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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=usgp-media@gp-us.org
href="mailto:usgp-media@gp-us.org">usgp-media@gp-us.org</A> ; <A
title=dlj725@hughes.net href="mailto:dlj725@hughes.net">dlj725@hughes.net</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Monday, June 04, 2012 8:57 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> There’s a Cancer on the Presidency, Called Barack
Obama</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV dir=ltr><FONT size=4>CounterPunch Diary <BR></FONT>
<H1>There’s a Cancer on the Presidency, Called Barack Obama</H1><FONT size=2>by
ALEXANDER COCKBURN <BR>Never trust a president who claims he reads himself to
sleep with the help of Marcus Aurelius. That was Bill Clinton, who claimed this
thundering imperial bore never strayed far from his hand.<BR>Most certainly view
with profound suspicion a president who professes to be guided in his conduct in
grave moral matters by Augustine and Aquinas, two very different characters.
Just as civilization would have profited if the rope lowering St Paul to the
ground from that tower in Damascus had broken fifty feet up, a death in the
cradle for Augustine would have spared humanity much horror from his poisonous
doctrines on original sin and other matters.<BR>Aquinas was a different matter.
A jovial fellow, among other things he loved fresh herring, and when he was
dying he asked for some. At this point a fishing boat in the Mediterranean
hauled an unprecedented netful of herring and the unexpected catch was slated
for a while as the second miracle required for Thomas’ canonization.<BR>The
excellent, astounding New York Times story by Jo Becker and Scot Shane published
on May 29 and vigorously discussed </FONT><U><FONT color=#0000ff size=2><FONT
color=#0000ff size=2>on this site</U></FONT></FONT><FONT size=2> by Ralph Nader,
says that Obama decided to take personal control of the White House’s secret and
unconstitutional death list after reading Augustine and Aquinas. "A student of
writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, he believes that he should take
moral responsibility for such actions. And he knows that bad strikes can tarnish
America’s image and derail diplomacy." Notice how the paragraph devolves rapidly
from moral duty to pr.<BR>Aquinas, using Augustine, defined a just war
thus:<BR></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE>First, war must occur for a good and just purpose rather than for
self-gain or as an exercise of power. Second, just war must be waged by a
properly instituted authority such as the state. Third, peace must be a
central motive even in the midst of violence.</BLOCKQUOTE><FONT size=2>Does the
following suggest itself to you as a properly instituted authority:<BR></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE>Every week or so, more than 100 members of the government’s
sprawling national security apparatus gather, by secure video teleconference,
[to] pore over terrorist suspects’ biographies — PowerPoint slides bearing the
names, aliases and life stories of suspected members of Al Qaeda’s branch in
Yemen or its allies in Somalia’s Shabab militia — and recommend to the
president who should be the next to die.</BLOCKQUOTE><FONT size=2>Then the baton
passes to Obama poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official
calls the macabre "baseball cards" of an unconventional war. When a rare
opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is
with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral
calculation.<BR>See St Thomas in action:<BR></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE>Then, in August 2009, the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, told
Mr. Brennan that the agency had Mr. Mehsud in its sights. But taking out the
Pakistani Taliban leader, Mr. Panetta warned, did not meet Mr. Obama’s
standard of "near certainty" of no innocents being killed. In fact, a strike
would certainly result in such deaths: he was with his wife at his in-laws’
home.</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>"Many times," General Jones said, in similar circumstances, "at
the 11th hour we waved off a mission simply because the target had people
around them and we were able to loiter on station until they
didn’t."</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>But not this time. Mr. Obama, through Mr. Brennan, told the C.I.A.
to take the shot, and Mr. Mehsud was killed, along with his wife and, by some
reports, other family members as well, said a senior intelligence official…
When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his
family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final
moral calculation.</BLOCKQUOTE><FONT size=2>Obama makes moral decision-making
easier on himself:<BR></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE>Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian
casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age
males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration
officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them
innocent.</BLOCKQUOTE><FONT size=2>We’ve had accounts of presidents dooming
people to death: LBJ or Nixon thumping the maps and shouting Bomb them back to
the stone age. There’s an altogether different, chill timbre to the account of
Obama as <I>maestro </I>of the death list. It clearly disquieted many in the
host of on-the-record sources mustered by Becker and Shane.<BR></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE>Dennis C. Blair, director of national intelligence until he was
fired in May 2010, said that discussions inside the White House of long-term
strategy against Al Qaeda were sidelined by the intense focus on strikes. "The
steady refrain in the White House was, ‘This is the only game in town’ —
reminded me of body counts in Vietnam," said Mr. Blair, a retired admiral who
began his Navy service during that war….</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>And Mr. Obama’s ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, has
complained to colleagues that the <U><FONT color=#0000ff>C.I.A.</U></FONT>’s
strikes drive American policy there, saying "he didn’t realize his main job
was to kill people," a colleague said…</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>Mr. Hayden, the former C.I.A. director and now an adviser to Mr.
Obama’s Republican challenger, Mr. Romney, commended the president’s
aggressive counterterrorism record, which he said had a "Nixon to China"
quality. But, he said, "secrecy has its costs" and Mr. Obama should open the
strike strategy up to public scrutiny.</BLOCKQUOTE>
<BLOCKQUOTE>"This program rests on the personal legitimacy of the president,
and that’s not sustainable," Mr. Hayden said. "I have lived the life of
someone taking action on the basis of secret O.L.C. memos, and it ain’t a good
life. Democracies do not make war on the basis of legal memos locked in a
D.O.J. safe."</BLOCKQUOTE><FONT size=2>Of course the more you get used to
consigning human Power Point Cards to incineration, without constitutional
review, the slightest form of check or balance, the stronger the psychic
mechanisms of self justification come into play:<BR></FONT>
<BLOCKQUOTE>But the control he exercises also appears to reflect Mr. Obama’s
striking self-confidence: he believes, according to several people who have
worked closely with him, that his own judgment should be brought to bear on
strikes.</BLOCKQUOTE><FONT size=2>The larger picture? The entire policy is
insane. Every time a drone lands on a suspect al Quaeda leader and kills him and
his entourage, the recruitment basis for Al Qaeda widens, the loathing of
America deepens..<BR>There’s a "growing cancer" in the White House, John Dean
famously advised Richard Nixon. Beyond doubt there’s a "growing cancer" now,
settled in the Oval Office, studying his Power Point Death list every week.<B>
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