Glenn Greenwald — Obama moves to make the War on Terror permanent

Complete with a newly coined, creepy Orwellian euphemism - "disposition matrix" - the administration institutionalizes the most extremist powers a government can claim

A primary reason for opposing the acquisition of abusive powers and civil liberties erosions is that they virtually always become permanent, vested not only in current leaders one may love and trust but also future officials who seem more menacing and less benign. The Washington Post has acrucial and disturbing story this morning by Greg Miller about the concerted efforts by the Obama administration to fully institutionalize - to make officially permanent - the most extremist powers it has exercised in the name of the war on terror.

The Guardian (UK)
Obama moves to make the War on Terror permanent
Glenn Greenwald

Clenching the grip of fascism on the US.

It doesn't requiring any conspiracy theorizing to see what's happening here. Indeed, it takes extreme naiveté, or wilful blindness, not to see it. 

What has been created here - permanently institutionalized - is a highly secretive executive branch agency that simultaneously engages in two functions: (1) it collects and analyzes massive amounts of surveillance data about all Americans without any judicial review let alone search warrants, and (2) creates and implements a "matrix" that determines the "disposition" of suspects, up to and including execution, without a whiff of due process or oversight. It is simultaneously a surveillance state and secretive, unaccountable judicial body that analyzes who you are and then decrees what should be done with you, how you should be "disposed" of, beyond the reach of any minimal accountability or transparency. 

The Post's Miller recognizes the watershed moment this represents: "The creation of the matrix and the institutionalization of kill/capture lists reflect a shift that is as psychological as it is strategic." As he explains, extra-judicial assassination was once deemed so extremist that very extensive deliberations were required before Bill Clinton could target even Osama bin Laden for death by lobbing cruise missiles in East Africa. But 


"Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the processes that sustain it."