Posted on 09/30/2011 6:48:51 PM PDT by chuckee
Sources to NBC News are reporting Samir Khan, editor of Inspire Magazine, is another American citizen that was killed in the air strike in Yemen, along with Anwar al-Awlaki. NBC's Bob Windrem reports.
By Pete Williams, NBC News justice correspondent
Is it legal for the federal government to kill a U.S. citizen overseas, someone who has never been charged or convicted of a crime? Civil liberties groups are condemning the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, but many legal scholars say it is justified.
No U.S. court has ever weighed in on the question, because judges consider these sorts of issues exclusively matters for the president.
Anwar al-Awlaki's father, Nasser, with the help of the ACLU, sued President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta a year ago, when it became clear that the U.S. was targeting the younger al-Awlaki. But U.S. District Judge John Bates threw the case out, ruling that federal courts were in no position to evaluate whether someone was a terrorist whose activities threatened national security and against whom the use of deadly force could be justified...
(Excerpt) Read more at openchannel.msnbc.msn.com ...
I believe we just proved we can.
Let’s ask the “victim”. LOL
Can we? Yes.
May we? I guess its ok, but it sure makes me feel uneasy.
Just send a cop over, they don’t need due process.
OH boo hoo
The short answer is... No. It is illegal for the federal government of the United States to kill a citizen without trial and conviction.
Yes we can.
I think your question has been answered in a most delightful way. Calling this thing an American is a insult to logic.
I could see one point in all this, they should have stripped his citizenship....what I don’t know is if he would have to be present because he was born in the US.
I feel that we should be stripping 100s of citizenships a week from people for violations of law and treason.
:) A first grade nun’s voice popped into my head with her can vs may argument after reading the headline. The empirical evidence suggests we ‘can.’
Is the man legally dead?
I rest my case.
Makes me think of the Civil War. Where was the ACLU back then?
As a member of Al-Qaeda he took a loyalty oath to that organization, which holds itself to be at war with the U.S. Under (2) and (3) he had renounced his American citizenship rights and had no Constitutional rights. Poof. He made himself into a free fire zone. I hope he enjoyed it.
Tell it to the thousands dead in civil war cemeteries all over the eastern United States. As far as I know there wasn’t any attempt to arrest and prosecute rebels. They were simply shot and killed. Were they not?
Really? Ron Paul is a effing moron. I don’t care who is POTUS killing the enemy is a good thing.
See post #15. He stripped himself of U.S. citizenship by his own actions.
“The short answer is... No. It is illegal for the federal government of the United States to kill a citizen without trial and conviction.”
I heard Krauthammer today cite the legal argument on the other side that we killed plenty of citizens during the civil war because the union never recognized the confederacy, still considered confederates US citizens who were “insurgents”.
As long as you don’t elect him as president first... it’s ok.
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