Gaps.

All tried and true border hawks should be concerned. Right, Maverick? LA Times: “Radar shows U.S. border security gaps” latimes.com/news/nationwor… — John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) April 4, 2013 The drones aren’t in wide enough use yet to know what the numbers look like in other spots along the border but that situation may soon be remedied. [...]

Read this post »

"I don't think we need to name any names, do we?"

If you can’t watch it all, pick it up at 16:00 as the big call for a new Republican Party begins. Very rarely do CPAC speeches surprise but Paul’s had a chance just because one never knows where his ongoing libertarian/conservative straddle might take him. An overt pitch to leave marijuana policy to the states? [...]

Read this post »

What could go wrong?

Quite a headline, huh? But I think this says more about Holder’s political skills, or lack thereof, than about the White House instituting any egregious new policy. Remember when Rand Paul said he’d demand an answer from John Brennan on whether the president can kill Americans on American soil? Brennan finally got back to him [...]

Read this post »

Protocol.

The Senate Intel Committee’s seen four memos. Turns out, per Dianne Feinstein, that the White House has many more in its files and is very, very reluctant to share the rest — to the point that it’s willing to make a deal with the hated GOP to keep them covered up. From Wednesday’s NYT: Rather [...]

Read this post »

Accountability.

Good lord. How did I miss this last week? If all you had here was the quotes, you might guess that they came from Dick Cheney or Condi Rice. Actually, scratch that — Condi sounds a bit more dovish about drones than Nancy does. Three words, my friends, just in case O does end up [...]

Read this post »

“There has never been a drone used on an American citizen, on American soil."

A nice catch by the Examiner’s Charlie Spiering, especially after Rand Paul threatened to block Brennan unless/until he provides a straight answer on whether drones can be used against U.S. citizens here in the United States. This doesn’t quite qualify as a straight answer but it’s the closest we’ve come yet: “The rules outside of [...]

Read this post »

Notice.

Via Mediaite, I wonder if Wyden knows that the U.S. did, kinda sorta, give Awlaki a chance to surrender. Remember? About six months before alleged Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Anwar Al-Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in Yemen last year, the U.S. moved to notify him that his American passport had been [...]

Read this post »

US says all drones are accounted for.

Did Iran capture an American drone over the Persian Gulf, or just try to capture the imaginations of the mullahcracy’s subjects? Tehran claims it either shot down or somehow snagged an American intel drone on patrol over the Gulf, but as CNN reports, the US Navy reports that none of its unmanned vehicles are missing: [...]

View the video »

FYI.

Just something that slipped their mind. Happened five days before a presidential election, they revealed it two days after the election. Perfectly up-and-up. Here’s the real question: Why’d Iran fire on it? Spokesman George Little said the incident, which marks the first time the Iranians have fired on a U.S. drone, occurred Nov. 1 at [...]

Read this post »

Heat.

“This tragedy turned into a debacle and massive coverup or massive incompetence in Libya is having an effect on the voters because of their view of the commander in chief,” McCain said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “And it is now the worst coverup or incompetence that I have ever observed in my life.”… “I [...]

Read this post »

Really.

Note that he’s not complaining here on behalf of civilians killed in the drone strikes, nor is he claiming that his brother’s been falsely accused of being a top-flight AQ propagandist. (That’d be hard to do given the number of al-Libi videos floating around.) In fact, he seems to be more offended by the way [...]

Read this post »

Gone.

Reports of his demise were not greatly exaggerated. Al Qaeda’s deputy leader, Abu Yahya al-Libi, was killed in a drone strike in northern Pakistan, an American official confirmed on Tuesday, in the biggest single success in the controversial campaign’s eight-year history… Characterizing what the loss would mean to Al Qaeda, the American official said: “Zawahri [...]

Read this post »

Big fish.

This guy’s been evading America for years. Believe it or not, we once had him in custody: He escaped from Bagram in 2005, was thought killed in a drone strike in 2009 before U.S. intel realized they had the wrong man, and has been working his way up the AQ food chain ever since. Supposedly [...]

Read this post »

The decider.

A dynamite piece, well worth 10 minutes of your time. In fact, there’s no better proof of just how far O’s “evolved” from his 2008 counterterror posture to the “Cheney lite” figure we know today than the number of sources who cooperated with the Times on this story. This isn’t just one “senior administration official” [...]

Read this post »

Really?

The obligatory follow-up to Monday night’s anti-drone cri de coeur from Krauthammer. On the one hand, Chicago is hosting the big NATO summit this weekend, for which security should be airtight. Has DHS added a special little birdie to their eyes in the sky? On the other hand, c’mon. Slate reports: A government source familiar [...]

View the video »

"I'm going to go hard left on you here. I'm going to go ACLU."

From last night’s “Special Report.” We’re not talking about armed drones here, of course, just eye-in-the-sky surveillance, but CK says no way regardless. I’m sympathetic to his libertarian impulse but I think his reaction’s being driven by the device’s military application, not its intended police use. The public knows it as an instrument of death [...]

Read this post »

Warrior.

“The president who won the Nobel Peace Prize less than nine months after his inauguration has turned out to be one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades… “Mr. Obama’s readiness to use force — and his military record — have won him little support from the right. Despite countervailing evidence, most conservatives [...]

Read this post »

"The president had three options on his desk, and he rejected all of them."

That’s a good question — and according to former VP Dick Cheney’s contacts, Barack Obama didn’t lack for options to keep the highly-classified drone from falling into the Iranian military’s hands. In an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett, Cheney wonders why Obama didn’t order an air strike on the downed aircraft while he still had [...]

Read this post »

Goodie.

According to a tweet from the Associated Press (and a spate of snarky follow-up tweets from conservative pundits), the president announced today that the United States has officially asked Iran to return a downed U.S. surveillance drone. Iranian officials said just yesterday they have absolutely no intention to return the drone — but I’m sure [...]

View the video »

Room temperature.

This just in from points across the sea. Predator drones struck again, this time in South Waziristan, and served a rather abrupt pink slip to the terrorism career of Ilyas Kashmiri, according to a report from The Long War Journal. The rapidly cooling subject is described as, “one of al Qaeda’s most dangerous military commanders [...]

Read this post »