HUFFINGTON POST
Faced with growing questions over the legality and scope of his counterrorism policy from Congress and elsewhere, President Barack Obama said Thursday that he has codified the process his administration goes through before launching a drone strike.
Nevertheless, he gave an impassioned defense of drone strikes in countries such as Somalia and Yemen as an essential counterterrorism tool, presenting them as the best possible option.
"To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance," Obama said. "For the same human progress that gives us the technology to strike half a world away also demands the discipline to constrain that power –- or risk abusing it....
As part of a realignment of counterterrorism policy, he said he would curtail the use of drones.
He spoke of returning to his plan to close the military detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, renewing the Authorization for Use of Military Force, and adjusting to an environment where homegrown terrorists pose more of a threat than an organized 9/11-style attack.
"As we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11," Obama said....
"Dozens of highly skilled al-Qaeda commanders, trainers, bomb makers, and operatives have been taken off the battlefield," he said. "Plots have been disrupted that would have targeted international aviation, U.S. transit systems, European cities and our troops in Afghanistan. Simply put, these strikes have saved lives."....
At one point, Code Pink co-founder Madea Benjamin heckled the president after he started speaking about Guantanamo. "I'm willing to cut that young lady interrupting me some slack, because it's worth being passionate about," he said. For several minutes, Benjamin intermittently questioned the president before being escorted from the event.....
A hunger strike in Guantanamo Bay has grown to over 100 prisoners. Thirty of them are being force fed, which the United Nations considers torture.
Obama addressed the force-feeding Thursday. "Is that who we are? Is that something that our Founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children?" he asked.
Nearly 12 years after the 9/11 attacks, invasion of Afghanistan and subsequent war on terror, Obama said at some point, it would end. "Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands," he said.
NY TIMES: The precise ramifications of his shift were less clear than the lines of argument, however, because the new policy guidance he signed remains classified, and other changes he embraced require Congressional approval. Mr. Obama, for instance, did not directly mention in his speech that his new order would shift responsibility for drones more toward the military and away from the Central Intelligence Agency.
But the combination of his words and deeds foreshadowed the course he hopes to take in the remaining three and a half years of his presidency so that he leaves his successor a profoundly different national security landscape than the one he inherited in 2009. While President George W. Bush saw the fight against terrorism as the defining mission of his presidency, Mr. Obama has always viewed it as one priority among many at a time of wrenching economic and domestic challenges.