Telling the powers that be how it really is

Jeremy Scahill is The Nation magazine's national security correspondent. He has over the years garnered a formidable first-class reputation for his writing. He today testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the US's shadow wars in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere.

The Nation has his evidence in full, here, but one extract:

"As the war rages on in Afghanistan and--despite spin to the contrary--in Iraq as well, US Special Operations Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency are engaged in parallel, covert, shadow wars that are waged in near total darkness and largely away from effective or meaningful Congressional oversight or journalistic scrutiny. The actions and consequences of these wars is seldom discussed in public or investigated by the Congress.

The current US strategy can be summed up as follows: We are trying to kill our way to peace. And the killing fields are growing in number.

Among the sober question that must be addressed by the Congress: What impact are these clandestine operations having on US national security? Are they making us more safe or less? When US forces kill innocent civilians in "counterterrorism" operations, are we inspiring a new generation of insurgents to rise against our country? And, what is the oversight role of the US Congress in the shadow wars that have spanned the Bush and Obama Administrations?

The most visible among these shadow wars is in Pakistan where the United States regularly bombs the country using weaponized drones. As we now know from diplomatic cables made public by Wikileaks, Pakistan's Prime Minister told a senior US official in Islamabad, "I don't care if [the US bombs Pakistan] as long as they get the right people. We'll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it."

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