-government tribal leader, killing him and four members of his family, including a five-year-old child.

...During his first nine months in office he authorized as many aerial attacks in Pakistan as George W Bush did in his final three years in the job...According to the New America Foundation thinktank in Washington DC, the number of US drone strikes in Pakistan more than doubled in 2010, to 115. That is an astonishing rate of around one bombing every three days inside a country with which the US is not at war.”

And from the Obstruction of Justice Department, Look Forward Division:

“The U.S. Department of Justice has rejected a request from prosecutors in Warsaw for assistance in the investigation into the alleged CIA prisons in Poland, where captives claim they were tortured. On 18 March, the Prosecutor’s Office of Appeal in Warsaw filed a motion for legal assistance from the US Department of Justice into the probe...[T]he US informed prosecutors that the motion had been rejected on the basis of the international Agreement on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters and that the U.S. authorities consider the matter “to be closed”.

So far, the U.S. Justice Department has failed to comply with its treaty obligations to supply information requested by prosecutors in Spain, Germany, Italy, and Poland who are probing allegations of kidnapping, false arrest, assault, and torture by persons believed to be CIA agents in connection with extraordinary rendition operations.”

This has, by far, been my biggest disappointment with the current administration. Legislative policies are one thing-legislation can be amended, superseded, or repealed. But by continuing, and in some cases expanding upon, the Bush administration “war on terror” tactics, and pursuing this “look forward, not back” lunacy, it has now become the accepted and established policy of two successive administrations---one Republican and one Democratic--that the United States of America now condones actions (indefinite detention without charges, denial of due process) that were once upon a time (pre-9/11) considered a violation of our Bill of Rights.

It also lets other countries that enter into treaties with us know that we will abide by the conditions of those treaties only so far as it is convenient and politically expedient for us to do so, and denies us any credibility on the world stage when it comes to the condemnation of other country’s human rights violations.

In short, we prove to the world that America is a nation of preachers and not practicers.