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CIA To Hand Over Drone Program To Pentagon?
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.'"
Sorry you lost control of your toy, CIA.
You are permitted to read, but not to erase.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
It could be more transparency, or it could be the administration trying to confuse things (as they have done with other hot issues) by changing the owner and trying to either divest responsibility or knowledge. "I don't knwo what's going on in that program - we don't do that here" or "We transferred all records when we transferred the program. What do you mean they were lost?"
This could lead to increased transparency for the program and stricter requirements for drone strikes.
HAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaa ha. Funny. This is the same administration that was mercilessly mocked by Jon Stewart for it's total and abject lack of transparency, to the point of trying to use a "jedi mind meld trick" on the assembled reporters regarding the mere existance of the requirements... which were basically "We'll do whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want, to whomever we want."
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It may just be switching a program from one hand to another, from my viewpoint in the regular military I think it's a step in the right direction. A huge chunk of my coworkers are the "freedom loving gun nut" types-- and regardless of your opinion of the "God Bless 'murrica" crowd, if the order ever comes down to kill Americans, they'll be the first ones to refuse that order. Same goes for forcibly taking guns away, or any other egregious violations of basic human rights.
It's acceptable because it's not Bush who's doing it.
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...
This could lead to increased transparency for the program and stricter requirements for drone strikes.
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?!
Does this mean the President can still murder his own citizens whenever he feels like it?
No.
I still can't work out how this is acceptable to anyone in the western world?
I don't know that it is.
Well, then, we need to get all those drone strikes completed before 2016.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If you're going to prosecute the "war on terror" as an actual war, from an organization standpoint this makes sense. However, the whole reason the CIA was given the program to start with was they were supposed to have human intelligence on the ground to identify targets. I'm curious to know if the CIA wasn't very effective in that area, the CIA will still be providing HUMINT, or the military will be expected to do so.
Don't be silly. The CIA already has a better drone program, they're just dumping their old crap on the military.
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.
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.
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...
Heh if you really believe that what we do with the military is a decision that actually ORIGINATES with the President and only happens with the President's personal agreement and approval ... well, in that case you have a lot to learn about how American power actually works. We've been Fascist for quite a while now. Even when Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex, even then it was a bit too late. Too much inertia is behind it.
It's like what Douglas Adams said. The President exists not to wield power, but to distract attention away from it. The illusion of choice is very important to the power elites and their idea of maintaining order. The truth is, a two-party system is the perfect way to control things while making it look like you could actually vote for change. The trick is, "change" is code for "becoming more so". Truth is, no candidate who sincerely wanted to change things would ever get the sponsorship and political support it takes (from the real power behind the throne) to win an election.
Is that instead of one there will now be two agencies doing drone missions. The Pentagon will take over, but the CIA will still do it in secret.
CAPTCHA: Truthful
It's more than a "step"...
Obama is quietly doing to the CIA what Kennedy tried to do (and cost him his life)...
Obama is clipping the military/industrial complex's wings. All the 'black helicopter' set is completely missing this...
Thank you Dave Raggett
What does it matter if it's a drone? What's the difference between a drone and a regular fighter jet? Or missiles launched from ships? You're all acting like there's some new element in all this, but there isn't, it's still the American armed forces taking out targets. This has been going on for a very very long time...
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
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
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/wikileaks_cables_and_the_iraq_war/singleton/
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
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.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Seriously, for a president who ran on the idea of being the most transparent president in history.... well lets just say that it was opposite day when he made that statement.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
You know that stopping a war is not stopping a car, right?
If Obama had not taken action then we would not be leaving now, that's for sure. Are you really saying Romney and the GOP would have done the same???
You didn't disprove my contention at all. Obama, as commander and chief, ordered the ending of our operations in Iraq/Afghanistan.
No one but him could do it.
Thank you Dave Raggett
And if martians give him a super shrink ray then he can just zap anyone he wants and feed them to goldfish.
Look...you want to say something like this:
you need to present a serious number of links and some logic.
On the face of it you're making flamebait claims. Start making sense or don't expect a response. Please include links in your response.
I'm a 'shill' for a non-biased, honest look at what Obama has done and what this 'drone' thing means in that context....can you participate in such a discussion?
Thank you Dave Raggett