Assassination // Current TV

Rewritten Headlines: Assassination to Cheerleaders

Tony D rewrites the news so you don't have to read it.

TonyDiGerolamo
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Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list' ( Article)

(Reuters) – American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or... more

factoverfiction
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The Day America Died: The only Future for Americans is a Nightmare

Many expected President Obama to re-establish the accountability of government to law. Instead, he went further than Bush/Cheney and asserted the unconstitutional power not only to hold American citizens indefinitely in prison without bringing charges, but also to take their lives without convicting them in a court of law. Obama asserts that the US Constitution notwithstanding, he has the authority to assassinate US citizens, who he deems to be a “threat,” without due process of law.

In other words, any American citizen who is moved into the threat category has no rights and can be executed without trial or evidence.

On September 30 Obama used this asserted new power of the president and had two American citizens, Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan murdered. Khan was a wacky character associated with Inspire Magazine and does not readily come to mind as a serious threat.

Awlaki was a moderate American Muslim cleric who served as an advisor to the US government after 9/11 on ways to counter Muslim extremism. Awlaki was gradually radicalized by Washington’s use of lies to justify military attacks on Muslim countries. He became a critic of the US government and told Muslims that they did not have to passively accept American aggression and had the right to resist and to fight back. As a result Awlaki was demonized and became a threat.

All we know that Awlaki did was to give sermons critical of Washington’s indiscriminate assaults on Muslim peoples. Washington’s argument is that his sermons might have had an influence on some who are accused of attempting terrorist acts, thus making Awlaki responsible for the attempts.

Obama’s assertion that Awlaki was some kind of high-level Al Qaeda operative is merely an assertion.Jason Ditz concluded that the reason Awlaki was murdered rather than brought to trial is that the US government had no real evidence that Awlaki was an Al Qaeda operative.

But what Awlaki did or might have done is beside the point. The US Constitution requires that even the worst murderer cannot be punished until he is convicted in a court of law. When the American Civil Liberties Union challenged in federal court Obama’s assertion that he had the power to order assassinations of American citizens, the Obama Justice (sic) Department argued that Obama’s decision to have Americans murdered was an executive power beyond the reach of the judiciary.

In a decision that sealed America’s fate, federal district court judge John Bates ignored the Constitution’s requirement that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law and dismissed the case, saying that it was up to Congress to decide. Obama acted before an appeal could be heard, thus using Judge Bates’ acquiescence to establish the power and advance the transformation of the president into a Caesar that began under George W. Bush.

Attorneys Glenn Greenwald and Jonathan Turley point out that Awlaki’s assassination terminated the Constitution’s restraint on the power of government. Now the US government not only can seize a US citizen and confine him in prison for the rest of his life without ever presenting evidence and obtaining a conviction, but also can have him shot down in the street or blown up by a drone.

(allot more @ link)

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-day-america-died-the-only-future-for-americans-is-a-nightmare.htmlMany expected President Obama to re-establish the accountability of government to law.... more

Anonmaly
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Al-Awlaki Killing In Yemen Raises Constitutional Questions: Assasinated American citizen without Trial?

The United States government killed an American citizen in Yemen on Friday in hostile... more

mab001
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The Due-Process-Free Assassination Of U.S. Citizens Is Now Reality

By Glenn Greenwald
Salon

It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki. No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was "considering" indicting him). Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even has any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt. When Awlaki's father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were "state secrets" and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts. He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner. When Awlaki's inclusion on President Obama's hit list was confirmed, The New York Times noted that "it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing."

After several unsuccessful efforts to assassinate its own citizen, the U.S. succeeded today (and it was the U.S.). It almost certainly was able to find and kill Awlaki with the help of its long-time close friend President Saleh, who took a little time off from murdering his own citizens to help the U.S. murder its. The U.S. thus transformed someone who was, at best, a marginal figure into a martyr, and again showed its true face to the world. The government and media search for The Next bin Laden has undoubtedly already commenced.

What's most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law"), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What's most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government's new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government. Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President's ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki -- including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry's execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists -- criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed.

From an authoritarian perspective, that's the genius of America's political culture. It not only finds way to obliterate the most basic individual liberties designed to safeguard citizens from consummate abuses of power (such as extinguishing the lives of citizens without due process). It actually gets its citizens to stand up and clap and even celebrate the destruction of those safeguards.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/By Glenn Greenwald Salon It was first reported in January of last year that the... more

Vic_Romano
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Is Hope Dead?

It's time to pick ourselves up and move forward.... more

Progresshiv
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Unconfirmed report of Syrian general's assassination

Rustum Ghazali was Syria's head of military intelligence, and one of the... more

Aimee_Kligman
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8 months ago
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http://newstalgia.crooksandliars.com/gordonskene/newstalgia-reference-room-inimitable-h

Where would we be without the haywire among us?

Gordonskene
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http://www.rob-servations.com/1/post/2011/07/fox-news-tweets-obamadead.html

The network had another twitter mistake - and makes many others of similar,... more

regroce
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11 months ago
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President Obama assassinated according to hacked Fox News Twitter

Earlier today the Fox News Politics Twitter account was hacked and a number of... more

sbacker
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11 months ago
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Osama raid avenged CIA deaths

2 agents among 44 U.S. Embassy workers killed in 1988 bomb blast in Kenya For a... more

Vierotchka
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1 year ago
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'Al Arabiya' talks to a witness of night bin Laden was assassinated

Al Arabiya publishes both an Arabic and English version of its web news. In the Arabic... more

Aimee_Kligman
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CBS '60 Minutes' talks to President Obama about mission to kill bin Laden

In a preview to this Sunday's 60 Minute segment, correspondent Steve Kroft asks... more

Aimee_Kligman
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There is nothing normal about celebrating death

By Jody McIntyre
The Foreign Desk
Tuesday, 3 May 2011 at 9:58 am

113546409 254x300 There is nothing normal about celebrating deathI thought justice was about bringing people to trial for crimes they have committed, not targeted assassinations. It seems I was wrong. I thought disdain for Britain and the US was born from our imperialist foreign policy, not one man recording video messages. It seems I was wrong. First, NATO bomb Libya and kill three of Gaddafi’s grandchildren, and people celebrate. What were the crimes of those children? Or is it acceptable to celebrate their deaths because they are ‘the devil’s spawn’?

Today, we are celebrating the death of former CIA employee Osama Bin Laden. Why are there no photographs of his body? Why was he buried in the sea? Why is he not on trial? Of course, we are not encouraged to question the official line.

Can one man be solely responsible for atrocities that kill thousands of people? As with Saddam Hussein, as with Muammer Gaddafi, the complete dehumanisation of Osama Bin Laden as an individual has served as the pretext for the killing of hundreds of thousands of people. If we were to follow the logic that the killing of one man called Bin Laden comprises ‘justice’ for the thousands of victims of 9/11, then what would ‘justice’ for the estimated one million Iraqis dead since the US and British-led invasion of Iraq entail?

The truth is, the conditions that allow Bin Laden’s ideology to proliferate still exist. The colonialist Israeli occupation of Palestine still exists. The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan still exist. The bombing of Libya continues. We do not celebrate those victims of our ‘military humanitarianism’; rather, we completely ignore them.

If Osama Bin Laden was killed today, then is the world a better place? Should we feel safer? I do not feel safer to know that a country with a thousand military bases across the world still holds the arrogant vision of itself as the world’s policeman. I think there is another reason Bin Laden would never be put on trial; perhaps then, we could have found out who he was taking his orders from?

“I think that all the silence is worse than all the violence,” sings rapper Lupe Fiasco on his latest single, ‘Words I Never Said’, “Fear is such a weak emotion that’s why I despise it / We’re scared of almost everything afraid to even tell the truth…”

When will we stop allowing our fears to blind our sense of humanity?By Jody McIntyre The Foreign Desk Tuesday, 3 May 2011 at 9:58 am... more