Robert Scheer: Hope Burning?

So now we have Rambo Obama, a steely warrior who, according to a lengthy leaked insider account in The New York Times, hurls death-dealing drones at anyone who threatens the good old USA. Including children. Those children are presumed guilty by virtue of proximity, and the Times plays along, not even modifying a targeted terrorist with the word "alleged," as once had been the paper's convention: When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises, but his family is with him, it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation." Obama as the "cool trigger-man" is an image useful to White House operatives as they buff the president's persona for the coming election, but what it reveals is the mindset of a political cynic, whose seductive words cloak the moral indifference of a methodical executioner. Forget Harry Truman, who obliterated the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or Lyndon Johnson, who carpet-bombed millions in Vietnam. The Democrats have got themselves another killer, one whose techniques are as devastatingly effective, but brilliantly refined. The story was obviously planted in The New York Times to benefit the Obama political campaign. Otherwise, why would the president's former chief of staff, William Daley, and three dozen current and past intelligence insiders provide the newspaper with the most sensitive details of national security decision-making? Pfc Bradley Manning was held for many months in solitary confinement for allegedly disclosing information of far lower security classification. The difference is that the top secrets in the news article are ones the president wants leaked in the expectation they will burnish his "tough on terrorism" credentials.