You are talking apples and organes here. There is a huge difference between targeting an American citizen for assasination without due process and targeting someone like Osama Bin Laden. Surely you ‘get’ that distinction.
President Bush never went this far because he understood our rights under our constitution. Even though this guy may be a scumbag islamic terrorist and deserves the ‘death penalty’, he is entitled to a trial first. This is dangerous territory we are entering into and Zero is just getting warmed up. All he has to do now is ‘deem’ any American citizen a threat and target them for state sanctioned assasination.
If an article posted on FR said that Anwar al-Awlaki had been killed by a Hellfire missile fired from a drone aircraft, everyone would have said good riddance.
If the article happened to mention that Anwar al-Awliki had been killed after being intentionally targeted by the military or CIA, at most a very few would have mentioned the due process thing and they would have been shot down.
If an article mentioned that there are a few Americans among the individuals being targeted by Predators in Pakistan, Yemen, etc., the discussion would be more evenly balanced.
But since this article mentions that the president is involved in the creation or approval of the list of targeted individuals, all of a sudden everyone is a civil libertarian.