Obama engages clergy to bless secret "kill list"

WASHINGTON - Nothing else in President Obama’s first term has baffled liberal supporters and confounded conservative critics alike as his aggressive counterterrorism record. His actions have often remained inscrutable, obscured by awkward secrecy rules, polarized political commentary and the president’s own deep reserve.

In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.

They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”

His first term has seen private warnings from top officials about a “Whac-A-Mole” approach to counterterrorism; the invention of a new category of aerial attack following complaints of careless targeting; and presidential acquiescence in a formula for counting civilian deaths that some officials think is skewed to produce low numbers.

The administration’s failure to forge a clear detention policy has created the impression among some members of Congress of a take-no-prisoners policy. And Mr. Obama’s ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, has complained to colleagues that the C.I.A.’s strikes drive American policy there, saying “he didn’t realize his main job was to kill people,” a colleague said.

Beside the president at every step is his counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, who is variously compared by colleagues to a dogged police detective, tracking terrorists from his cavelike office in the White House basement, or a priest whose blessing has become indispensable to Mr. Obama, echoing the president’s attempt to apply the “just war” theories of Christian philosophers to a brutal modern conflict.

President Obama in the Oval Office with Thomas E. Donilon, left, the national
security adviser, and John O. Brennan, his top counterterrorism adviser in a
moment of prayer before signing off on the week's targeted assasination list.
 (Photo: Pete Souza/The White House) 

It is the strangest of bureaucratic rituals: 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 and recommend to the president who should be the next to die.

This secret “nominations” process is an invention of the Obama administration, a grim debating society that vets the 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.

The video conferences are run by the Pentagon, which oversees strikes in those countries, and participants do not hesitate to call out a challenge, pressing for the evidence behind accusations of ties to Al Qaeda.

In what some Administration officials see as a rather bizarre twist (and possibly a way to counter such challenges), the President's high "priest" convinced Obama to include members of the clergy in the weekly decision-making meetings.  It is, according to Brennan, an effort to apply Christian principles, and particularly Just War Theory, in such an extreme situation. 

The names of the clergypeople participating in the "nomination" process are a closely guarded secret.  An unnamed White House staffer said "although we cannot share the names of those involved for reasons of National Security and their individual safety, we can assure you that one clergyperson from every major denomination has been invited to participate in this process." 

When asked whether a Muslim cleric is included in the "nomination" process the staffer said "no comment."

###

Thanks to the New York Times, the source for the article that was butchered to create this fake article: Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will, By JO BECKER and SCOTT SHANE, Published: May 29, 2012,  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?_r=1&pagewanted=8&permid=554