The Obama administration expects to continue adding names to its kill list for at least a decade — maybe more — into the future. So reports Greg Miller, writing for the Washington Post. The grand, over-arching plan for hunting terrorists is contained in a database developed by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and disturbingly called the “disposition matrix.” US drones, it turns out — which the Obama administration has only recently acknowledged using — can’t go everywhere.
The database includes the names of suspected terrorists accompanied by a full accounting of the “resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations.”
Glenn Greenwald, writing for the Guardian, reports that the disposition matrix serves “as the centralized clearinghouse for determining who will be executed without due process based upon how one fits into the executive branch’s ‘matrix.'”
A related Washington Post infographic outlines the assassination process.
“Less visible is the extent to which Obama has institutionalized the highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war,” writes Miller who goes on to identify John O. Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser as the primary mover behind the disposition matrix.
Miller also points out that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is pushing the Obama administration to expand the spook agency’s use of armed drones, reflecting “the agency’s transformation into a paramilitary force,” and refusal to return to a primary function of intelligence gathering.
Most disturbing of all is the creation of a permanent bureaucracy to support the president’s growing kill list of assassination targets. The US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is the unit that assassinated Osama bin Laden and has reportedly expanded into Africa. Miller reports that the JSOC is forming the operations core for the kill list:
“JSOC also has established a secret targeting center across the Potomac River from Washington, current and former US officials said. The elite command’s targeting cells have traditionally been located near the front lines of its missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. But JSOC created a ‘national capital region’ task force that is a 15-minute commute from the White House so it could be more directly involved in deliberations about al-Qaeda lists.”
Miller minces no words when describing the goals of the Obama administration’s legacy in routing around our prior collective squeamishness with assassination: “Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the processes that sustain it.”
Greenwald succinctly outlines the purpose of the disposition matrix:
“What has been created here — permanently institutionalized — is a highly secretive executive branch agency that simultaneously engages in two functions: (1) It collects and analyzes massive amounts of surveillance data about all Americans without any judicial review let alone search warrants, and (2) creates and implements a ‘matrix’ that determines the ‘disposition’ of suspects, up to and including execution, without a whiff of due process or oversight. It is simultaneously a surveillance state and a secretive, unaccountable judicial body that analyzes who you are and then decrees what should be done with you, how you should be ‘disposed’ of, beyond the reach of any minimal accountability or transparency.”
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Obama institutionalizes kill list with disposition matrix was originally published by ARTS & FARCES internet on Wednesday, 31 October 2012 at 8:34 AM CDT. Copyright © ARTS & FARCES LLC. All rights reserved. | ISSN: 1535-8119 | OCLC: 48219498 | Digital fingerprint: 974a89ee1284e6e92dd256bbfbef3751 (64.237.45.114)