U.S. Must Explain Targeted Killings of Its Own Citizens

[slipslidingaway]

http://www.aclu.org/blog/tag/Abdulrahman%20al-Awlaki

"Today the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking information about the legal and factual basis for the targeted killings of three U.S. citizens in Yemen. Last month, Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were killed when unmanned drones operated by the CIA and the U.S. military fired missiles at the car in which they were traveling. Last week, al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was killed in a similar drone strike.

The killing of three American citizens raises serious and troubling questions about whether the U.S. government was acting lawfully when it placed Anwar al-Awlaki's name on a "kill list" and when it ordered the deadly drone strikes. But the government is hiding behind a veil of secrecy and is refusing to publicly release information about its justifications for killing U.S. citizens far from any active battlefield. We know from reports in the press that the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) produced a memorandum providing legal justifications for killing al-Awlaki and that he was placed on a so-called "kill list" by a secret group of government officials. The government refuses to release the OLC memo or any other information about the legal and factual bases for killing Anwar and Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, however.

Before the public can determine whether the targeted killings of these U.S. citizens were lawful, the government must come clean and release the OLC memo and other records..."

[southmost]

1. sort of like the wireless wiretaps but exponentially worse

[slipslidingaway]

3. Definitely worse :( n/t

[Poll_Blind]

2. The secret assassination list for Americans thing- Not what I expected from a Democratic President

Oddly, I was sort of under the belief that we would be getting a more, not less, transparent government.

PB

[slipslidingaway]

4. Me neither, transparency only when it is convenient :( ...

DU would be up in arms if Bush had done the same thing.

Fortunately OWS looks past the D or R :)

[Poll_Blind]

10. Indeed- there would be paroxysms of outrage if an R had done it.

And in the biggest possible way, I give a huge thumbs up to your last sentence!

:thumbsup:

PB

[slipslidingaway]

17. Thanks, so happy OWS is not being divided into D's and R's, hope it stays that way! n/t

[The Northerner]

5. K&R n/t

[Kurmudgeon]

6. Al Qaeda declared war on the US in 1996.

[TransitJohn]

7. Was that before or after they withdrew diplomatic relations?

:sarcasm:


War is fought between nations.

[OnyxCollie]

9. You don't know how many times I had to repeat that here.

A superpower does not declare war on a terrorist organization. Al Qaeda does not deserve the status of a war opponent to the US.

"But the global caliphate is (almost) a state!1!"

Teh stupid. It burns.

[Kurmudgeon]

12. Not near as stupid as letting them run free to do it again.

[OnyxCollie]

19. Well, if it had been treated as a crime,

law enforcement could have cut off Al Qaeda's finances and saved taxpayers about $1.3 trillion spent on this "war."

Halliburton, Bechtel, Parsons, etc. thank you for your support.

[Kurmudgeon]

11. They are unpunished murderers, a group sworn to attack the US.

You can play games with semantics all you wish, luckily Mr. Obama isn't playing games.

[TransitJohn]

20. Haha, who's playing semantics?

:crazy: :eyes:

[Angry Dragon]

13. The US declared war on the Middle East in 1953

[slipslidingaway]

28. Played a large role IMHO. n/t

[Odin2005]

15. Terrorists are not soldiers, they are criminals.

Them saying that they are "at war" with the US is meaningless legally. Terrorism is a crime, not an act of war.

[Luminous Animal]

8. Kick.

[woo me with science]

14. It is extremely disturbing. Please read the ACLU report on Obama and core liberties.

There is alarm about what this administration is doing, as there should be.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2069714

http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/07/liberties_3/singleton/

The ACLU on Obama and core liberties
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon

The ACLU decided to use the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack to comprehensively survey the severe erosion of civil liberties justified in the name of that event, an erosion that — as it documents — continues unabated, indeed often in accelerated form, under the Obama administration. The group today is issuing a report entitled A Call to Courage: Reclaiming Our Liberties Ten Years After 9/11; that title is intended to underscore the irony that political leaders who prance around as courageous warriors against Terrorism in fact rely on one primary weapon — fear-mongering: the absence of courage — to vest the government with ever-more power and the citizenry with ever-fewer rights. Domestically, the “War on Terror” has been, and continues to be, a war on basic political liberties more than it is anything else. The particulars identified in this new ACLU report will not be even remotely new to any readers here, but given the organization’s status among progressives as the preeminent rights-defending group in the country, and given the bird’s-eye-view the report takes of these issues, it is well worth highlighting some of its key findings.

Let’s begin with the ACLU’s summary assessment of what President Obama has done with regard to these matters:

Last week, the top lawyer and 34-year-veteran of the CIA, John Rizzo, explained to PBS’ Frontline that Obama has “changed virtually nothing” from Bush policies in these areas, and this week, the ACLU explains that “most policies remain core elements of our national security strategy today.“ At some point very soon, this basic truth will be impossible to deny with a straight face even for the most hardened loyalists of both parties, each of whom have been eager, for their own reasons, to deny it (and even the two differences cited there, though positive, are wildly exaggerated by Obama defenders: the torture techniques authorized by Bush were no longer in use and the CIA black sites were empty by the time Obama was inaugurated; by contrast, there is ample evidence that the Obama administration continues to use torture by proxy and rendition/CIA-black-sites by proxy as well).

The ACLU then highlights one of the most perverse though revealing ironies of Democratic Party opinion on civil liberties in the Obama age: the way in which Bush’s attempt merely to imprison a U.S. citizen without due process (or merely to eavesdrop on citizens) prompted such outrage, while Obama’s claimed right to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process provokes virtually no protest:...

The Full ACLU Report: http://www.aclu.org/national-security/report-call-courage-reclaiming-our-liberties-ten-years-after-911


.

[WinkyDink]

16. For a man who knows Bill Ayers, this is supremely ironic.

[slipslidingaway]

18. Thanks for the links, snip ...

http://www.aclu.org/national-security/report-call-courage-reclaiming-our-liberties-ten-years-after-911

"A Cancer On Our Legal System

Taking on the legacy of the Bush administration's torture policy, the report warns that the lack of accountability leaves the door open to future abuses. "Our nation's official record of this era will show numerous honors to those who authorized torture – including a Presidential Medal of Freedom – and no recognition for those, like the Abu Ghraib whistleblower, who rejected and exposed it," it notes..."

[sabrina 1]

21. Thanks for the links. What a huge disappointment this is.

Putting it mildly. We were promised the restoration of Habeas Corpus. What happened to Sen. Leahy's Committee? We were told that if we elected Democrats, Leahy would have a much better chance of getting his work done regarding restoring the Rule of Law. Since Democrats took over, I have not heard a word from him on this issue.

Maybe it's time to start calling him again.

Same thing with Conyers. I used to be on his blog, helping him to get petitions signed, to do research for his book, 'The Constitution in Crisis' etc. etc. But he too became silent on these issues since Democrats took over the WH.

Seems to me Democrats work harder for civil rights when a Republican in the WH.

[slipslidingaway]

23. Great point ...

"Seems to me Democrats work harder for civil rights when a Republican in the WH."

I remember Feingold answering a question a few years ago about rights, he said the real proof will be what the Dems do once they are back in control and the WH is held by a Dem.

[Bonobo]

22. If Fascism is not the President maintaining the right to kill anyone on a secret list...

then I can't imagine how one would define it.

[slipslidingaway]

24. Seems we'll have to wait for a Repub to be in charge before more people...

are offended.

[Bonobo]

26. It does seem that way. If you look at the people posting on this thread...

you will notice the absence -quite obvious- of any of the toe-the-line hard-core, not values supporters.

I guess they just have no answer for this kind of Constitution-shredding behavior.

[slipslidingaway]

27. Yes :) n/t

[KoKo]

25. K&R