Analysis: Oversight failures help oil Obama’s killing machine

Revelations that President Barack Obama presides over key aspects of secret kill-list machinery that has sentenced thousands to death by drone have disturbed many. Torture and extraordinary rendition under Bush, it turns out, have been replaced with industrial-scale extrajudicial execution by his successor.

Today, CIA and Pentagon armed drones range at will over Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, seeking out alleged terrorists. These wars are ‘secret’ only in that they are removed from true accountability. White House and CIA officials brag in selective leaks of effectiveness, even as they use the courts to block real scrutiny. Lawyers and journalists seeking to expose the truth have been smeared. Mounting evidence of hundreds of civilian casualties is pushed aside. And a compliant US media has, until now, barely raised a whisper.

No wonder Obama’s re-election team seeks to present him as the Warrior President, the decapitator of Al Qaeda. Domestic US opinion polls have shown 83% support for the covert drone war – those unmanned killing machines may actually help put Obama back in the White House. Yet like Guantanamo, the cost to the international reputation of the United States may prove devastating.