The day has come. Sort of--members of two Senate Intelligence Committees now have "access" to classified memos undergirding the legal justification for killing US citizens abroad in the war on al-Qaeda. But is the big reveal merely lip service?
Before his CIA pick John Brennan gets grilled in Congress, Obama's own "torture memos" on targeted killings -- and a new set of intel on Bush's torture program -- shed some harsh light on how America secretly conducts war.
John McCain has never faltered in his principled stance against torture. John Brennan, on the other hand?
Drones have struck Pakistan seven times in the first 11 days of 2013, and Islamabad--once a very vocal hater of the American kill program--isn't talking.
Nominating Chuck Hagel and John O. Brennan as defense secretary and CIA chief, respectively, represents a somewhat controversial re-imagining of the US national security team's expanding drone wars.
