{"id":137434,"date":"2013-02-18T10:00:56","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T15:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?p=137434"},"modified":"2013-12-09T11:28:55","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T16:28:55","slug":"obama-whistleblower-drones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/02\/18\/obama-whistleblower-drones\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s War On Whistleblowers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Article:<\/strong> U.S. media complicit in Obama’s drone doctrine<\/a> by Neil MacDonald in CBC News.<\/p>\n

The Text:<\/strong> In 2001, when Israel started killing militant Palestinian enemies (and, often, innocent bystanders) with missiles fired from helicopters hovering so high you could barely see them, foreign reporters were urged by the Israeli government to call the practice \u201ctargeted killing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of us, including many of my American colleagues, preferred the term \u201cextrajudicial assassination.\u201d We felt we were in the news business, not the euphemism business.<\/p>\n

Today, 12 years later, the Washington Post carries a front-page headline about the U.S. drone program titled, \u201cTargeted killings face new scrutiny.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Yet another government document has been leaked, this time a so-called \u201cwhite paper\u201d in which the U.S. Department of Justice lays out the administration\u2019s justification for killing American citizens it suspects of belonging to Al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n

U.S. media outlets, it seems, are perfectly comfortable with the term \u201ctargeted killing,\u201d now that it is a major tool for the Pentagon and CIA.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also clear American media outlets are comfortable suppressing news the government does not want published. Today\u2019s story reveals not just that the Americans have operated a secret drone base for years in Saudi Arabia, but that the Post, along with various other news organizations, have been keeping that fact to themselves at the government\u2019s request.<\/p>\n

History of suppressing sensitive information<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t the first time such information has been suppressed. In 2005, bowing to the White House, the New York Times for months kept confidential the fact that the Bush administration had been carrying out warrantless wiretapping. The revelations eventually provoked Congress to pass a new law.<\/p>\n

Reports on the U.S. drone program, also based on leaks, have described how Barack Obama\u2019s administration has become ever more dependent on remote-controlled killing. Obama himself reportedly signs off personally on each target.<\/p>\n

The American public has been largely unconcerned with the program, except when the person killed has been an American citizen. (The U.S., unlike many other countries, accords its citizens special protections from government intrusions.)<\/p>\n

That is the focus of the latest leak. The \u201cwhite paper\u201d in today\u2019s story appears under the arid title \u201cLawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qaeda or an Associated Force.\u201d<\/p>\n

The term \u201csenior operational leader\u201d appears to be key. An American citizen who is a low-level fighter would appear to enjoy a legal immunity that does not extend to foreign nationals suspected of planning or involvement in attacks on Americans.<\/p>\n

As the Post story rather dryly notes, \u201cThe number of attacks on Americans is minuscule compared with the broader toll of the drone campaign, which has killed more than 3,000 militants and civilians in hundreds of strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is an accompanying article today on the astonishing fact that 54 countries, including Canada, have participated in or enabled the CIA\u2019s \u201cextraordinary rendition\u201d program of sending suspected militants to be interrogated, sometimes under torture, in secret prisons and by totalitarian regimes worldwide.<\/p>\n

Twelve years ago, reporters had a different term for that sort of thing, too: kidnapping.<\/p>\n

Obama’s ‘war on whistleblowers’<\/p>\n

All these hardened security measures were begun under the Bush administration. President Obama, who once denounced them and even, as president, ordered Bush legal memos be made public, has not just amplified Bush\u2019s programs, but has begun vigorously hunting down and prosecuting officials who leak details.<\/p>\n

And that is one initiative the American media is not so comfortable with.<\/p>\n

Some are calling it Obama\u2019s \u201cwar on whistleblowers.\u201d Current Attorney-General Eric Holder has prosecuted more officials for leaking information to reporters than any of his predecessors since the Second World War.<\/p>\n

The government has hunted down intelligence officials who leaked details of expensive programs to spy on internet traffic, wiretaps placed in the Israeli embassy in Washington and of Obama\u2019s personal involvement in selecting drone targets.<\/p>\n

The lawyer for one of those officials said Holder\u2019s prosecutors \u201cdon\u2019t distinguish between bad people \u2013 people who spy for other governments, people who sell secrets for money \u2013 and people who are accused of having conversations and discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several news outlets have noted, rather acidly, that the administration seems fairly expert at leaking classified material that makes the government look good.<\/p>\n

None of this makes Obama different from any previous president. It just demonstrates his ability to keep the nation\u2019s media on board, and mete out punishment when they publish the wrong sorts of secrets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Article: U.S. media complicit in Obama’s drone doctrine by Neil MacDonald in CBC News. The Text: In 2001, when Israel started killing militant Palestinian enemies (and, often, innocent bystanders) with missiles fired from helicopters hovering so high you could barely see them, foreign reporters were urged by the Israeli government to call the practice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":137435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nObama's War On Whistleblowers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As more and more outrage spreads on Obama's drone doctrine, the president has begun hunting down and prosecuting officials who leak details.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/02\/18\/obama-whistleblower-drones\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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