Suppose that bin Laden, while fighting the USSR in Afghanistan, had married a US citizen.

[Boojatta]

If he had used his marriage to himself become a US citizen before the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa, then what options would have been available to deal with him?

[itsallhappening]

1. Same plan would have worked.

[LuvNewcastle]

2. Well since he was already married --

a few times I think -- we could have arrested him and his new wife for polygamy and thus prevented the attacks.:7

[Boojatta]

3. Suppose he had divorced all of his wives before marrying a US citizen.

[LuvNewcastle]

10. He is said to have been a CIA asset at that time,

and he was probably being protected by our people over there. As a new American citizen, he probably would have been lauded for his intelligence work for our side. The bombings probably would have been blamed on someone else and Bin Laden dealt with secretly.

[Boojatta]

15. I like that answer.

Of course, I'm biased in favor of thinking, and against knee-jerk responses. Perhaps it's simply my bias on display.

[dkf]

4. This crew doesn't believe in the death penalty much less when not done under international law

Nor against American citizens.

Their only acceptable justice is life in prison and anything more is wrong.

[COLGATE4]

6. No - but there are a lot of us who believe that the death penalty

should only occur after the person so sentenced has had the due process rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Pretty radical thinking.

[dkf]

11. I bet you will find more people upset about awlaki against the death penalty entirely.

[white_wolf]

9. Not only is the death penalty wrong, the prison system in the U.S. is wrong.

We need to completely change our prison system in this country and focus on rehabilitation and not revenge. U.S. prisons just make people more violent and the prisoners are often exploited for slave labor.

[dkf]

13. Terrorist citizens too?

[white_wolf]

14. I don't believe in the death penalty. Period.

Violence may be necessary at times, but killing someone who is no longer a threat to you is nothing more than cold blooded murder.

[TheWraith]

5. While I agree with you, this is getting pretty ridiculous.

Almost as ridiculous as the people insisting on a principle that would have prevented Union troops from firing on Confederates during the Civil War.

[Vinnie From Indy]

16. I feel compelled to ask why you support a policy that appears

to allow the President or some designated subordinate to pick from a secret list of names of Americans to be summarily killed anywhere they happen to be at the time of the killing. Keep in mind that this list is secret and there is no indication that those on the list are informed that their doom could happen at any time nor is it known if these targeted Americans are even asked to surrender peacefully to the US government.

It is also not known if these operations ever have to be reported to anyone. There does not appear to be anything to compel the government to reveal to anyone that they had any hand in the disappearance of a John Smith in Ohio or a Fred Peterson in Iowa. As far as we know the President now has the power to disappear anyone anywhere within his military grasp.

I find that some here are very incurious, shortsighted and overly trustful of politicians.

Cheers!

[TheWraith]

19. I'm compelled to ask why you feel a need to make up imaginary facts.

Like trying to turn the death of a wanted fugitive, who was publicly acknowledged as being a target and that we would kill him if we couldn't capture him, into "the Big Gummint can murder any innocent person at any time!!!1"

[Vinnie From Indy]

17. Your argument is very odd in regard to the comparison between soldiers

on a battlefield, holding weapons and the al-Alawki killing. These things are not remotely similar and I am shocked that anyone would ever even come up with such a comparison.

[TheWraith]

18. Well they were American citizens and they deserved trials, didn't they?

Doesn't matter what they did or were about to, it was a violation of due process to just kill them wasn't it? :eyes:

Trust me, you have really no grounds to complain about other people's comparisons, when you're making up scenarios that hinge on how innocent a self-confessed attempted murderer was, and how we have no evidence he did anything other than the Big Gubmint's claims--except for his own repeated claims of responsibility, of course.

[Vinnie From Indy]

20. Being willfully obtuse is no way to go through life

And, it is quite boring.

Cheers and good luck with that!

[Boojatta]

7. A website of PBS contains an odd typographical error: "U.S.ccessful" instead of "Unsuccessful"

June 1995
U.S.ccessful assassination attempt on the life of the President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, in Addis Ababa. U.S. intelligence sources believe bin Laden was somehow linked.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/etc/cron.html

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Boojatta]

12. If US citizenship were like diplomatic immunity, then don't you think

that wealthy people around the world would make a big effort to obtain it?