Heck of a Job, Brennan

Dear Mr. President,
The Senate Intelligence Committee, responsible for oversight of military and CIA activities, under Charwoman Feinstein has been a disaster, turning a blind eye to your war crimes. Only Senator Wyden has raised objections to your assassination program. For a year he’s been asking for a list of countries where the CIA is actively killing people. Stonewalled. For months he’s asked for the classified legal memo justifying the killing of Anwar al-Aulaqi. Denied. And now, with the release of the “White Paper” we see why; the legal justification is as flimsy and specious as Bush’s was for torture. Now, with your nomination of the architect of drone wars and targeted assassinations to head the CIA, we finally get a little light on this dark corner of foreign policy. But very little since Feinstein, a national security warhawk, is a Brennan admirer. Yesterday, she cleared the chamber when protests broke out and the next session will be held behind closed doors. And after yesterday’s hearing she parroted Brennan’s lie that civilian casualties from drone attacks are in the single digits. Astounding! Is the Washington bubble so impenetrable that no outside information gets through? The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the Long War Journal, the Stanford/NYU study, many sources document nearly 1,000 civilian casualties. Over the past 11 days, my letters to you, which are also cc’d to Senator Feinstein, list the names of 80 children and 25 adults. Either she’s not reading her mail or she dismisses me as she dismissed Code Pink – and everyone else – from the hearing room yesterday. What’s really appalling, though, is your administration’s arrogant violation of domestic and international law, the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the fundamental principles of democracy and common humanity. You have embraced war rather than peace and made no attempt to investigate or correct the injustices of our foreign policy that resulted in 9/11. Your drone wars have made America more hated, made the world less stable, made us less safe. You’ve wasted trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives on an unjust war without purpose or end and the architect of it all is your man Brennan, a slam-dunk to head the CIA, his reward for a job well-done. Sort of like Bush’s “Heck of a job, Brownie,” after the Katrina disaster only more chilling. Feinstein should be impeached and Brennan – and you – tried for war crimes.

John Brennan defends drone strikes

John Brennan is met by protesters as he arrives for hearings on his confirmation as CIA chief. Photo: Jewel Samad, AFP/Getty Images