tagged w/ Extrajudicial Executions
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Article 2, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution reads as follows: The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
In 1998, President Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice for matters arising out of the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.
If perjury and obstruction of justice constitute high crimes or misdemeanors, then doesn’t it seem rather obvious that the murder of an American citizen by the president would also constitute a high crime or misdemeanor, especially if the citizen is a child?
That’s precisely what President Obama, acting through U.S. national-security state agents, did on October 14, 2011. He murdered a 16-year-old American boy who was traveling in Yemen. The boy was Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was the son of accused terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki, who the CIA had assassinated two weeks before.
Why did President Obama and the CIA or the military kill Abdulrahman? The president, the CIA, and the Pentagon have all chosen to remain silent on the matter, refusing to even acknowledge that they killed the boy. But White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs implicitly provided the justification: “I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don’t think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.”
So, there you have it: the boy was apparently killed because he was considered to have the wrong father.
But if that’s a legitimate justification for killing a child, there are obviously a lot more children at risk in this country.
Proponents of the war on terrorism argue that the killing of the teenager wasn’t really a murder but rather an assassination. But isn’t that a distinction without a difference?
After all, compare Obama’s killing of Abdulrahman with Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s killing of Orlando Letelier. Pinochet took power in 1973, during the time that the Cold War and the war on communism were being waged. Pinochet, who the U.S. national-security state had helped install into power, not only began rounding up, incarcerating, torturing, abusing, and executing suspected communists without any judicial process, he also embarked on an program to assassinate Chilean communists found overseas.
Agents of Pinochet’s counterpart to the CIA, a secret police force called DINA, planned and orchestrated the killing of Orlando Letelier on the streets of Washington, D.C. Why was Letelier targeted for death? He was a socialist, a Chilean citizen who had served in the administration of President Salvador Allende, the democratically elected Marxist president whom Pinochet, President Richard Nixon, the CIA, and the U.S. military ousted from power and replaced with Pinochet’s military dictatorship. Therefore, as part of the war on communism, Letelier was considered to be a legitimate target for assassination.
On September 21, 1976, an assassination team headed by a man named Michael Townley exploded a bomb that the team had planted under Letelier’s car. Letelier was killed, along with his American assistant who was also in the car, 25-year-old Ronni Moffitt.
Interestingly, the U.S. Justice Department did not consider the assassination to be legitimate under the concept of war and enemy combatants, notwithstanding the fact that the Cold War and global war on communism were still being waged. The Justice Department treated the killings of Letelier and Moffitt as murders. Townley and his team were indicted and prosecuted for the murders of Letelier and Moffitt.
How is Obama’s killing of Abdulrahman any different from Pinochet’s murder of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt? In the one case, a 16-year-old boy has had his life snuffed out because he had the wrong father. In the other case, a man had his life snuffed out because he had the wrong philosophical beliefs. Given that the Letelier and Moffitt killings were treated as murders, why shouldn’t the Abdulraham killing be treated as murder too?
An interesting twist to these killings is a common
Full Story: http://fff.org/2013/02/20/why-isnt-the-murder-of-an-american-boy-an-impeachable-offense/Article 2, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution reads as follows: The President, Vice... more
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Does President Obama think that he has the power to kill American citizens on U.S. soil? If he accuses a guy in the Arizona desert or rural Montana of being an Al Qaeda terrorist, is it ever kosher to send a drone over to blow him up, as was done to Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen killed in Yemen? Or is it never okay to drone strike an American citizen to death here in the United States?
It's an easy question.
Answering it wouldn't jeopardize national security in any way.
So why do Obama Administration officials keep dodging it?
Asked the question in a Google Plus interview Thursday, Obama himself said, "Well first of all, there has never been a drone used on an American citizen on American soil." Duh. But will there ever be? He went on to say that it's easier to capture accused terrorists in the United States than abroad.
But he still didn't give a straight answer.
Counterterrorism adviser John Brennan won't answer either, despite Senator Rand Paul's repeated inquiries and vow that he'll try to block Brennan's confirmation as CIA director until he gets a response. Here's how Paul phrased the question: "Do you believe that the president has the power to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil?"
He added, "What about the use of lethal force against a non-U.S. person on U.S. soil?"
He's been after these answers awhile, so it's no surprise that he's also produced variations on the question:
Do you believe that the prohibition on CIA participation in domestic law enforcement, first established by the National Security Act of 1947, would apply to the use of lethal force, especially lethal force directed at an individual on a targeting list, if a U.S. citizen on a targeting list was found to be operating on U.S. soil? What if the individual on the targeting list was a non-U.S. person but found to be operating on U.S. soil? Do you consider such an operation to be domestic law enforcement, or would it only be subject to the president's wartime powers?
I can't think of any reason why the Obama Administration would keep dodging this question save one: It believes that, under certain circumstances, perhaps spelled out in a secret legal memo, it is empowered to kill American citizens or non-citizens with drones inside the United States.
And it knows the citizenry would be alarmed by that belief.
Americans know enough about what sometimes happens to innocents when Hellfire missiles explode to want their use restricted to foreign lands where victims can be put in the mental bucket "not like us." Paul, Senator Ron Wyden, and others are right to keep pressing for an answer. They should have more company. When sex scandals occur, the Washington, D.C., media whips itself into a frenzy getting answers to questions like, "Congressman, is that a picture of your penis in the tweet?" They don't rest until they get answers!
"Do you think you can kill Americans on U.S. soil?" would seem to be a more important question.
Anyone want to join me in a media frenzy for answers? If Paul tattoos the question on his butt and tweets out a picture, would that help?
(The terrible truth is that, yes, that would totally help.)
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/this-isnt-hard-mr-president-do-you-think-you-can-kill-us-on-american-soil-or-not/273207/Does President Obama think that he has the power to kill American citizens on U.S.... more
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The Obama administration, having killed a 16-year-old American boy, refuses to explain why in court.
The boy, Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi, was born in Denver and lived there until he was 7, when his family moved to Yemen. Like many American kids, he had a Facebook page and a love of the “Simpsons.” No one ever accused him of any wrongdoing. Yet on Oct. 14, 2011, a U.S. drone missile killed him and his teenage cousin while they were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant.
On Dec. 14, 2012, the Justice Department asked a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit in which Abdulrahman’s grandfather, Nasser Al-Aulaqi, is asking for an official explanation about why the boy died.
Until now, only unofficial explanations have been offered.
One anonymous government official told the media Abdulrahman’s death was a mistake. Indefensibly, former White House press secretary and Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs said this October, “You should have a far more responsible father” if you don’t want to be killed. (Abdulrahman’s father, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was suspected by the United States of terrorism and was killed by a drone two weeks before his son.) But surely no one would suggest that children are fair game simply because their parents are suspected of wrongdoing.
And if the government made a mistake, it should explain why.
http://libertycrier.com/politics/foreign-policy/opinion-barack-obama-needs-to-explain-drone-strikes/?utm_source=The+Liberty+Crier&utm_campaign=cf25ec5678-The_Liberty_Crier_Daily_News_12_27_2012&utm_medium=emailThe Obama administration, having killed a 16-year-old American boy, refuses to explain... more
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WASHINGTON — This was the enemy, served up in the latest chart from the intelligence agencies: 15 Qaeda suspects in Yemen with Western ties. The mug shots and brief biographies resembled a high school yearbook layout. Several were Americans. Two were teenagers, including a girl who looked even younger than her 17 years.
President Obama, overseeing the regular Tuesday counterterrorism meeting of two dozen security officials in the White House Situation Room, took a moment to study the faces. It was Jan. 19, 2010, the end of a first year in office punctuated by terrorist plots and culminating in a brush with catastrophe over Detroit on Christmas Day, a reminder that a successful attack could derail his presidency. Yet he faced adversaries without uniforms, often indistinguishable from the civilians around them.
“How old are these people?” he asked, according to two officials present. “If they are starting to use children,” he said of Al Qaeda, “we are moving into a whole different phase.”
Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=allWASHINGTON — This was the enemy, served up in the latest chart from the... more
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Presidential hopeful Ron Paul has publically attacked the Obama administration’s abolishment of due process in a new editorial, calling the move a turning point in American history.
Responding to Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent justification for the extrajudicial killings of three American citizens on foreign soil, Republican Party candidate Ron Paul has penned a scathing op-ed condemning the White House for circumventing the US Constitution. Earlier this month Holder spoke at Chicago’s Northwestern Law School to discuss last year’s execution of alleged terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki and two other US-born clerics in Yemen, a decision he says the White House still defends despite criticism from citizens and lawmakers alike.
Although both US President Barack Obama and the CIA signed off on the airstrike that killed the American citizens, Washington has been relatively quiet on the matter until Holder spoke earlier this month.
After Attorney General Holder justified the assassination of Americans, a congressional inquiry revealed that Robert Mueller, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, wasn’t certain that the same laws could be applied to killing Americans on US soil. With the FBI and Oval Office both hiding behind vague verbiage to allow the assassination of their own citizens, Ron Paul is critiquing what he calls a complete disregard of the Constitution.
“It is particularly bizarre to hear the logic of the administration claiming the right to target its citizens according to some secret selection process, when we justified our attacks against Iraq and Libya because their leaders supposedly were targeting their own citizens,” writes Rep. Paul. “We also now plan a covert war against Syria for the same reason.”
Full ASrticle: http://rt.com/usa/news/ron-paul-obama-process-014/Presidential hopeful Ron Paul has publically attacked the Obama administration’s... more
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The dirty war in Colombia continues to claim innocent victims. "War is a trick, and the trickier you are, the faster you win it", said a demobilized guerrilla from FARC who murdered civilians and military personnel with landmines. "We will not continue to shed tears over spilled milk, " says the former armed forces commander, General Freddy Padilla de León, about the hundreds of civilians killed by the Colombian army in the last five years.The dirty war in Colombia continues to claim innocent victims. "War is a trick,... more
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