Posted on 05/14/2010 9:47:26 AM PDT by lbryce
The Obama administration’s decision to authorize the killing by the Central Intelligence Agency of a terrorism suspect who is an American citizen has set off a debate over the legal and political limits of drone missile strikes, a mainstay of the campaign against terrorism.
The notion that the government can, in effect, execute one of its own citizens far from a combat zone, with no judicial process and based on secret intelligence, makes some legal authorities deeply uneasy.
To eavesdrop on the terrorism suspect who was added to the target list, the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen, intelligence agencies would have to get a court warrant. But designating him for death, as C.I.A. officials did early this year with the National Security Council’s approval, required no judicial review.
“Congress has protected Awlaki’s cellphone calls,” said Vicki Divoll, a former C.I.A. lawyer who now teaches at the United States Naval Academy. “But it has not provided any protections for his life. That makes no sense.”
Administration officials take the view that no legal or constitutional rights can protect Mr. Awlaki, a charismatic preacher who has said it is a religious duty to attack the United States and who the C.I.A. believes is actively plotting violence. The attempted bombing of Times Square on May 1 is the latest of more than a dozen terrorist plots in the West that investigators believe were inspired in part by Mr. Awlaki’s rhetoric.
“American citizenship doesn’t give you carte blanche to wage war against your own country,” said a counterterrorism official who discussed the classified program on condition of anonymity. “If you cast your lot with its enemies, you may well share their fate.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Probably not since the day of George McGovern in 1972 has there been one as vociferous opponent of US military policy as was Obama. That as President, CIC, has become a zealous practitioner of those very same policies he had relentlessly harangued against speaks volumes on the moral rectitude, integrity in which these policies are being implemented. I have no misgvings about the US decision, share none of the "unease" made reference to in the title, and can say with unequioval confidence is any of it shared by my fellow Freepers on this matter.
Evidently the attack was done without the knowledge of the president. At least that is what the official whitehouse response will be.
THIS is the source of the decline.
Lawyers/bureaucrats/regulators now rule everywhere. No action can be taken without extensive consultations during which words are parsed endlessly and hairs split to near infinity and until the sensibilities of all concerned are addressed and assuaged nothing is done. We lose our prosperity, our freedom, our sovereignty and possibly our lives because those charged with leading the nation fritter their time away trying to figure out how many angels dance on the head of a pin.
There are 1.3 billion møøselimbs on the planet.
Our very survival requires that we kill n møøselimbs. Where n is a number between 0 and 1.3 billion. It is defined as the number necessary to kill for the remainder, 1,300,000,000-n to forswear violence as a means of religious debate.
WE don’t set the value of n.
THEY set the value of n...
Who said Yemen is away from the battlefield? To the Moosies, the world is divided in two, no? The dar al-islam—the "house of peace" where Moslems rule under sharia, and everywhere else, which they call the dar al-harb—which means "house of war."
Well, we're not Moosies, as they keep reminding us. Turnabout is not just fair play. It's reality. Moslem countries, of which Yemen is one, are in the "house of war" for us, especially the ones we know are harboring terrorists. We're not going to go in for targeting civilians, since we aren't pond scum like them, but if some terrorist mouthpiece or collaborator is going to hide under Yemen's skirts, Yemen is making its civilian areas a war zone. I don't have a problem blowing him up there.
And this clown was "born in America"? I'm impressed. He's going to die somewhere else.
You don’t get it..
The objective of those in power is to set the precedence to specifically whack some really bad guy citizen overseas first. Then wait a few years, a little sliding slope and they will start whacking Tea Party activists. Talks Show Hosts and the like.
If the guy dies in an air-strike on a AQ Headquarters that is just not the same as specifically targeting a known American Citizen.. It’s the precedence they want. Do you think the current Administration really cares that Islamofacists are out there doing bad things Citizen or not?
W
“Brilliant” legal scholar Obama has got himself into quite a contradictory mess here. You can’t question these guys with their lawyer being present, yet you can kill them without court proceedings?
The Bush administration had thought the entire problem through and had sound legal basis for everything they did to prosecute the WORI.
Zero messed it up by trying to cater to left wing loonies. He’s now adrift on a legal boat with no paddle.
Yep. Now it's on "foreign" soil, but the precedent will be set. A President can kill an American after an accusation that he or she is a terrorist. No indictment, not trial, just straight to the execution.
In a few years they'll be popping Hellfire missiles into ramshackle cabins in Idaho or the Michigan woods.
It probably won't even take that long.
My understanding is that such a precedent already exists, and has always existed in warfare: You sign up with the enemy, you get whacked with the enemy. I wouldn't be surprised if the intention of many in the administration is what you describe, but we have to have a country in the meantime—so we can throw them out of power.
I suspect the immediate motivation for TOTUS and his staff is that they suddenly realized the White House could be a Moslem target again sometime soon, and they have no strategy against such events.
For one ..
There has been no Formal Declaration of War.. Thanks to P.Bush the Younger..who made a hash of the legal side of the WOT right off the bat by letting the Demon-crats pass some half assed use of force authorization.
If Jihad Johnny a US Citizen from Detroitistan is running and gunning with the Taliban in Afghanistan or elsewhere and he joins the flying Jihadis all is well and good.
That is not the same as the specific targeting and killing of a named individual US Citizen by Executive Order or some such nonsense.
How hard is it to understand the Rubicon being crossed is the Executive deliberately targeting a named US Citizen.
Where the American Citizen is killed is irrelevant. If the bad guy comes thru Mexico into the US then what?
What if he a reformed alcoholic pouring his heart and soul daily into breaking cover on Socialists and Communists supporters in positions of Power and Authority in the US Government at Fox Studios?
“Stroke of the Pen.. Law of the Land”...
Now with the New Improved “Death Mark”
“Kinda Cool”.
NOT!!!
W
... NOT!!!
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