CIA To Hand Over Drone Program To Pentagon? 142
An anonymous reader writes "According to a report at The Daily Beast, the Obama administration has decided to give the drone program to the Pentagon, taking it away from the CIA. This could lead to increased transparency for the program and stricter requirements for drone strikes. From the article: 'Officials anticipate a phased-in transition in which the CIA’s drone operations would be gradually shifted over to the military, a process that could take as little as a year. Others say it might take longer but would occur during President Obama’s second term. “You can’t just flip a switch, but it’s on a reasonably fast track,” says one U.S. official. During that time, CIA and DOD operators would begin to work more closely together to ensure a smooth hand-off. The CIA would remain involved in lethal targeting, at least on the intelligence side, but would not actually control the unmanned aerial vehicles. Officials told The Daily Beast that a potential downside of the agency’s relinquishing control of the program was the loss of a decade of expertise that the CIA has developed since it has been prosecuting its war in Pakistan and beyond. At least for a period of transition, CIA operators would likely work alongside their military counterparts to target suspected terrorists.'"
Re:In related news ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I suspect when all is said and done that the CIA will still have surveillance drones, and just the armed drones will go to the military (where they really should be anyway).
At least, that'll be the public line...
Re:So... (Score:2, Interesting)
Yup - the President is still commander in chief of the armed forces. This changes nothing but makes a great PR story for slashdot to pass on...
See? He's no longer in control of the drone strikes because it's under the control of the Pentagon now...
The first question anyone should ask is... if the CIA has been running its own defacto military force with its own strikes that means the CIA has been running its own war... WTF have they been doing that we don't know about?!
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Does this mean the President can still murder his own citizens whenever he feels like it?
Well, not legally, obviously, but if he can do it secretly, the law will count for as much as a politician's promise.
Re:Transparancy? Or dodging? (Score:4, Interesting)
During the transition period, the Pentagon will murder whoever the CIA asks them to, and vice versa, and it will be impossible to pin blame on either of them.
After the transition, the CIA will probably keep using drones the same way as before, just keeping it slightly more secret, and pulling out different legal nonsense when they get caught.
Re:Obama = Another Nobel Prize (Score:4, Interesting)
OMFG. "Obama Stopped Two Wars"
You have to be fucking joking or retarded.
Iraq: Iraq ended because the Iraqi government refused to extend the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) which was set to expire in December 2011 (date ring a bell?). Obama tried in the time period before SOFA expired to get the Iraqis to extend it. That was politically impossible for the Iraqi government partly as a result of war crimes confirmed by the information Bradley Manning released through Wikileaks. That's who you should thank for ending Iraq because if Obama had had his way, we'd still be there. But when Democrats get a hold of the FACT that what Obama did was fail to extend the war, they say "Iraq over: Check!" As if Obama is some peacenik. By that same logic, you should be lauding as a hero any person who intends to shoot a bunch of people on campus, but gets arrested before he can go on a rampage. Obviously, the guy is a humanitarian -- look at how many people he saved by failing to do what he wanted to. THAT is exactly the logic used to commend Obama on the end of the Iraq war.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/26/obama-iraq_n_1032507.html [huffingtonpost.com]
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/wikileaks_cables_and_the_iraq_war/singleton/ [salon.com]
As for the second war -- which was that? Afghanistan is still going (and remember, Obama tripled the troops there, GWB's max was about 35k, we're still at around 65K troops, so still almost double) and Libya is spilling over into Mali. Of course Libya is a thing in itself -- even GWB had congressional approval for the Iraq debacle, but Libya was prosecuted without that token congressional acknowledgment required by the War Powers Act (a law designed in the post Viet Nam error to prevent future Viet Nams) because our constitution says that wars are not declared by the president, but by congress. So next time we have a Dick Cheney type in the office and he decides he's going to war with anyone and everyone, Congress be damned, remember to send Obama a "thank you" note.
And how is that even after Iraq ended, Obama can't figure out how to spend less on the offense budget than GWB did in his worst (i.e., highest spending) year?
offense spending (Trillions)
2007: 0.7T
2008: 0.7T
2009: 0.8T
2010: 0.8T
2011: 0.9T
2012: 0.9T
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/breakdown_2012USrt_13rs5n [usgovernmentspending.com]
Obama is up 200 billion over GWB in military spending and he cries big sad tears about the sequester which is what, 80B? Even if the entire sequester came out of the military budget, we'd still be paying 120B more than we were when the Iraq war that Obama failed to extend, was hot.
Wise up and quit being an apologist for the worst president ever -- which is an amazing feat considering the depths GWB plumbed.