FirmhandKY
Posts: 8948
Joined: 9/21/2004
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quote:
ORIGINAL: mnottertail
yanno, you like to portray yourself as cherubic. there is nobody attacking you or claiming everybody knows it. so, you rant thru your own personal prejudices, and leave me to mine.
you have no welcome to attribute to me positions I do not hold, nor do you have leave to put words in my mouth.
oh, yeah, and you forgot bush for one.
http://wap.cbsnews.com/site?sid=cbsnews&pid=sections.detail&catId=TOP&storyId=531596&viewFull=yes
but he isnt particularly unique, only in that he figured it legal to torture americans as well, obama hasnt went that far yet (that we know).
First, your facts are wrong.
Second, even if I give you Bush (which I don't), there is a substantial difference between one President who you name (Bush) and "just about every president whos went to war" which is what you claimed.
Third, the specifics, in case you didn't read your own article for comprehension, or the OP's article:
Your article:
secret finding signed by the president [Bush] after the Sept. 11 attacks that directs the CIA to covertly attack al Qaeda anywhere in the world. The authority makes no exception for Americans, so permission to strike them is understood rather than specifically described, officials said.
...
Any decision to strike an American will be made at the highest levels, perhaps by the president.
...
The target of the attack, a Yemeni named Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, was the top al Qaeda operative in that country. Efforts by Yemeni authorities to detain him had previously failed. But the CIA didn't know a U.S. citizen, Yemeni-American Kamal Derwish, was in the car.
So, two points:
1. No specific American was actually targeted for assassination by Bush, and
2. The events and methods used when one American was killed was due to the fact that he was killed when other members of AQ were targeted. In other words, he was "on the battlefield" and was a causality of war, not the target of assassination. (Government officials kill American citizens daily without due process, when they are in the commission of felony crimes, but they are not specifically targeted for assassination.
The OP's article:
... the Obama administration's "presidential assassination program," whereby American citizens are targeted for killings far away from any battlefield, based exclusively on unchecked accusations by the Executive Branch that they're involved in Terrorism. At the time, The Washington Post's Dana Priest had noted deep in a long article that Obama had continued Bush's policy (which Bush never actually implemented)
...
Today, both The New York Times and The Washington Post confirm that the Obama White House has now expressly authorized the CIA to kill al-Alwaki no matter where he is found, no matter his distance from a battlefield. I wrote at length about the extreme dangers and lawlessness of allowing the Executive Branch the power to murder U.S. citizens far away from a battlefield (i.e., while they're sleeping, at home, with their children, etc.) and with no due process of any kind.
...
Just to get a sense for how extreme this behavior is, consider -- as the NYT reported -- that not even George Bush targeted American citizens for this type of extra-judicial killing (though a 2002 drone attack in Yemen did result in the death of an American citizen). Even more strikingly, Antonin Scalia, in the 2004 case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, wrote an Opinion (joined by Justice Stevens) arguing that it was unconstitutional for the U.S. Government merely to imprison (let alone kill) American citizens as "enemy combatants"; instead, they argued, the Constitution required that Americans be charged with crimes (such as treason) and be given a trial before being punished. The full Hamdi Court held that at least some due process was required before Americans could be imprisoned as "enemy combatants." Yet now, Barack Obama is claiming the right not merely to imprison, but to assassinate far from any battlefield, American citizens with no due process of any kind.
Again, Bush never authorized such an assassination, even according to the NYT. Is that a right wing rag, ya think?
In fact, Bush got into trouble be imprisoning an American without due process, trouble which I think was justified.
What I find telling is that if you are one of those people who talked about how Bush's "violations" of our civil rights - through legislation and policies - could or would allow greater erosion of our rights, yet when that actually happens ... you are a cheerleader (or, at least an apologists) for those greater civil liberties violations.
I guess it's because "your guy" is in office now?
Firm
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Some people are just idiots.
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RE: Obama authorizes killing of US citizen - 
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