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Justice, American Style: Was Bin Laden's Killing Legal?
DER SPIEGEL ^ | May 3, 2011 | Thomas Darnstädt

Posted on 05/03/2011 9:03:22 AM PDT by presidio9

US President Barack Obama gets precious few opportunities to announce a victory. So it's no wonder he chose grand words on Sunday night as the TV crews' spotlights shone upon him and he informed the nation about the deadly strike against Osama bin Laden. "Justice has been done," he said.

It may be that this sentence comes back to haunt him in the years to come. What is just about killing a feared terrorist in his home in the middle of Pakistan? For the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, and for patriotic Americans who saw their grand nation challenged by a band of criminals, the answer might be simple. But international law experts, who have been grappling with the question of the legal status of the US-led war on terror for years, find Obama's pithy words on Sunday night more problematic.

Claus Kress, an international law professor at the University of Cologne, argues that achieving retributive justice for crimes, difficult as that may be, is "not achieved through summary executions, but through a punishment that is meted out at the end of a trial." Kress says the normal way of handling a man who is sought globally for commissioning murder would be to arrest him, put him on trial and ultimately convict him. In the context of international law, military force can be used in the arrest of a suspect, and this may entail gun fire or situations of self-defense that, in the end, leave no other possibility than to

(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Editorial; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: binladen
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1 posted on 05/03/2011 9:03:25 AM PDT by presidio9
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To: presidio9
Justice, American Style: Was Bin Laden's Killing Legal?

[facepalm] I don't know. If some attorney wants to be appointed to represent him at this point, let him come forward and we'll shoot him too. Would that make it adequately legal?

2 posted on 05/03/2011 9:05:52 AM PDT by Still Thinking (Freedom is NOT a loophole!)
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To: presidio9

So are the left-wingers going to be calling Obama a war criminal and to be put on trial by the International Criminal Court?


3 posted on 05/03/2011 9:06:18 AM PDT by avacado
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To: presidio9

"I will make it legal."

4 posted on 05/03/2011 9:07:05 AM PDT by Snickering Hound
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To: presidio9

A cheesey movie quote will do as a reply:

In certain extreme situations, the law is inadequate. In order to shame its inadequacy, it is necessary to act outside the law. To pursue... natural justice. This is not vengeance. Revenge is not a valid motive, it’s an emotional response. No, not vengeance. Punishment.


5 posted on 05/03/2011 9:07:17 AM PDT by brownsfan (I miss the America I grew up in.)
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To: presidio9
Was the 9/11 attack legal?
6 posted on 05/03/2011 9:07:25 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Under Islam, there is no separation of church and state. The church IS the state.)
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To: Still Thinking

Oh, no, did we hurt a terrorist? Who wasn’t doing any harm/ just hanging out with his wife in retirement?

BOOOOOOO HOOOOOOO.


7 posted on 05/03/2011 9:07:28 AM PDT by bboop (Stealth Tutor)
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To: presidio9

Meh, he’s just speaking German.


8 posted on 05/03/2011 9:08:19 AM PDT by Palter (If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it. ~ Mark Twain)
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To: presidio9
Ok, I'll go along with it being illegal and someone should be made to pay for such an atrocious act. Let's see, who was it that took full credit for it? Oh, yeah, it was zero. That's one way to get him out of office.
9 posted on 05/03/2011 9:08:19 AM PDT by bgill (Kenyan Parliament - how could a man born in Kenya who is not even a native American become the POTUS)
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To: presidio9

I don’t actually care if it was or was not.


10 posted on 05/03/2011 9:09:55 AM PDT by svcw (Non forgiveness is like holding a hot coal thinking the other person will be blistered)
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To: presidio9

Fking german wusses. Its legal to us he was the reason 9/11 happened. You wimpy ass nanny state moral equalizers make me want to vomit.


11 posted on 05/03/2011 9:10:02 AM PDT by MARKUSPRIME
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To: presidio9

Whether it was or wasn’t......I don’t think this country needs to answer Germany in matters of morality and law.


12 posted on 05/03/2011 9:10:17 AM PDT by edpc (Tagline under construction: Your American Recovery and Reinvestment Act dollars at work.)
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To: presidio9
The REAL question that Der Spiegel is asking is, Would
the United States still come after really old Nazis?

13 posted on 05/03/2011 9:10:34 AM PDT by righttackle44 (I may not be much, but I raised a U.S. Marine.)
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To: presidio9

The mission was to execute an order likely on the shelf for some time to be called up in a minute’s notice. The order was in effect a death warrant signed sealed and requiring only a counter signature

The operation was therefore legal


14 posted on 05/03/2011 9:10:54 AM PDT by bert (K.E. N.P. N.C. D.E. +12 ....( History is a process, not an event ))
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To: presidio9
So now is some dumbass prosecutor in Switzerland going to charge Zero with a war crime, and is the Alfred Nobel Committee going to revoke Zero's Peace Prize?
15 posted on 05/03/2011 9:11:07 AM PDT by Yo-Yo (Is the /sarc tag really necessary?)
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To: presidio9
A legal killing..... WHAT A CONCEPT!..
Murdering babies seems to be LEGAL!...
16 posted on 05/03/2011 9:11:07 AM PDT by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole...)
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To: presidio9

Was it legal?

WHO THE F%$# CARES??? WE GOT THE SONOFABITCH!!!!

I mean jeez....we, the United States of America, take out a mastermind of evil, and someone asks if it was LEGAL??? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!!!


17 posted on 05/03/2011 9:11:37 AM PDT by hoagy62 (Help stamp out crack-pull up your pants.)
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To: edpc

amen...Der Spiegel, you guys have historical amnesia in the morality department.


18 posted on 05/03/2011 9:13:05 AM PDT by PAMadMax (Islam is a disease....)
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To: presidio9
Claus Kress, an international law professor at the University of Cologne, argues that achieving retributive justice for crimes, difficult as that may be, is "not achieved through summary executions, but through a punishment that is meted out at the end of a trial."

You people are funny.

There is no such thing as international law. Nations have laws, and sometimes they have treaties. Everything else is blather at international conferences, paid for by taxpayers who are not protected in the least by the conferees' silly, socialistic words. If you attack Americans, we paint a target on your back. Our guys are so good, even a metrosexual waving his hands can't screw up the operation.

I wonder what they actually told him beforehand about the operation or what it would involve. He doesn't know which end the bullet comes out of. How would he ever know if they were BS-ing him?

19 posted on 05/03/2011 9:13:20 AM PDT by SamuraiScot
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To: presidio9
"What is just about killing a feared terrorist in his home in the middle of Pakistan?"

EVERYTHING is just about it. This is not a "feared terrorist". He is a known terrorist, and by his own admission.

20 posted on 05/03/2011 9:13:37 AM PDT by Mich Patriot (Today, if you build a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse. RReagan)
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