OF THE
TIMES
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.Just ponder that: not only the Democratic Party, but also its progressive faction, is wildly enamored of "one of the most militarily aggressive American leaders in decades." That's quite revealing on multiple levels. Bergen does note that irony: he recalls that Obama used his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech to defend the justifications for war and points out: "if those on the left were listening, they didn't seem to care." He adds that "the left, which had loudly condemned George W. Bush for waterboarding and due process violations at Guantánamo, was relatively quiet when the Obama administration, acting as judge and executioner, ordered more than 250 drone strikes in Pakistan since 2009, during which at least 1,400 lives were lost."
[These] dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrestedShipler goes on to describe the elaborate entrapment methods followed by the FBI and its agents and asks:
This is legal, but is it legitimate? Without the F.B.I., would the culprits commit violence on their own? Is cultivating potential terrorists the best use of the manpower designed to find the real ones? Judging by their official answers, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department are sure of themselves - too sure, perhaps.In most cases, entrapment defenses do not hold up in court because 'the law requires that they show no predisposition to commit the crime, even when induced by government agents.' The entrapment schemes followed by the FBI are distinctive because, before the 9/11 attacks, 'it would be very unusual for the F.B.I. to present a crime opportunity that wasn't in the scope of the activities that a person was already involved in' and that is because 'There isn't a business of terrorism in the United States'. So what the FBI has to do, apparently, is 'find somebody who would jump at the opportunity if a real terrorist showed up in town.' (Someone indulging in 'Thought Crimes' before those thoughts were directed toward action?)
Comment: We won't go into Navy Seals and Osama. Osama bin Laden corpse photo is fake
Instead we'll travel down memory lane about these Drones that somehow miss civilians:
Drone kills 25 on eve of mass protest, US drone strike kills 25 in Pakistan, US drone kills 8 in Pakistan, drone strikes have killed over 130 in Yemen, US Drone Strike Kills 78 in Somalia, US drone strike kills 23 in Pakistan It's easy to get to over 250 men, women and children. Perhaps Brennan ran out of fingers or forgot a digit? And this small group of articles isn't the whole, and if you think about it, what about the forgotten and hushed numbers that didn't make it into the main stream media?