Drones In The Dark

"Drone warfare should be obscene and not heard"

Or sump to that defect - check it out, check it outers....

Whether lawmakers back the Pentagon or the C.I.A. reflects, to some degree, their proprietary interest in protecting their fiefdoms. The Intelligence Committee oversees the undisclosed drone strikes conducted by the C.I.A. in Pakistan and Yemen, while Armed Services does the same for the Pentagon’s strikes in the official war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. (Mr. McCain is on Armed Services, and has made a career of criticizing the work of Congressional appropriators.) Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, has been openly skeptical about whether the Pentagon can effectively conduct the drone strikes as well as the C.I.A.

But what’s really at issue in this dispute isn’t military competence; it’s the competing goals of secrecy and accountability. The administration wanted to shift control of the strikes to the Pentagon as part of a plan for greater transparency. At the moment, it officially acknowledges the Pentagon program, but won’t discuss or even admit the fact that the C.I.A. fires bombs at terror targets in Pakistan.

Many people in Congress like it that way. As long as the drone strikes are never discussed outside the sealed hearing room of the Intelligence Committee, the country doesn’t have to be accountable for the success or failure of the program, and neither do the lawmakers who authorize it. If the Pentagon takes over, the legal scrutiny of the strikes will grow, and that could limit the scope of the program.   

There’s a strong faction on Capitol Hill that prefers keeping the public in the dark about the country’s endless secret war against terrorists, and this time it won.

Pic - "Great Satan's Killing Machine"