(CNN) -- Four years ago, John Brennan withdrew from consideration for C.I.A. director because of his leadership role there while serious human rights violations were occurring, including waterboarding and secret detention. Mr. Brennan has said he regrets these practices. Yet he moved from the CIA to the White House, where he began to support a practice many consider worse than torture: targeted killing. Brennan has been a champion and defender of attacks by C.I.A. drones that have killed thousands of people, including hundreds of children, far from any battlefield. These killings have occurred in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has recently said the killing is likely to expand to Libya, Mali and Nigeria.
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Mary Ellen O'Connell: Torture, renditions used during John Brennan's Bush era CIA tenure
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At Obama White House he backed something worse, she says: targeted drone killings
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She says both Justice Dept. 's misrepresented both practices, tried to keep legality obscure
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Writer: For CIA chief, U.S. needs someone who upholds nation's values. Brennan has not
Panetta, Brennan and others in the @placeholder administration defended these lawless killings the same way the Bush administration justified the unlawful treatment of detainees.
President @placeholder finally ended it with an executive order signed within days of his first inauguration.