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I like that this guy sticks to his beliefs. eventhough he sounds crazy most of the time. Still I give him credit.
"I don't think that's a good way to deal with our problems," Paul told reporters. "Al-Awlaki was born here; he is an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes. No one knows if he killed anybody. We know he might have been associated with the underwear bomber. But if the American people accept this blindly and casually that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I think it's sad.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...wlakis-killing
I like that this guy sticks to his beliefs. eventhough he sounds crazy most of the time. Still I give him credit.
I'm surprised he didn't just say "Let him die!".
obama on the hunt.
The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality
BY GLENN GREENWALD
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/gl...aki/index.html
It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki. No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was "considering" indicting him). Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even has any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt. When Awlaki's father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were "state secrets" and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts. He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner. When Awlaki's inclusion on President Obama's hit list was confirmed, The New York Times noted that "it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing."
After several unsuccessful efforts to assassinate its own citizen, the U.S. succeeded today (and it was the U.S.). It almost certainly was able to find and kill Awlaki with the help of its long-time close friend President Saleh, who took a little time off from murdering his own citizens to help the U.S. murder its. The U.S. thus transformed someone who was, at best, a marginal figure into a martyr, and again showed its true face to the world. The government and media search for The Next bin Laden has undoubtedly already commenced.
What's most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law"), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What's most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government's new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government. Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President's ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki -- including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry's execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists -- criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed.
From an authoritarian perspective, that's the genius of America's political culture. It not only finds way to obliterate the most basic individual liberties designed to safeguard citizens from consummate abuses of power (such as extinguishing the lives of citizens without due process). It actually gets its citizens to stand up and clap and even celebrate the destruction of those safeguards.
* * * * *
In the column I wrote on Wednesday regarding Wall Street protests, I mistakenly linked to a post discussing a New York Times article by Colin Moynihan as an example of a "condescending" media report about the protest. There was nothing condescending or otherwise worthy of criticism in Moynihan's article; I meant to reference this NYT article by Ginia Bellafante. My apologies to Moynihan, who rightly objected by email, for the mistake.
UPDATE: What amazes me most whenever I write about this topic is recalling how terribly upset so many Democrats pretended to be when Bush claimed the power merely to detain or even just eavesdrop on American citizens without due process. Remember all that? Yet now, here's Obama claiming the power not to detain or eavesdrop on citizens without due process, but to kill them; marvel at how the hardest-core White House loyalists now celebrate this and uncritically accept the same justifying rationale used by Bush/Cheney (this is war! the President says he was a Terrorist!) without even a moment of acknowledgment of the profound inconsistency or the deeply troubling implications of having a President -- even Barack Obama -- vested with the power to target U.S. citizens for murder with no due process.
Also, during the Bush years, civil libertarians who tried to convince conservatives to oppose that administration's radical excesses would often ask things like this: would you be comfortable having Hillary Clinton wield the power to spy on your calls or imprison you with no judicial reivew or oversight? So for you good progressives out there justifying this, I would ask this: how would the power to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process look to you in the hands of, say, Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann?
OBL is screwing those virgins and laughing his ass off at how his couple $100K suckered America into unending, bankrupting, unwinnable foreign wars and America into violating civil liberties of US citizens, basically suckering America into self-inflicted insanity, and into exposing how trivial, immoral, visionless American leaders are.
At a minimum, the guy advocated killing American civilians and inspired other terrorists. From what I've read elsewhere, he was also advocating the use of WMD if they could obtain them.
Paul is being myopic. At the point where the guy is openly advocating and encouraging others to murder American civilians (and if nothing else is providing valuable propaganda to the enemy), he's a national security risk and should be taken out.
Last edited by Thompson; 09-30-2011 at 02:08 PM.
He had declared war against the US. Well he wanted it...he got it.
fox news reporting how harmful it can be to kill terrorist. lol
Sheppard Smith just said something to the effect of 'it was the right thing to do.' They're reporting what Paul said, but they're not taking that position.
If this happened on Bush's watch, you can bet CNN and MSNBC would be screeching about it.
Good for Ron Paul. Obama has been frighteningly horrible on civil liberties, and this is just another example.
If they could take him out, why couldn't they arrest him and put him on trial?
If I say that I'm going to bomb an airport, should I just be summarily shot then as well?
Wouldn't it have looked better if we put him on trial, found him guilty of treason, then took his life?
Or is someone advocating an extremely antagonistic view now enough to assasinate him/her?
they were interviewing someone else that said it was harmful. fox is about to show the ron paul interview right now.
how many casualties would be acceptable in capturing this guy in yemen?
If it was too difficult to capture him, then don't capture him. But that doesn't mean we get to kill him either. He's an American citizen, and has rights.
Of course we're better off without him; we're better off without a lot of people. But I don't think bending the rules of law to take someone out that we don't like is an acceptable outcome.
Heck, we took the time to capture Saddam, and he's not even a citizen.
I read some of the do entation and reasoning on why they took him out, and it seems reasonable/justifiable that, if he was an operational player, he would forfeit his citizen/protected status. However, without any specific law stating that, I still don't agree with this course of action on a legal/moral level.
yemen is barely hanging on as it is.
take the shot.
and regarding saddam.....junior really wanted that trophy.
lol travesty of justice.
lol hack
lol defending occupy wall street protests
lol http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...man-rights-usa
Is that supposed to be a rebuttal? She's not defending the assassination order, she's asking her organization to have some perspective in their defense of Al-Awlaki. I think she's right on.
I would agree Greenwald's piece is somewhat melodramatic. But I think he is right to question the tactic and to question the selective partisan outrage associated with foreign policy like this.
LMAO what the does it matter if he had a US citizenship. dude was al quaeda
"did not have evidence" dude was drinking tea wearing a turban with alquaedas in Yemen or wherever
She's actually pretty explicit in saying that the CCR should not be defending Anwar Al-Awlaki:
You're right to say that she opposes "extrajudicial killings" in violation of international law.
That just begs the question of whether or not the assasination of Awlaki was in contravention of international law. Given the rest of her article details how much of a this guy was, I'd say there are no legal problems.
His understanding of the law is ignorant, he bas izes legal arguments to appeal to his partisan position, and preys on the minds of the uninformed. Did you bother to ask yourself why the First Amendment would apply to the speech at issue here? Or why the Fifth Amendment would apply outside the borders of the U.S.?
tbqh, I find the whole "he advocated murder" defense for justifying this action pretty lame.
Sure, the guy was a murderer asshole and what not, but we are supposed to be better than them. And what makes us better is the moral high ground of having a system of justice that gives rights to a fair trial to everyone, no exceptions. When you lower yourself to "their" standards, you become them and everything you despise about them.
Even Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy received a fair trial.
SCOTUS hasn't really ruled on it, albeit has hinted towards extraterritoriality of that amendment. Actual reading material, starting on page 1940:
http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lawr...3n4Lichter.pdf
Definitely still a gray area, IMO.
Right. She believes Awlaki deserves due process but she doesn't want her organization defending him as though he was an ordinary US citizen. Those positions aren't diametrically opposed. Maybe YOU didn't read this part of the article:
However, today, the CCR is acting as lawyers for Nasser al-Awlaki, Anwar's father, as representative of his son's interest. Given Nasser al-Awlaki's romantic view of his son expressed in press accounts, this is tantamount to representing, without comment, the father of the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan who claims his son is a good man.
Would a progressive human rights group do that, even if the son faced abuses at the hands of the US government? And if they did, would they be silent about the grave harms done by the KKK?
Is she saying that klansman doesn't deserve due process? No.
That's what our courts are designed to decide.Did you bother to ask yourself why the First Amendment would apply to the speech at issue here?
Why wouldn't it?Or why the Fifth Amendment would apply outside the borders of the U.S.?
Allegedly
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