OBAMA MUST SACK BRENNAN

TIME FOR BRENNAN TO GO!
"It (policies initiated and supported by Mr. Brennan) goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country*"


*US Senator Paul Rand, on floor of Senate during filibuster against Mr. Brennan's nomination as CIA director.

In my view, Mr. Brennan, is another one of the unfortunate "hold-overs" from the Bush Administration. Like some others of his vintage, he has become more of a threat to our Democracy than the bulwark against terror he claims to be. He serves at President Obama's discretion. But his past history and recent actions should make it clear to the White House that it is time for Mr. Brennan's departure.

Mr. Brennan has an unfortunate similarity to disgraced former President Nixon. Like Tricky Dick, the only President to have had to resign from office, Mr. Brennan's long training as a CIA operative, has left him tinged with a nixonian paranoia that does not serve him or the nation he serves well, at a time when the USA is attempting to pull itself away from an errant and violent past. And like Mr. Nixon, he has an unfortunate willingness to break the law or norms of morality if these serve his ambition, or those of his superiors. These are two dangerous tendencies for a supposed servant of the PEOPLE in a Democracy. They led to Nixon's utter disgrace and downfall. Evidence now on display about Brennan seem to suggest a similar path.

Let us recall that Mr. John O. Brennan organized and publicly supported the CIA torture policies and the rendition of resistant suspects to foreign countries where they would be tortured in an even more brutal manner. Due to these and other activities in the CIA his reputation only two years ago was such that he could not be confirmed by the Senate. President Obama skirted that stumbling block by setting him up in the position of "chief counter terrorism advisor", a position which did not need confirmation. In Obama's second term he was confirmed. Mr. Brennan has been cited in the past for using terms and phrases which suggest he believes his mission is a holy war against Islam. He has been the architect and supporter of President Obama's highly criticized and questionable use of targeted assassinations by drone. He is responsible for efforts to intensify the militarization of the CIA into a "uncontrolled and secrete" organization designed to terrorize and assassinate enemies of the state. He was the architect of the expansion of the drone assassination program into Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere, initiating world condemnation of the USA and concern about our adherence to international law and standards, and of the legality, morality and effectiveness of these efforts. He helped establish and organize the "kill list" of individuals outside of the congressionally authorized war zone for assassination by drone. He is the architect of a more permanent secret system known as the "Disposition Matrix" which is a permanent secret "tool" of the executive branch designed to track, capture, render to another venue for torture, or kill enemies of the state. His efforts during his long career have been to dangerously concentrate lethal power in the executive branch and at the same time to discourage oversight of that power, giving the executive ability to incriminate, judge, target, and execute anyone it considered an "enemy"...regardless of where that person resided in the world or even if he or she was a US citizen.

There are numerous examples of Mr. Brennan's deceptions, half truths and perversions of the truth. In his profession disinformation and prevarications are the stock and trade. One example: In a June 2011 speech Brennan made the jaw-dropping assertion that "there had not been a single collateral death in more than 100 CIA covert drone strikes in Pakistan". But he made that statement only three months after the CIA had rained drone missiles down on what the CIA claimed was a militant's camp, but what turned out to be a gathering of tribal leaders--a tribal council-- conducting a hearing over a mining dispute in North Waziristan. The CIA strikes killed 45 innocent men. Brennan late claimed he did not dissimulate. He was able to claim "zero collateral kills" as a result of the way the CIA counts "kills". Since all the 45 individuals were men between the ages of 12 and 65, they were all defined as "militants" and therefore legitimate targets! This is an insight into how Mr. Brennan thinks and operates.

Senator Rand Paul in his filibuster speech in the Senate stated that in effect: the thrust of Mr. Brennan's efforts in the last decades and as Director of the CIA has resulted in a process in which the chief executive can charge an individual, judge the guilt of that person and execute him or her with no oversight by Congress. He concluded that " it goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country."

Is it now such a surprise that this same individual is accused of a "flat out treason" ( by Representative Darrel Issa, chair, House Oversight Committee) for turning his organization's spooks against the Congress itself when it spied on the Senate intelligence Committee?

Two days ago, on March 11, 2014 the Washington Post reported on an extraordinary speech from the floor of the US Senate. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee openly accused the CIA under Mr. Brennan of "secretly removing documents, searching (Senate staff) computers used by the committee, and attempting to intimidate congressional investigators by requesting an FBI inquiry of their conduct." Feinstein called the conflict with Brennan a "defining moment" for Congressional ability to oversee the nation's intelligence agencies. This author believes that if there is no meaningful oversight of our executive branch, we then no longer have a democracy. What we have is some form of phony "elected oligarchy". Feinstein warned that she had grave concerns that the CIA had violated the separation of powers clause of the Constitution. Mr. Brennan quickly denied the validity of Senator Feinstein's charges. But this is a man who also stated with a straight face that there were "zero collateral kills after 100 drone strikes in Pakistan". I suspect that he was applying another one of his Jesuitical semanticisms. Or was it a simple prevarication?

The background behind this outburst of Senate ire is related to the long-running investigation conducted by the Senate intelligence Committee into the conduct of the CIA, during the Bush Administration post 9-11. The CIA and the Senate Committee are at odds about the long-awaited document that is being produced by Feinstein's committee. The committee's report will soon be delivered to the White House where it may remain...in a classified state ---unless President Obama gets up the cohones to release it to the public. Let's hope he does. We all deserve to know what Brennan and his CIA employees have been doing( besides burning tapes of torture procedures)..and not doing, in the name of the people.

What we do know now, based on revelations from Senator Feinstein's speech, and earlier revelations, is that the CIA and the committee disagree over the conclusions of the nearly completed 6000 page report which concerns what the CIA did and did not do to Al Qaida suspects, how the CIA tortured and how they transported these individuals to other countries (rendition) where even more excessive and brutal procedures were used. Brennan would obviously like to prevent this missive from seeing the light of day. He has apparently been doing his best to sabotage committee efforts and prevent it being published. What else would you expect? Mr. Brennan was himself an architect of the very procedures that are only now becoming public knowledge. We can expect that the report will make this clear. According to Feinstein, the torture and rendition policy was far worse than was originally revealed and a horrible example of procedures and policies that should never have been permitted to occur.

Finally, let me say this. This critically important story is indeed a turning point in our nation'a history. How it plays out will establish what kind of a nation we really are. It has also revealed the errors of Mr. Obama's policies. Our President won his first election handily and the electorate expected and deserved a change in the government's direction and policies. It sought and required a clean sweep of the elements of the Bush Administration, and the prosecution and punishment of those (Mr. Brennan among them) who broke the laws. But what we got was a motley crew. The new administration was a mix of progressive men and women mixed in with a cadre of hard-core holdovers from the discredited Bush and Clinton Administrations. As a consequence, Mr.Obama, morphed into a intellectual, dark skinned "Bush light" with better oratory. This new president obviously did not have the experience, political skill, or stomach for the confrontations that were required to take the reins of the nation in a new direction as was his mandate from both elections. He has as a result, weakened the people who supported him, his country, and his party. Perhaps he should have never run.....

Of course, we can always hope. He still has years left. Can he still become the transformative president he wanted to be?

He could start by sacking Brennan.