U.S. defends unilateral capture or kill doctrine

[Brooklyn Red Leg]

By KIMBERLY DOZIER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. will keep targeting al-Qaida anywhere in the world, including in countries unable or unwilling to do it themselves, the top U.S. counter terror official said Friday.

White House counter terror chief John Brennan laid out what could be called the Osama bin Laden raid doctrine, in remarks at Harvard Law School. He says under international law, the U.S. can protect itself with pre-emptive action against suspects the U.S. believes present an imminent threat, wherever they are.

That amounts to a legal defense of the unilateral Navy SEAL raid into Pakistan that killed al-Qaida mastermind bin Laden in May, angering Pakistan. It also explains the thinking behind other covert counterterrorist action, like the CIA’s armed drone campaign that only this week killed a top al-Qaida operative in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The Obama administration has quadrupled drone strikes against al-Qaida targets since taking office.

The Obama administration has more recently expanded drone strikes and the occasional special-operations raid into areas like Somalia, where the weak government may be willing to fight al-Qaida but lacks the resources. Navy SEALs targeted al-Qaida operative Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in Somalia in 2009, by helicopter. The SEALs then landed to pick up his body and bury it at sea, just as bin Laden was later interred.

“We reserve the right to take unilateral action if or when other governments are unwilling or unable to take the necessary actions themselves,” Brennan said.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/17/2411507/us-asserts-unilateral-terrorist.html

And as a bonus, another big prison is going in at Bagram Airbase....

U.S. to build new massive prison in Bagram
By Glenn Greenwald

As the Obama administration announced plans for hundreds of billions of dollars more in domestic budget cuts, it late last week solicited bids for the construction of a massive new prison in Bagram, Afghanistan. Posted on the aptly named FedBizOps.Gov website which it uses to announce new privatized spending projects, the administration unveiled plans for "the construction of Detention Facility in Parwan (DFIP), Bagram, Afghanistan" which includes "detainee housing capability for approximately 2000 detainees." It will also feature "guard towers, administrative facility and Vehicle/Personnel Access Control Gates, security surveillance and restricted access systems." The announcement provided: "the estimated cost of the project is between $25,000,000 to $100,000,000."

In the U.S., prisons are so wildly overcrowded that courts are ordering them to release inmates en masse because conditions are so inhumane as to be unconstitutional (today, the FBI documented that a drug arrest occurs in the U.S. once every 19 seconds, but as everyone knows, only insane extremists and frivolous potheads advocate an end to that war). In the U.S., budgetary constraints are so severe that entire grades are being eliminated, the use of street lights restricted, and the most basic services abolished for the nation's neediest. But the U.S. proposes to spend up to $100 million on a sprawling new prison in Afghanistan.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/09/19/bagram/index.html

Now, I have to ask what in the bloody hell it is going to take for the Obama apologists on this board to rebuke him? What is it going to take for the Obama apologists on this board to stop standing silent on the abuses of foreigners that Obama is visiting upon the world?