Ken Butigan - Challenging the ‘Disposition Matrix’ and Its Ever-Expanding Kill List
November 2, 2012 Last week The Washington Post published a three-part series on the U.S. government’s dramatic increase in targeted killing, and the steps being taken to institutionalize extra-judicial assassination as standard operating procedure far into the future. “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,” the series reports. (See the articles themselves here, here, and here.)
Nicknamed the “disposition matrix” and coordinated by presidential counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan in conjunction with the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), this new system integrates drone technology, satellite surveillance, massive databases and presumed congressional authorization to target and kill persons of interest globally. While the focus at the moment is killing suspected operatives in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the system is designed for “flexibility,” with the capacity to cross borders at will.
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