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Drone Warfare: Obama's Secret Assassination Machine

President Obama's mass assassination program, utilizing drones deployed by the CIA and the Pentagon, has reached such proportions that even the Washington Post has come out with a serious expose of the President's obsession with high-altitude extra-judicial executions. In an extensive report on Dec. 28, Greg Miller revealed that, in order to avoid detentions, President Obama has opted for simply "taking out" the people placed on his Administration's anti-terror hit lists.

"No president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation's security goals" as President Obama, he wrote. And the Administration has structured the program in such a way that no serious Congressional oversight is exercised. Both the CIA and the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) have separate drone surveillance and assassination capabilities, both draw up their own target lists and operate under separate statutes, which means that the Congressional Intelligence committees only receive information on the CIA, and the Armed Services committees only on JSOC. Frequently, the CIA and JSOC work together, further blurring the lines between the military and intelligence community, and their operations centers have computer and other interface.

According to the Post report and a June 2011 Congressional Budget Office study, "Policy Options for Unmanned Aircraft Systems," the Pentagon has 775 drones deployed currently, with 30 of those drones assigned to the CIA. Under a compartmentalized top-secret program established after 9/11, the CIA additionally has an undisclosed number of drones, including RQ-170 stealth drones. Over the next ten years, according to the CBO study, the Pentagon plans to purchase 730 additional drones at a cost of an estimated $37 billion.

According to one senior Administration source cited by Miller, President Obama is "hands on," taking great interest in the drone assassination program. When the former Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, challenged the expansion of the drone killings, and called for broader debate before proceeding ahead, he was fired by President Obama. Furthermore, according to the same source, there are at least 2-3 meetings per month at the White House to review the drone warfare programs in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. The U.S. presently has clandestine drone bases in six countries, and dozens of clandestine sites throughout the United States from which the programs are run.

Miller cited an example of how the CIA and JSOC hit operations are deployed interchangeably. The CIA stalked Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen from June 2011 to September, when he was killed. Four CIA drones, as well as JSOC drones, tracked his every move, waiting for an opportunity to kill him with minimal added casualties. Weeks later, it was JSOC that assassinated al-Awlaki's son while he was attending a birthday party in Yemen. JSOC claimed that the son was an innocent bystander, and that the target of the drone attack was Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian who was on their assassination target list.

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