Jeremy Scahill - License to Kill (lecture)
Jeremy Scahill is the award-winning National Security Correspondent for theNation magazine and author of the best-sellers Blackwater and Dirty Wars. He has reported from war zones around the world. His work has sparked several congressional investigations. He is also the subject of the film Dirty Wars, an official selection of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.
Drones represent a new era in warfare. They are the White House-Pentagon-CIA weapon of choice. Clean 21st century death from above. No body bags. No weeping mothers. At least not in the homeland. The President decides who lives and who dies. It's a dangerous world. Enemies are lurking everywhere. Let's get them before they get us. Georgetown Law Professor Rosa Brooks, among others, are ringing alarm bells. She told a Senate committee, "Right now we have the executive branch making a claim that it has the right to kill anyone anywhere on earth at any time for secret reasons based on secret evidence in a secret process undertaken by unidentified officials. That's not the rule of law. That frightens me." As Bob Dylan tells us in License to Kill: "Man thinks 'cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please, And if things don't change soon, he will."