Killing Machine (41 page)

31
.
  
Hastings,
The Operators
, 288–89.

32
.
  
Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe, “U.S. ‘Secret War’ Expands Globally as Special Operations Forces Take Larger Role,”
Washington Post
, June 4, 2010.

33
.
  
For the struggle over Rumsfeld’s plan, see Lloyd C. Gardner,
The Long Road to Baghdad: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy from the 1970s to the Present
(New York: The New Press, 2009).

34
.
  
DeYoung and Jaffe, “U.S. ‘Secret War.’”

35
.
  
Ibid.

36
.
  
Sebastian Rotella, “Times Square Bombing Investigation Focuses on Suspected Role of Pakistani Army Major,”
ProPublica
, May 21, 2010,
www.propublica.org/article/times-square-bombing-investigation-focuses-on-pakistani-major
.

37
.
  
Dion Nissenbaum, “McChrystal Calls Marjah a ‘Bleeding Ulcer’ in Afghan Campaign,” McClatchy Newspapers, May 26, 2010.

38
.
  
Ibid. Succeeding quotations about the frontline conference are from this source.

39
.
  
Gareth Porter, “McChrystal Strategy Shifts to Raids—and Wali Karzai,” May 24, 2010, Inter Press Service.

40
.
  
Ibid.

41
.
  
Rod Nordland, “Afghan Strategy Focuses on Civilian Effort,”
New York Times
, June 8, 2010.

42
.
  
Karen DeYoung, “Results of Kandahar Offensive May Affect Future U.S. Moves,”
Washington Post
, May 23, 2010.

43
.
  
Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “In Afghan Region, U.S. Spreads the Cash to Fight the Taliban,”
Washington Post
, May 31, 2010

44
.
  
Ernesti Londono, “Karzai Removes Afghan Interior Minister and Spy Chief,”
Washington Post
, June 7, 2010; Dexter Filkins, “Karzai Is Said to Doubt West Can Defeat Taliban,”
New York Times
, June 11, 2010.

45
.
  
Filkins, “Karzai Is Said to Doubt West Can Defeat Taliban.”

46
.
  
James Risen, “U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan,”
New York Times
, June 13, 2010.

47
.
  
Ibid.

48
.
  
Jim Lobe, “Timing of Leak of Afghan Mineral Wealth Evokes Scepticism,” Inter Press Service, June 14, 2010.

49
.
  
“Press Availability with Secretary Gates from the NATO Ministerial at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium,” U.S. Department of Defense news transcript, June 11, 2010,
www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4642
; Gareth Porter,
“McChrystal Faces ‘Iraq 2006 Moment’ in Coming Months,” Inter Press Service, June 16, 2010.

50
.
  
Dexter Filkins, “Convoy Guards in Afghanistan Face an Inquiry,”
New York Times
, June 6, 2010.

51
.
  
Boh Herbert, “The Courage to Leave,”
New York Times
, June 15, 2010.

52
.
  
Michael J. Carden, “Defense Officials Cite Progress, Challenges in Afghanistan,” Armed Forces Press Service, June 15, 2010,
www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=59645
.

53
.
  
Adam Entous, “Questions on Afghan Strategy Touch Nerve in Pentagon,” Reuters, June 15, 2010.

54
.
  
Ibid.

55
.
  
Thom Shanker and Elisabeth Bumiller, “Military and Pentagon Leaders Urge Patience for Afghan Mission,”
New York Times
, June 16, 2010.

56
.
  
Michael Hastings, “The Runaway General,”
Rolling Stone
, June 22, 2010. Quotations that follow are taken from this article.

57
.
  
Chandrasekaran,
Little America
, 217–19.

58
.
  
Hastings,
The Operators
, 292–93.

59
.
  
Ibid., 319–21.

60
.
  
Thomas E. Ricks, “In Afghanistan, Petraeus Will Have Difficulty Replicating His Iraq Success,”
Washington Post
, June 27, 2010.

61
.
  
Karen DeYoung, “Obama Says He Is ‘Confident’ in War Leadership,”
Washington Post
, June 26, 2010.

62
.
  
Leslie Gelb, “Petraeus Locked Obama In,”
Daily Beast
, June 29, 2010.

63
.
  
Elisabeth Bumiller, “Petraeus Pledges Look at Strikes in Afghanistan,”
New York Times
, June 29, 2010.

5. The War of the Drones

1
.
  
Spencer Ackerman, “How I Was Drawn into the Cult of David Petraeus,”
Danger Room
blog,
Wired
, November 11, 2012,
www.wired.com/dangerrooom/2012/11/petraeus-cult-2/
.

2
.
  
Greg Miller and Julie Tate, “CIA Shifts Focus to Killing Targets,”
Washington Post
, September 1, 2011.

3
.
  
Jane Mayer, “The Predator War,”
New Yorker
, October 26, 2009.

4
.
  
Ibid.

5
.
  
James Bennet, “U.S. Cruise Missiles Strike Sudan and Afghan Targets Tied to Terrorist Network,”
New York Times
, August 21, 1998.

6
.
  
Richard Clarke, “Give Drones a Medal,” New York
Daily News
, December 2, 2012.

7
.
  
Karen DeYoung, “Secrecy Defines Obama’s Drone War,”
Washington Post
, December 19, 2011.

8
.
  
“Spying on the Home Front,” interview with John Yoo,
Frontline
, January 10, 2007,
www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/interviews/yoo.html
.

9
.
  
Clarke, “Give Drones a Medal.”

10
.
  
This subject is fully explored in Louis Fisher,
Presidential War Power
, 2nd ed. (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2004), chap. 8. Quotation is from page 200.

11
.
  
Conor Friedersdorf, “The Bizarre Story of How Drones Helped Get Us into the Iraq War,”
The Atlantic
, October 2012.

12
.
  
Mayer, “Predator War.”

13
.
  
David Ignatius, “Charting a Post-Petraeus Era,”
Washington Post
, November 14, 2012.

14
.
  
Daniel Klaidman,
Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 121–22.

15
.
  
David Kilcullen and Andrew McDonald Exum, “Death from Above, Outrage Down Below,”
New York Times
, May 16, 2009.

16
.
  
“U.S. Airstrikes in Pakistan Called ‘Very Effective,’” CNN, May 18, 2009.

17
.
  
“Voters Are Gung-Ho for Use of Drones but Not Over the United States,” Rasmussen Poll, February 13, 2012.

18
.
  
Steve Coll, “More on the Drone War,”
Think Tank
blog,
New Yorker
, May 18, 2009,
www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/stevecoll/2009/05/more-on-the-drone-war.html
.

19
.
  
Ibid.

20
.
  
Scott Shane, “C.I.A. to Expand Use of Drones in Pakistan,”
New York Times
, December 3, 2009.

21
.
  
Quoted in ibid.

22
.
  
Interview of Micah Zenko by Greg Bruno, “Raising the Curtain on U.S. Drone Strikes,” Council on Foreign Relations, June 2, 2010,
www.cfr.org/pakistan/raising-curtain-us-drone-strikes/p22290
.

23
.
  
David E. Sanger,
Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power
(New York: Crown, 2012), 255.

24
.
  
Ibid.

25
.
  
DeYoung, “Secrecy Defines Obama’s Drone War.”

26
.
  
Adam Entous, “Special Report: How the White House Learned to Love the Drone,” Reuters, May 18, 2010.

27
.
  
Klaidman,
Kill or Capture
, 215–16.

28
.
  
Ibid.

29
.
  
Ibid.; Marcy Wheeler, “Five Questions for John Brennan,”
Empty Wheel
, February 7, 2013,
www.emptywheel.net/2013/02/07/flve-questions-for-john
.

30
.
  
Harold Hongju Koh, “The Obama Administration and International Law,” speech at Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law, Washington, DC, March 25, 2010,
www.state.gov/s/l/releases/remarks/139119.html
.

31
.
  
See Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks, “Obama Breaks the Golden Rule on Drones,”
Daily Take
, December 1, 2012,
truth-out.org/news/item/13085-obama-breaks-the-golden-rule-on-drones
.

32
.
  
Koh, “Obama Administration and International Law” (emphasis in original).

33
.
  
John Yoo, “Obama, Drones and Thomas Aquinas,”
Wall Street Journal
, June 7, 2012.

34
.
  
Tara McKelvey, “Interview with Harold Koh, Obama’s Defender of Drone Strikes,”
Daily Beast
, April 8, 2012.

35
.
  
James Risen and David Johnston, “Threats and Responses: Hunt for Al Qaeda; Bush Has Widened Authority of C.I.A. to Kill Terrorists,”
New York Times
, December 15, 2002.

36
.
  
“Statement of Harold Hongju Koh Before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution on Restoring the Rule of Law,” September 16, 2008,
www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/News_&_Events/Kohtestimony091608RuleofLaw.pdf
.

37
.
  
Entous, “Special Report: How the White House Learned to Love the Drone.”

38
.
  
Ibid.

39
.
  
Joby Warrick and Peter Finn, “Amid Outrage over Civilian Deaths in Pakistan, CIA Turns to Smaller Missiles,”
Washington Post
, April 26, 2010.

6. The Meaning of Two Deaths

1
.
  
“Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney and Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan,” May 2, 2011,
www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/05/02/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-and-assistant-president-homela
.

2
.
  
Ibid.

3
.
  
“Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney,” May 3, 2011,
www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/05/03/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-532011
.

4
.
  
Ibid.

5
.
  
Ibid.; Robert Booth, “The Killing of Osama bin Laden: How the White House Changed Its Story,”
The Guardian
, May 4, 2011; Mark Owen and Kevin Maurer,
No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama bin Laden: The Autobiography of a Navy SEAL
(New York: Dutton, 2012), 235–36. When a member of the assault team—the pseudonymous “Mark Owen,” whose real name is Matt Bissonnette—finally told the inside story, it turned out that two women were standing over the fallen bin Laden weeping and wailing, and one rushed in anger at an assaulter when he entered the room. Owen does not mention the woman being shot—another variation in the story.

6
.
  
In addition to Owen and Maurer,
No Easy Day
, another source is by the respected Osama bin Laden researcher Peter L. Bergen’s
Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad
(New York: Crown, 2012). It would take too much space to detail the discrepancies in these books (and other accounts as well), but readers will find that the authors do not agree on important questions about how many shots were fired, whether those present in the compound had loaded weapons close at hand, and how bin Laden died.

7
.
  
David E. Sanger,
Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power
(New York: Crown, 2012), 107.

8
.
  
Nicholas Schmidle, “Getting bin Laden: What Happened That Night in Abbottabad,”
New Yorker
, August 8, 2011.