U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric

[SuMar]

WASHINGTON — 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.

Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and spent years in the United States as an imam, is in hiding in Yemen. He has been the focus of intense scrutiny since he was linked to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., in November, and then to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25.

Some of you might be of a mind to cheer, but before you do, consider this:

By what authority does President Obama command the US military?

That granted by the Constitution.

How is it not a violation of the 5th Amendment to hunt down and execute an American citizen without a trial?

U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric - NYTimes.com​

 

[The Rabbi]

Because this is a war, not a criminal action.
And Obama was lucky to have Bush before him to pave the way here for the understanding that the War on Terror is in fact a war, not a criminal police action.

Thanks again, Mr Former President. We all miss you!

 

[☭proletarian☭]

WASHINGTON — 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.

Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and spent years in the United States as an imam, is in hiding in Yemen. He has been the focus of intense scrutiny since he was linked to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., in November, and then to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25.

Some of you might be of a mind to cheer, but before you do, consider this:

By what authority does President Obama command the US military?

That granted by the Constitution.

How is it not a violation of the 5th Amendment to hunt down and execute an American citizen without a trial?

U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric - NYTimes.com​

Where did he say to kill him without trial?

Local police often authorize the use of deadly force if the suspect cannot be captured alive. Sounds like the same principle to me.

 

[George Costanza]

I'm sorry - not buying it. I know the N.Y. Times article says so. But I'm not buying it. We simply do not "target" people for death.

Need to know a lot more here.

 

[Father Time]

Because this is a war, not a criminal action.
And Obama was lucky to have Bush before him to pave the way here for the understanding that the War on Terror is in fact a war, not a criminal police action.

Thanks again, Mr Former President. We all miss you!

We are not at war with Yemen.

What Obama is doing is beyond disgusting.

 

[CaféAuLait]

WASHINGTON — 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.

Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and spent years in the United States as an imam, is in hiding in Yemen. He has been the focus of intense scrutiny since he was linked to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., in November, and then to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25.

Some of you might be of a mind to cheer, but before you do, consider this:

By what authority does President Obama command the US military?

That granted by the Constitution.

How is it not a violation of the 5th Amendment to hunt down and execute an American citizen without a trial?

U.S. Approves Targeted Killing of American Cleric - NYTimes.com​

I'm confused. I really am here. So we worry about the 'rights' of non-US Citizens as suspected terrorists in GITMO, but this suspected terrorist has no rights as a US citizen, no right to trial or miranda?

 

[Father Time]

Methinks all that Miranda stuff for the terrorists was just for show (didn't they get convicted anyway). Either that or Obama has a special grudge against this guy for some reason.

 

[GilbertArizona]

Whether it is proper for American citizens to have their photo on a "Wanted Dead or Alive" posters is a good question. For me it is a question whether preserving this guy's rights is worth the additional risk to any in our military by mandating he be taken alive? I really think we already ask too much from our soldiers and so am leaning towards Obama's decision. Although if the guy surrenders, he should get his trial.

 

[FA_Q2]

I'm sorry - not buying it. I know the N.Y. Times article says so. But I'm not buying it. We simply do not "target" people for death.

Need to know a lot more here.

Not to be offensive here but that is a little ignorant. The US military regularly defines targets for death. This sound to be the same thing.

Because this is a war, not a criminal action.
And Obama was lucky to have Bush before him to pave the way here for the understanding that the War on Terror is in fact a war, not a criminal police action.

Thanks again, Mr Former President. We all miss you!

We are not at war with Yemen.

What Obama is doing is beyond disgusting.

We are at war with terrorists. Yes it is a war and disgusting things are done in wars. That is the nature of the beast. What is more disgusting the bullshit outrage that the American public seems to have against military actions that must be done. It is beyond me how people cannot seem to understand how brutal warfare is and the things that go on in wars are never pretty. It is that sentiment that wants terrorists brought here and given trials as American citizens when our justice system was not built to handle that type of situation. Whether or not this individual is an American citizen is rather a distant secondary concern. The grater concerns here are his ties to enemy actions and that he is hiding abroad to do them. This makes him a military target and subject to that paradigm.

Whether it is proper for American citizens to have their photo on a "Wanted Dead or Alive" posters is a good question. For me it is a question whether preserving this guy's rights is worth the additional risk to any in our military by mandating he be taken alive? I really think we already ask too much from our soldiers and so am leaning towards Obama's decision. Although if the guy surrenders, he should get his trial.

Well said, and I do believe that if the individual in question were to surrender then they would get a trial. If they fight back is another story as it should be.

 

[Father Time]

Why do people act like the entire Constitution can be ignored at will if we're at war?

 

[Kalam]

Why do people act like the entire Constitution can be ignored at will if we're at war?

It's an American tradition.

Alien and Sedition Acts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[QUENTIN]

Remember when in order to detain someone, you had to have evidence they committed a crime and then put them on trial? Those were the days.

Now we'll really, really yearn for the days when in order to kill a citizen they had to be found guilty of a capital crime in a court of law and sentenced to the death penalty.

What this sets up is a system, in complete and utter contravention of the most fundamental guarantees enshrined in the Constitution, in which the only thing it takes for a citizen to be "legally" assassinated is the accusation of the President that you're a "terrorist."

Considering how many times such accusations have proven to be false, that is the vast majority of the time, this should chill the blood of every American.

CBC News - World - Most Guantanamo detainees are innocent: ex-Bush official

http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=h...FSFkk3SUUSUkS0aHQ3CH0Q3CSUkWQ7E,PHQ3CnV0Oqne8

Of the 779 total detainees held at Guantanamo since 9/11, 531 (68%) were found to by the CSRT to be innocent and were released by 2007. Of the remaining 248 detainees not cleared for release by the CSRT and tried by federal judges, 28 out of 33 (85%) have resulted in similar findings and cleared the so-called "worst of the worst" of any connection to terrorism and ordered them released. That's not even counting the 22 Chinese Uighurs who were found to pose zero threat to anyone but the Chinese, 4 of whom have been released to Bermuda.

In other words, at the very least, three-quarters of those the Government has accused of being terrorists have turned out not to be terrorists once they were given even the most minimal of review (and the CSRT was setup to be far stricter than American laws, with almost no protections for the accused and designed to maximize our ability to hold those with even passing connections to any terrorists, terrorist networks, or support of terrorism).

We now are willing to enable that system to not merely detain, but KILL people, not even foreign nationals but U.S. citizens, still based solely on their word?

How stupid and subservient can we get? If the last 9 years should have taught us anything it's that the fact that the government claims someone is a terrorist does not in any way shape or form mean that they are actually guilty of terrorism. And despite all the arguments about who is protected by the Constitution, no one, not even the radical John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld, or Bush DOJ, has ever proffered the argument that American citizens are not guaranteed its protections.

Obama has now gone above and beyond the dictatorial powers and lawlessness of even the worst executive power-grabbing decrees of the Bush Administration. That we would bestow in the government the right to "legally" murder a U.S. citizen based on unverified and so far usually untrue claims untested by a court or any check or oversight is one of the most radical and disturbing developments in the whole war on terror debacle.

The ramifications could not possibly be more Orwellian or more dangerous and those who believe in limited (or simply not totalitarian) government, or the right to free speech, or dissent, or any number of essential liberties and protections the Founding Fathers had the foresight to bestow on us should vehemently oppose this measure. It is not hyperbole to say that if allowed to exercise this claimed authority, current and future Administrations would be free to declare those, like Awlaki, who advocate against the U.S. government (militias, tea partiers, anti-war groups, etc) "terrorists" and execute them with impunity.

 

[US Army Retired]

Assassination is standard proceedures of CIA agents. Obama ought to know with his experience.


CIA Columbia Obama Cover Up

Very interesting.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WedxY61d60&feature=player_embedded]YouTube - CIA Columbia Obama Cover Up[/ame]

 

[QUENTIN]

When Obama was seeking the Democratic nomination, the Constitutional Law Scholar answered a questionnaire about executive 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, not even John Yoo claimed that the President possessed the power Obama is claiming here.

 

[QUENTIN]

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 by the U.S. Government have proven to be false.

Again: CBC News - World - Most Guantanamo detainees are innocent: ex-Bush official

68% of the detainees claimed by the government to be "terrorists" and held at Guantanamo Bay were cleared of all charges by the Combatant Status Review Tribunal and released by the Bush Administration by the end of 2007. 85% of those claimed by the government to be "terrorists" and tried by strong-on-terror Bush appointed federal judges were found to be innocent of any connection to terrorism and released.

A government claim that someone is a terrorist does not make it so. Trusting them with that kind of unchecked, unverified, and absolute power - the power to kill based purely on accusation - is as total a submission to supreme authoritarian rule as I can imagine.

 

[FA_Q2]

Let's get something straight here. This is not an ordinary citizens sitting at home having some coffer and having his door kicked down and assassinated. This is an American citizen that may have ties with enemy actions hiding on foreign grounds in the middle of a war. In the past this was a lot simpler because you had defined enemies and actual battlegrounds. Now those battlegrounds are all over the planet and that does pose some problems but does not completely wipe away the nature of war. Sure, an American has the right to a trial and all the protections granted within the constitution but an enemy combatant is another animal all together. If the citizen was so damn innocent then why do they not turn themselves in to receive a trial? Why are they hiding in Yemen? I do not expect the American military to act as a police force and I do expect them to root out enemy weak points and eliminate them. As I said earlier, I do believe that if capture or surrender present themselves then there certainly needs to appropriate measures taken and trials held. If such things are not feasible then elimination is certainly on the table for a military target.

 

[The Rabbi]

We are at war with terrorists. Yes it is a war and disgusting things are done in wars. That is the nature of the beast. What is more disgusting the bullshit outrage that the American public seems to have against military actions that must be done. It is beyond me how people cannot seem to understand how brutal warfare is and the things that go on in wars are never pretty. It is that sentiment that wants terrorists brought here and given trials as American citizens when our justice system was not built to handle that type of situation. Whether or not this individual is an American citizen is rather a distant secondary concern. The grater concerns here are his ties to enemy actions and that he is hiding abroad to do them. This makes him a military target and subject to that paradigm.

Yes.
War is not pretty. There is no way to wage one effectively using Marguis of Queensbury Rules and acting like gentlemen. Turn off the cameras, do what needs to be done, and finish with it.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Why do people act like the entire Constitution can be ignored at will if we're at war?

It is not being Ignored. He is a traitor. He is waging WAR on the US. Nothing in the Constitution ties the Governments hands in dealing with anyone waging armed rebellion against the Country, nor of dealing with anyone openly waging WAR against the US.

Perhaps you would care to cite for us where in the Constitution does so?

 

[QUENTIN]

Let's get something straight here. This is not an ordinary citizens sitting at home having some coffer and having his door kicked down and assassinated. This is an American citizen that may have ties with enemy actions hiding on foreign grounds in the middle of a war.

Indeed, he may. Just as anyone accused of any crime may be guilty of whatever it is. And the only Constitutional way to determine that is through a trial by jury.

Why do people act like the entire Constitution can be ignored at will if we're at war?

It is not being Ignored. He is a traitor. He is waging WAR on the US. Nothing in the Constitution ties the Governments hands in dealing with anyone waging armed rebellion against the Country, nor of dealing with anyone openly waging WAR against the US.

Perhaps you would care to cite for us where in the Constitution does so?

There's no open about it. And if you're at all familiar with the Constitution, you know the Sixth Amendment guarantees a fair trial to all accused. If he's to be deemed a traitor, he has to be tried for treason and found guilty.

His rights can't simply be revoked because of an unproven suspicion he's no longer loyal to the US. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 held that it is unconstitutional for Congress to strip the citizenship of any American who did not voluntarily renounce citizenship, even if that citizen proved himself loyal to a foreign country or army. The Court found, and it is Constitutional law that:

[The Fourteenth Amendment] provides its own constitutional rule in language calculated completely to control the status of citizenship: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States . . . ." There is no indication in these words of a fleeting citizenship, good at the moment it is acquired but subject to destruction by the Government at any time. Rather the Amendment can most reasonably be read as defining a citizenship which a citizen keeps unless he voluntarily relinquishes it. Once acquired, this Fourteenth Amendment citizenship was not to be shifted, canceled, or diluted at the will of the Federal Government, the States, or any other governmental unit.

So al-Waliki is still a US Citizen and still subject to all laws guaranteed to citizens, namely in this case the right to a fair and speedy trial by jury to determine his guilt before he can be given a sentence, particularly a death sentence.

Our military has every right to kill al-Waliki or anyone else who is actively engaging them in hostilities on a genuine battlefield - shooting at them in the desert, trying to blow them up from a roof top, etc. - that's not what this is about. This is about the Obama Administration trying to kill al-Waliki anywhere he is and even if he's not engaged at all in anything remotely resembling hostilities - sleeping at home with his family for instance - by first claiming the entire world is a battlefield and then that al-Waliki and anyone else the government just labels without evidence, charge, or trial as a "terrorist" has all of their legal rights revoked. We're not talking a slippery slope here, we're talking an vertical drop covered in black ice.

So far the only actual evidence offered by the government that this guy is a terrorist is their claim that he has talked to people in Yemen and the U.S. who have carried out crimes. That in his role as a Cleric he has offered religious counsel of his interpretation of Islam and advocated anti-U.S. actions. In other words, he has expressed his opinion guaranteed to him by our free speech laws. Fred Phelps also hates the U.S., is a religious radical, and calls for the violent usurpation of the American government. Should the government be allowed to assassinate him too?

It's worth noting that Awlaki vehemently denies the charges that he has taken any part in any physical act of terrorism (something not in keeping to people who actually engage in terrorism who, as a source of honor, pride, and to help recruitment, take credit not only for all of the attacks they perpetrate but sometimes even ones they don't) through his family and the government has done nothing to counter these professions of innocence and call for evidence except disseminate claims to media outlets via anonymous internal sources.

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 targets (advocacy which happens to be Constitutionally protected) 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. Even more strikingly, Antonin Scalia, in the 2004 case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, wrote an Opinion (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 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.

Anyone who values civil liberties, legal protections, or value of the Constitution should oppose this massive and dangerous expansion of executive power and circumvention of our most basic rights. It's not about terrorism, it's about the sanctity of the rule of law.