[PAA-Discuss] Confirmed : Obama Authorizes Assassination of U.S.Citizen

Fri Apr 9 11:34:19 EDT 2010

Golly gee, Bart, what about all that hope and change stuff?? Are we still
not allowed to criticize the most Holy One since he's biracial and since
he's a Democrat? Please inform and thanks.

Kris

  _____  

From: Bart Boyce [mailto:bartboyce at sbcglobal.net] 
Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2010 10:37 PM
To: PAA discussion; mandell at yahoogroups.com
Cc: HoustonTruth; HCGP discussion; Code Pink
Subject: [PAA-Discuss] Confirmed : Obama Authorizes Assassination of
U.S.Citizen

  New from Glenn Greenwald ....

Confirmed: Obama Authorizes Assassination of U.S. Citizen 

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Thursday, 08 April 2010 18:07 

<http://www.worldcantwait.net/images/stories/cia-agents%20and%20cronies%282%
29.jpg> By Glenn Greenwald
<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html> 

In late January, I
<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/27/yemen>  wrote
about the Obama administration's "presidential assassination program,"
whereby American citizens are targeted for killings far away from any
battlefield, based exclusively on unchecked accusations by the Executive
Branch that they're involved in Terrorism.  

At the time, The Washington Post's Dana Priest had noted deep in a long
article
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/26/AR201001260
4239_2.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2010012700394>  that Obama had continued
Bush's policy (which Bush never actually implemented) of having the Joint
Chiefs of Staff compile "hit lists" of Americans, and Priest suggested that
the American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was on that list.  

The following week, Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Adm. Dennis
Blair, acknowledged in Congressional testimony
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/26/AR201001260
4239_2.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2010012700394>  that the administration
reserves the "right" to carry out such assassinations.

Now, both
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/world/middleeast/07yemen.html?hp> The New
York Times and
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/06/AR201004060
4121.html?hpid=topnews> The Washington Post confirm that the Obama White
House has now expressly authorized the CIA to kill al-Alwaki no matter where
he is found, no matter his distance from a battlefield.  I wrote at length
about the extreme dangers and lawlessness of allowing the Executive Branch
the power to murder U.S. citizens far away from a battlefield (i.e., while
they're sleeping, at home, with their children, etc.) and with no due
process of any kind.  I won't repeat those arguments -- they're here
<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/27/yemen>  and
here
<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/04/assassinations
>  -- but I do want to highlight how unbelievably Orwellian and tyrannical
this is in light of these new articles today.

Just consider how the NYT reports on Obama's assassination order and how it
is justified: "The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of
authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim
cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging
attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence
and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday. . . .

"American counterterrorism officials say Mr. Awlaki is an operative of Al
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate of the terror network in Yemen
and Saudi Arabia. They say they believe that he has become a recruiter for
the terrorist network, feeding prospects into plots aimed at the United
States and at Americans abroad, the officials said.

"It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved
for targeted killing, officials said.  A former senior legal official in the
administration of George W. Bush said he did not know of any American who
was approved for targeted killing under the former president. . . ."

"The danger Awlaki poses to this country is no longer confined to words,"
said an American official, who like other current and former officials
interviewed for this article spoke of the classified counterterrorism
measures on the condition of anonymity. "He's gotten involved in plots."

No due process is accorded.  No charges or trials are necessary.  No
evidence is offered, nor any opportunity for him to deny these accusations
(which he has done vehemently through his family
<http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/01/10/yemen.al.awlaki.father/index.html
> ).  None of that.  

Instead, in Barack Obama's America, the way guilt is determined for American
citizens -- and a death penalty imposed -- is that the President, like the
King he thinks he is, secretly decrees someone's guilt as a Terrorist.  He
then dispatches his aides to run to America's newspapers -- cowardly hiding
behind the shield of anonymity which they're granted -- to proclaim that the
Guilty One shall be killed on sight because the Leader has decreed him to be
a Terrorist.  

It is simply asserted that Awlaki has converted from a cleric who expresses
anti-American views and advocates attacks on American military
<http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/02/2010271074776870.html>  targets
(advocacy which happens to be Constitutionally protected
<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/04/assassinations
> ) to Actual Terrorist "involved in plots."  These newspapers then print
this Executive Verdict with no questioning, no opposition, no investigation,
no refutation as to its truth.  And the punishment is thus decreed:  this
American citizen will now be murdered by the CIA because Barack Obama has
ordered that it be done.  What kind of person could possibly justify this or
think that this is a legitimate government power?

Just to get a sense for how extreme this behavior is, consider -- as the NYT
reported -- that not even George Bush targeted American citizens for this
type of extra-judicial killing (though a 2002 drone attack in
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A
5126-2002Nov4&notFound=true>  Yemen did result in the death of an American
citizen).  Even more strikingly, Antonin Scalia, in the 2004 case of
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-6696.ZS.html> Hamdi v. Rumsfeld,
wrote an Opinion <http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-6696.ZD.html>
(joined by Justice Stevens) arguing that it was unconstitutional for the
U.S. Government merely to imprison (let alone kill) American citizens as
"enemy combatants"; instead, they argued, the Constitution required that
Americans be charged with crimes (such as treason) and be given a trial
before being punished.  

The full  <http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-6696.ZO.html> Hamdi
Court held that at least some due process was required before Americans
could be imprisoned as "enemy combatants."  Yet now, Barack Obama is
claiming the right not merely to imprison, but to assassinate far from any
battlefield, American citizens with no due process of any kind.  Even GOP
Congressman Pete Hoekstra, when questioning Adm. Blair, recognized the
severe dangers raised by this asserted power.

And what about all the progressives who screamed for years about the Bush
administration's tyrannical treatment of Jose Padilla?  Bush merely
imprisoned Padilla for years without a trial.  If that's a vicious,
tyrannical assault on the Constitution -- and it was
<http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/11/true-tyranny-defined-bush-admin-
v-jose.html>  -- what should they be saying about the Nobel Peace Prize
winner's assassination of American citizens without any due process?

All of this underscores the principal point made in this excellent new
article by Eli Lake
<http://reason.com/archives/2010/04/06/the-914-presidency> , who
compellingly and comprehensively documents what readers here well know:
that while Obama's "speeches and some of his administration's policy
rollouts have emphasized a break from the Bush era," the reality is that the
administration has retained and, in some cases, built upon the core
Bush/Cheney approach to civil liberties and Terrorism.  As Al Gore asked in
his superb 2006 speech protesting
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/16/AR200601160
0779.html>  Bush's "War on the Constitution":

Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our
Constitution?

If the answer is yes, then under the theory by which these acts are
committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited?

If the president has the inherent authority to eavesdrop on American
citizens without a warrant, imprison American citizens on his own
declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do?

Notice the power that was missing from Gore's indictment of Bush radicalism:
the power to kill American citizens.  Add that to the litany -- as Obama has
now done -- and consider how much more compelling Gore's accusatory
questions become.

This article originally appeared on the web site of Glenn Greenwald.
<http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html> 

UPDATE:  When Obama was seeking the Democratic nomination, the
Constitutional Law Scholar answered a questionnaire about executive
<http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/specials/CandidateQA/ObamaQA/>
power distributed by The Boston Globe's Charlie Savage, and this was one of
his answers:

5. Does the Constitution permit a president to detain US citizens without
charges as unlawful enemy combatants?

[Obama]:  No. I reject the Bush Administration's claim that the President
has plenary authority under the Constitution to detain U.S. citizens without
charges as unlawful enemy combatants.

So back then, Obama said the President lacks the power merely to detain U.S.
citizens without charges.  Now, as President, he claims the power to
assassinate them without charges.  Could even his hardest-core loyalists try
to reconcile that with a straight face?  As Spencer Ackerman documents today
<http://washingtonindependent.com/81550/why-is-it-legal-to-kill-anwar-al-awl
aki?utm_campaign=twitter&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitter> , not even
John Yoo claimed that the President possessed the power Obama is claiming
here.

UPDATE II:  If you're going to argue that this is all justified because
Awlaki is an Evil, Violent, Murdering Terrorist Trying to Kill Americans,
you should say how you know that.  Generally, guilt is determined by having
a trial where the evidence is presented and the accused has an opportunity
to defend himself -- not by putting blind authoritarian faith in the
unchecked accusations of government leaders, even if it happens to be Barack
Obama.  That's especially true given how many times accusations of Terrorism
<http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/12/16/80788/even-in-cases-the-us-wins-guant
anamo.html>  by the U.S. Government have proven to be false
<http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/03/19/guantanamo-detainee-innocent.html>
.

UPDATE III:  Congratulations, Barack Obama:  you're now to the Right of
National Review on issues of executive power and due process, as Kevin
Williamson objects
<http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmEyNmVmYjMyZWVhODQzYjVkNGQ5NDZiZD
cxMmFjODc> :  "Surely there has to be some operational constraint on the
executive when it comes to the killing of U.S. citizens. . . . Odious as
Awlaki is, this seems to me to be setting an awful and reckless precedent. "
But Andy McCarthy -- who is about the most crazed Far Right extremist on
such matters as it gets, literally -- is as pleased as can be with what
Obama is
<http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTcyOGQ2MWY5NmRhODFmNGZiNzRjNjJlNz
dhNjRmY2U=>  doing (or, as
<http://gawker.com/5511705/obama-does-something-bloodthirsty-enough-to-pleas
e-the-psychos> Gawker puts it, "Obama Does Something Bloodthirsty Enough to
Please the Psychos").

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