rssACLU Not Exactly Cool With Obama Administration Assassinating Americans
Thursday, February 04, 2010 at 4:20 pm
- 7 Comments
Apropos of intelligence chief Dennis Blair’s remarkable disclosure, the following statement comes from the American Civil Liberties Union’s Ben Wizner:
It is alarming to hear that the Obama administration is asserting that the president can authorize the assassination of Americans abroad, even if they are far from any battlefield and may have never taken up arms against the U.S., but have only been deemed to constitute an unspecified “threat.” This is the most recent consequence of a troublingly overbroad interpretation of Congress’s 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force. This sweeping interpretation envisions a war that knows no borders or definable time limits and targets an enemy that the government has refused to define in public. This policy is particularly troubling since it targets U.S. citizens, who retain their constitutional right to due process even when abroad.
His colleague Jonathan Manes wants to know more:
The American people have a right to know more about a policy that grants the president the unilateral authority to approve the killing of U.S. citizens. It is essential that more information be made available about who can be targeted for killing, who makes these decisions and on the basis of how much evidence, and whether lethal force can be used if arrest or capture are possible or have not been attempted. While there is little doubt that a U.S. citizen fighting for an enemy army could lawfully be killed on the battlefield in the course of fighting, this policy goes far beyond the ordinary parameters of battlefield combat. It appears to allow for the deliberate targeted killing of American citizens far away from any active hostilities, as long as the executive branch determines unilaterally that they meet a secret definition of who the enemy is.
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Comment posted February 4, 2010 @ 6:09 pm
Huray! Now we're just like the Soviet Union when they said they could kill Soviet defectors abroad because they were Soviet citizens who broke the law by moving abroad without permission which was obviously an act of Anti-Soviet agitation!!
Only 10 more years to Transparency, Reconstruction II and the collapse of the Mid-Atlantic Empire!
Comment posted February 4, 2010 @ 9:31 pm
I apologize for being so trite with that first post, but over the course of the past eight years, we have been introduced to “free speech zones”, rampant unwarranted use of tasers against American citizens, pre-emptive arrests at political conventions, physical assaults against none corporate media reporters, the escalation of extreme rendition and black detention/torture facilities, targeted assassinations being committed by robot drones inside countries we are not at war with, military christian fundamentalists in control at the Pentagon who openly state that their first allegiance is to Jesus first, not the U.S. Constitution, U.S. senators siding with corporations on their right to rape women in their employ overseas without repercussions, the TSA deploying high frequency “strip you naked” viewers at all major U.S. airports, a national budget that (once medicare and social security are removed because they are self funded) allocates just shy of 50% of itself to defense, and you want us to get upset because they finally admit they murder U.S. citizens too? And you actually believe that they limit this practice to locations outside this country?
Comment posted February 5, 2010 @ 8:11 am
I'm still amazed that there are people out there who think that Obama is a savior, rescuing us from the evils of George Bush. Their policies are both disgusting. What this country needs is to be save from the Republicrats. A pox on both their houses. Vote Green Party!
Pingback posted February 5, 2010 @ 8:15 am
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Comment posted February 5, 2010 @ 1:11 pm
I'm still amazed that there are people out there who think that Obama is a savior, rescuing us from the evils of George Bush. Their policies are both disgusting. What this country needs is to be save from the Republicrats. A pox on both their houses. Vote Green Party!
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