US approval of the Killing (by the CIA) of Cleric Causes Unease

U.S. Approval of Killing of Cleric Causes Unease
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: May 13, 2010


WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s decision to authorize the killing by the Central Intelligence Agency of a terrorism suspect who is an American citizen has set off a debate over the legal and political limits of drone missile strikes, a mainstay of the campaign against terrorism.

The notion that the government can, in effect, execute one of its own citizens far from a combat zone, with no judicial process and based on secret intelligence, makes some legal authorities deeply uneasy.

To eavesdrop on the terrorism suspect who was added to the target list, the American-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is hiding in Yemen, intelligence agencies would have to get a court warrant. But designating him for death, as C.I.A. officials did early this year with the National Security Council’s approval, required no judicial review. “Congress has protected Awlaki’s cellphone calls,” said Vicki Divoll, a former C.I.A. lawyer who now teaches at the United States Naval Academy. “But it has not provided any protections for his life. That makes no sense.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/world/14awlaki.html?scp=2&sq=CIA&st=cse

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maybe the New York Times isn't a valid source in their opinion

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I win either way

More eyes see it and eyes need to see this. That said, it is done. Geez, this is just awful!

I dread checking to see what's actually up there.

It's an incredibly slippery slope. How long before Fatwahs (oops, wrong word. Extra-judicial executions) are taken out on American citizens who happen to be protesting governmental action within the Fatherland (oops, wrong word. Homeland).

Nope, I'm not okay with this at all. Have any of you fellow frogs realized it's getting warm in here?

It is undeniable that the US has engaged in assassination for decades and it is probably a good bet that a very few of those killings were of Americans. The difference between the past killings and this latest "Presidential fatwah" is that the Obama Admin. is attempting to claim this right publicly. They are trying to tear the fig leaf off and make the practice one of the powers reserved for the President in full view of the American public. This is a very radical idea and an extremely dangerous evolution of the idea of extra-judicial assassination.

It is simply amazing that the vast majority of Americans do not understand how dangerous the idea that the Executive can kill anyone on his word alone with no judicial review. Killing Americans with scary sounding foreign names in Arab countries can VERY EASILY evolve into killing Americans named Pete Smith or Fred Jackson in Alabam or Ohio or Florida. One wonders whether America in a deacde or so will be rife with people that have simply been "disappeared" by the government.

In the end, Ben Franklin was right when asked what went on at the Constitutional Convention. He offered, "We have given you a Republic, if you can keep it!" It appears it has taken a little over two hundred years for us to let it slip through our grasp.

We're either the smartest kids on the block or more likely, we're a couple of insomniacs. I suspect this will have 100 recs by the middle of the day. I won't know, of course, because I sleep during the day but I would be quite disappointed in my fellow DUers if they didn't see this as a problem.

It is heartening to know that one is not alone on issues like this!

:)

especially from Democrats, about this incredible violation of not only the Constitution, but it has been illegal in the U.S. since Gerald Ford, (who is beginning to look better and better as time passes) made it illegal in 1976. Every president after that at least publicly, supported the ban on political assassinations, including Reagan

The war criminals in the Bush administration got back into the political assassination business using 9/11 as an excuse. It was never a reason and we didn't accept it from them.

But, whoever runs this country from behind the scenes, knows that if Republicans do it, half the country will support it, and to get the rest of the country on board, you just have to let Democrats win and do it and the other half of the country will support it.

Assassination of US Muslim Cleric Illegal Immoral and Unwise

Apologists for assassination ease the way for the US to kill anyone anywhere anytime. What is then the logical next step in this argument? If we can secretly kill US citizens who we decide are our enemies outside the US, why not inside the US? And why not keep that secret as well?

The US cannot be allowed to continue to exercise secret authority to murder people. If the Bush administration was doing this as openly as the Obama administration is, people would be vocal about its illegality, immorality and its lack of wisdom.

Murdering anyone in the US is a criminal act that is prosecuted regularly in courts across this country. Why should secret cold-blooded murder by government forces outside the U.S. be treated any differently?

I can't believe I supported this president. I know this, if he had run on the issues the way he is governing, he would never have made it to the WH.

Rec

(paraphrase) "blah blah cleric has gone from being a fanatic to being down right dangerous, so dangerous that he is on a permission to kill list of the CIA"... I almost pulled over! I was looking around me thinking does anyone hear this? What did we learn in Social Studies? Innocent until proven guilty and all that. WOW, really the CIA has a permission to kill list. This is why they are calling it a war... war has always given the false rational for killing that governments desire.

What makes this even more horrifying is our government is now sanctioning this. That's the heart stopping moment. And there have been many of recent. I feel like I'm in a Stephen King book and all the boogymen just took off their normal looking faces. I didn't like it when it was a hidden horror, but I'm totally freaked that they think it's okay to take the masks off now.

It might well be time for me to recycle one of my old sig lines: Is it fascism, yet?

Like they are trying to normalize it.

This government has been leading towards fascism for a long time.

Most American dictionaries have upped the ante when defining fascism, maybe so we won't look so fascist. The American Heritage Dictionary— I think— defines it without the overtones of where Hitler and the like took it.

American Heritage Dictionary, 1971. Fascism: . . . the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism.

There we are. USA 2010. Where we go with it is up to us.

(edited twice due to speling/gammer/ not enough coffee)

It didn't even start being blatant this year. But things like this are such stark reminders and they don't get less shocking to me. Well, they started to in the Bush years, because they were so relentless - I had fascism fatigue. And then the Obama movement came and I think I thought (for about a month) that it would stop. The egregious acts have slowed down but they certainly haven't stopped, as evidenced by this very article.

And this is the place where I'm supposed to lament that this isn't the America I grew up in, but I learned about America in American public schools and in the last decade or so, I've been learning so much I was never told in school - I'm not at all sure that the America I remember so fondly ever really existed.

how I felt when I read that Obama was now authorizing publicly what even Bush believed he had to secretly.

'Unease' with murder? Ordered by a U.S. president! There should be outrage, there would have been if Bush had done this.

I'm learning a lot about people I thought I had a lot in common with and most of it is not good. This is how dictatorships are born. With complicity from the people, silence while it was still possible to do something about it.

I hate to think what this country will be like for the next generation who won't even remember that there was a time when these crimes at least elicited some outrage.

This needs to be seen by many eyes.

Might be time for a little extra pharmaceutical help. Ugh, I hate insomnia.

peace~