Nothing is less reliable than unchecked claims from political officials that their secret conduct is justified by National Security Threats and the desire to Keep Us Safe.
Washington gets explicit: its “war on terror” is permanent
Last October, senior Obama officials anonymously unveiled to the Washington Post their newly minted “disposition matrix”, a complex computer system that will be used to determine how a terrorist suspect will be “disposed of”: indefinite detention, prosecution in a real court, assassination-by-CIA-drones, etc.
Their rationale for why this was needed now, a full 12 years after the 9/11 attack -
“Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaida continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight. … That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.”
(via josephdenne)
