The president’s partisan lawyers purport to vest him with the most extreme power a political leader can seize
Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian [UK]
5 February 2013
The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed US citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, along with US citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman with a separate drone strike in Yemen.
Since then, senior Obama officials including Attorney General Eric Holder and John Brennan, Obama’s top terrorism adviser and his current nominee to lead the CIA, have explicitly argued that the president is and should be vested with this power. Meanwhile, a Washington Post article from October reported that the administration is formally institutionalizing this president’s power to decide who dies under the Orwellian title “disposition matrix”.
When the New York Times back in April, 2010 first confirmed the existence of Obama’s hit list, it made clear just what an extremist power this is, noting: “It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing.” The NYT quoted a Bush intelligence official as saying “he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president”. When the existence of Obama’s hit list was first reported several months earlier by the Washington Post’s Dana Priest, she wrote that the “list includes three Americans”.
What has made these actions all the more radical is the absolute secrecy with which Obama has draped all of this. Not only is the entire process carried out solely within the Executive branch – with no checks or oversight of any kind – but there is zero transparency and zero accountability…
…I’ve written many times at length about why the Obama assassination program is such an extreme and radical threat – see here for one of the most comprehensive discussions, with documentation of how completely all of this violates Obama and Holder’s statements before obtaining power – and won’t repeat those arguments here. Instead, there are numerous points that should be emphasized about the fundamentally misleading nature of this new memo…
Read the entire article, with the DOJ document, at The Guardian.
Related: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans
I spliced together a few clips to highlight the jaw dropping hypocrisy of Obama’s past outrage over the non-lethal process of waterboarding foreign al-Qaeda leaders and today’s declaration by his spokesman that assassinating American citizens with no judicial review or trial is “legal, ethical, and wise.”
Kill Me Now, Or, Obama Bringing People Together
And, from The Ulsterman Report, June 2012, WHITE HOUSE INSIDER: Barack Obama’s High Tech Snuff Films…
WHI: …Obama loves them drones. He has made them a personal priority above all else…
…So having Obama so oddly focused…not just focused…he gets excited…visually…the guy gets off on it and he ain’t even hiding that fact anymore. And some are repulsed by it. They’ve done video reviews you know…of the missions. The drones. The kills.
UM: The president you mean? He watches videos of the drone attacks?
WHI: Yeah…
Someday everyone will be on a kill list for 15 minutes
Government Memo: Obama May Kill Certain U.S. Citizens
Rick Sanchez prefers ‘questionable’ drone strikes to unwinnable wars
Meanwhile, Obama Absolutely Wrong Again: “Weapons of War Have No Place On Our Streets”
Update: via Instapundit:
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: DOJ white paper on killer drones and US citizens abroad. “The Department of Justice has developed a white paper outlining the specific circumstances under which the United States can conduct a lethal drone strike against an American citizen, a copy of which was obtained Monday by NBC News. The paper provides the first detailed look at the criteria the Obama Administration uses to judge if it can legally kill American citizens traveling abroad without the benefit of due process.”
How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?
Update 2: Obama, Carney walk away from media questions about kill policy
President Barack Obama today walked away from a roomful of journalists, leaving Jay Carney to evade numerous media questions about the administration’s semi-secret, closed-door process of killing American citizens who are tied to jihad…
via Michael Savage:
Obama’s Drone Memo: The Mind-boggling Hypocrisy Of The Left Is Alive & Well at Flopping Aces
American drone deaths highlight controversy
Of the scores of people dubbed terrorists and taken out by American military drone strikes, three men–all killed in the fall of 2011–were U.S. citizens…
CAJ note:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
–Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America
Update 3: Is there a drone in your neighbourhood? Remember this:
View the full sized map here.
Link corrected.
