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FBI Director: I Have to Check to See If Obama Has the Right to Assassinate Americans On U.S. Soil
Fox News reports:
FBI Director Robert Mueller on Wednesday said he would have to go back and check with the Department of Justice whether Attorney General Eric Holder’s “[criteria] for the targeted killing of Americans also applied to Americans inside the U.S.
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“I have to go back. Uh, I’m not certain whether that was addressed or not,” Mueller said when asked by Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., about a distinction between domestic and foreign targeting
Graves followed up asking whether “from a historical perspective,” the federal government has “the ability to kill a U.S. citizen on United States soil or just overseas.”
“I’m going to defer that to others in the Department of Justice,” Mueller replied.
Indeed, Holder’s Monday speech at Northwestern University seemed to leave the door open.
Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley writes:
One would hope that the FBI Director would have a handle on a few details guiding his responsibilities, including whether he can kill citizens without a charge or court order.
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He appeared unclear whether he had the power under the Obama Kill Doctrine or, in the very least, was unwilling to discuss that power. For civil libertarians, the answer should be easy: “Of course, I do not have that power under the Constitution.”
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The claim that they are following self-imposed “limits” which are meaningless — particularly in a system that is premised on the availability of judicial review. The Administration has never said that the [Law Of Armed Conflicts] does not allow the same powers to be used in the United States. It would be an easy thing to state. Holder can affirmatively state that the President’s inherent power to kill citizens exists only outside of the country. He can then explain where those limits are found in the Constitution and why they do not apply equally to a citizen in London or Berlin. Holder was not describing a constitutional process of review. They have dressed up a self-imposed review of a unilateral power as due process. Any authoritarian measure can be dressed up as carefully executed according to balancing tests, but that does not constitute any real constitutional analysis. It is at best a loose analogy to constitutional analysis.
When reporters asked the Justice Department about Mueller’s apparent uncertainty, they responded that the answer is “pretty straightforward.” They then offered an evasive response. They simply said (as we all know) that “[t]he legal framework (Holder) laid out applies to U.S. citizens outside of U.S.” We got that from the use of the word “abroad.” However, the question is how this inherent authority is limited as it has been articulated by Holder and others. What is the limiting principle? If the President cannot order the killing of a citizen in the United States, Holder can simply say so (and inform the FBI Director who would likely be involved in such a killing). In doing so, he can then explain the source of that limitation and why it does not apply with citizens in places like London. What we have is a purely internal review that balances the practicality of arrest and the urgency of the matter in the view of the President. Since the panel is the extension of his authority, he can presumably disregard their recommendations or order a killing without their approval. Since the Administration has emphasized that the “battlefield” in this “war on terror” is not limited to a particular country, the assumption is that the President’s authority is commensurate with that threat or limitless theater of operation. Indeed, the Justice Department has repeatedly stated that the war is being fought in the United States as well as other nations.
Thus, Mueller’s uncertainty is understandable . . . and dangerous. The Framers created a system of objective due process in a system of checks and balances. Obama has introduced an undefined and self-imposed system of review ….
Before you assume that Mueller’s comments are being blown out of proportion, remember that it has been clear for some time that Obama has claimed the power to assassinate U.S. citizens within the U.S. As we pointed out in December:
I’ve previously noted that Obama says that he can assassinate American citizens living on U.S. soil.
This admittedly sounds over-the-top. But one of the nation’s top constitutional and military law experts – Jonathan Turley – agrees.
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Turley said [on C-Span]:
President Obama has just stated a policy that he can have any American citizen killed without any charge, without any review, except his own. If he’s satisfied that you are a terrorist, he says that he can kill you anywhere in the world including in the United States.
Two of his aides just … reaffirmed they believe that American citizens can be killed on the order of the President anywhere including the United States.
You’ve now got a president who says that he can kill you on his own discretion. He can jail you indefinitely on his own discretion
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I don’t think the the Framers ever anticipated that [the American people would be so apathetic]. They assumed that people would hold their liberties close, and that they wouldn’t relax …
Indeed, given that virtually any American could be considered a suspected terrorist these days, no one is safe from an all-powerful president’s whims.
As I noted in another context, circular reasoning provides all the justification needed:
The government’s indefinite detention policy – stripped of it’s spin – is literally insane, and based on circular reasoning. Stripped of p.r., this is the actual policy:
- If you are an enemy combatant or a threat to national security, we will detain you indefinitely until the war is over
- It is a perpetual war, which will never be over
- Neither you or your lawyers have a right to see the evidence against you, nor to face your accusers
- But trust us, we know you are an enemy combatant and a threat to national security
- We may torture you (and try to cover up the fact that you were tortured), because you are an enemy combatant, and so basic rights of a prisoner guaranteed by the Geneva Convention don’t apply to you
- Since you admitted that you’re a bad guy (while trying to tell us whatever you think we want to hear to make the torture stop), it proves that we should hold you in indefinite detention
See how that works?
And – given that U.S. soldiers admit that if they accidentally kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then “drop” automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they were militants – it is unlikely that the government would ever admit that an American citizen it assassinated was an innocent civilian who has nothing at all to do with terrorism.
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Well, I thought my intentions were clear. Just another snarky smartass.
Anyway, I look left, right, and up, before I walk out the door. Seems there are a lot more high flying buzzards circling these days.
To quote Ah-nold in the movie True Lies when asked by his wife if he had killed people, "Yes, but they were all bad". "Bad" is in the eye of the E. Holder, Uhem I mean beholder.
It wasn't far from the truth about how intelligence agencies operate, though. They murder people as necessary, laws or no.
You've obviously never worked at any intel agencies, douchebagger!
You still are unaware of the likes of Larry Johnson, Bob Baer, and Valerie Plame.
You still don't know why, during the privatization of the intel establishment in America, those with more IQ points went with the higher-paying privatized contractors, while recruiting ever more dumber people like, say, Fred Burton, former cop who overnight became a "terrorist expert" with the Diplomatic Security Service, now VP at StratFor.
You know nothing, and doubtful you ever will.....
Just because there's a few good guys at the CIA doesn't mean that there's not plenty of bad guys too. Unfortunately the bad ones float to the top and get to make the decisions.
Examples: Allen Dulles, George Tenet, William Casey, George H.W. Bush, Richard Helms
Oh, I see. Killing American citizens without due process is okay. But tapping their phones (think back to the Bush years) is a moral outrage. This country is governed by psychopaths and their media accomplices are a complete disgrace.
Well, Odumbo probably snuffed out Andrew Breitbart....
maybe those 911 towers
were full of terrorists ...
and that's why
they were blow up..
Naaah, I admit culpability for that (I used that word culpability so aerojet wouldn't understand what I was talking about).
I paid his bartender to slip some bad stuff in his 14th drink that night!
Don't let them out of your sight.... Your GUN SITE!!!
Sight and gun "sight" are spelled the same way.
Unintended consequences are a bitch.
Nice!
Leon Panetta, Barack Obama Are Not Beholden To The Law.- They believe it is their divine privilege to act above the law, inviting a time when the error of their ways brings tragedy to us and themselves.
Continue
There's something solid forming in the air,
And the wall of death is lowered in Times Square.
No-one seems to care,
They carry on as if nothing was there.
- FLY ON A WINDSHIELD
Genesis: "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway"
qui tacet consentire videtur!
"We have warned and warned of the decimation of our liberties and the push toward a police state. These warnings have been met with the manifestation of those developments we feared. And the NDAA is a sad culmination of laws long broken now legitimized. Few however, seem concerned.
So what lies in the future of our ‘American exceptionalism’ and post 9/11 patriotic blood lust?
“It may seem crazy but could it be just a mater of time before some Joystick cowboy in Nevada starts taking out Americans right here in the good old USA?” – The Disappearance of Chivalry – George Santayana & Murder By Joystick"
See: The Silent Coup, Para Militarization And The New Reich
welkome to the U S S A
A government has three core abilities: Kill, Steal and Lie.
As humans, we should trust them accordingly.
they use items one and three to accomplish number two
History has shown that the only real struggle is between governments and people. Governments claim to own all of the land, all of the wealth and all of the people, including their souls. People on the other hand do not believe that is fair or right. From a government's perspective, the government simply allows people to live on the land, use money and assets and exist until the time that they need their body, mind, assets or soul.
I have often wondered two things:
1) Do the people working for government think that they are different than the people that they fight to control (are they mindless stooges,deluded hypocrites or demonincally possessed?).
2) How is it that humans who are notoriously bad at passing their learning, experience and motivation from generation to generation able to keep it all together ... as if it has been planned and executed across multiple generation by some greater and longer living power?
... and why exactly in recent years have we been led to believe that Satan/Lucifer does not exist? Who are we? Where are we? Why are we here?
"History has shown that the only real struggle is between governments and people."
No, it's between POWER and people!
"... and why exactly in recent years have we been led to believe that Satan/Lucifer does not exist? Who are we? Where are we? Why are we here?"
It sounds like you probably already have a book with the answers to all of your questions.
Now, go annoy my next-door neighbor.
ALL HAIL Comrade Obamao. No need for the Gulag, I will order your death before breakfast. Without even making an executive order.
ALL HAIL THE DICTATOR.
I wish Gadaffi was alive, Atleast he was kinder dictator to his people.
Obama's next order is WOMEN MUST WEAR BURKAS and lose 20 lbs
Killing is cheaper than running a Gulag.
Stalin had both down to an art. At least we know which playbook the TOTUS is reading from.
Did even Hitler claim the right to kill German citizens, any time he thought appropriate?
I recall reading the hilarious story about Germans who got caught up in the Hitler BS and voluntered to help build the Autobahn...but when they got tired of it, and wanted to leave - they were FORCED TO WORK ON IT AS SLAVES and prisoners, under penalty of a summary execution. Great hilarity to me - imbeciles get what they got a-comin' Same of the few idiots who defected to the Soviet Union, or N. Korea. Great lolz!
Well, um, yeah. If they were the right ethnicity.
It wasn't just ethnicity, ordinary Germans too that dared to speak out against the atrocities.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERwhiterose.htm
"Political dissident" is an ethnicity?
I'm pretty sure once the Nazis got going, their power was absolute. Gestapo, SS, etc. It was a bad time.
He just did it. Even he wasnt stupid enough to parade that fact in front of ordinary Germans.
even Stalin never said that; although he applied it ruthlessly.
I think that O'bammy is saying this to improve his image with the red necked US population in coming election. Its a populist ploy but a very cynical, sinister one! This is the political knee jerk to the alarming trend in all first world economies of mounting hardship, uncertainty and rage; all of which fuel the sense of hatred for those who are not on the same page as the "activists" of these rage groups. O'bammy tries to surf on this disastrous societal trend, not solve its root causes.
Abe Lincoln would love the America of today: total Federal dictatorship over gutless passive states.
That was the entire point of his war. On the good side, the South gets to chuckle as the government the north fought for grinds the descendants of their own armies into the dirt.
Well done Yankees, we now have equality- a system that enslaved some of the population has been exchanged for one with the power to enslave everyone without any check. Youre all so smart and sophisticated!
From what I have read, we should not believe the press on Lincoln. He was supposedly something of a tyrant and against states rights. Sure the European bankers were trying to take over the US, but he did everything that our "so called" leaders of today are doing, including arresting and detaining people without warrant or charges ... just so that he could consolidate the power of the states under a strong federal government.
In many ways we can blame Lincoln today as much as we can blame the satanically led bankers.
"This country...belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
--Abraham Lincoln
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed..."
Declaration of Independence, United States of America, 1776
You think Lincoln was against states' rights?
What ever gave you that idea?
I mean -- aside from the 500,000 dead bodies.
Oh well, at least he was an Abolitionist. But I hope he at least lost a little sleep before he decided to make war upon Americans. I hope he at least lost as much sleep as Bobby Lee did when he was deciding which side to fight for.
Dude, I'm no fan of Lincoln, but the hot heads in Charleston, SC openned fire on FT. Sumner didn't they?
It takes two to tango.
Pretty sure Federal ships blockaded Charleston, preventing English ships from loading/unloading. Civil war pretty much was a war of Northern aggression to maintain the Southern states second-rate status as an agricultural supply point, and market for, Northern Mills.
The South wanted, dare we say, the free market ability to import/export from England...this would not be allowed under force of arms.
Firing upon Fort Sumter was the result of deliberate provocation by Lincoln to get the South to fire the first shot. The whole saga of Fort Sumter is fascinating reading and I encourage you to look into the subject further.
I'll take a look.
I would also invite everyone to look up New Manchester Ga. The town no longer exists, burnt to the ground. It's now a park. It's civilian daughters, mothers and children relocated to a hostile Indiana.
Many of the women were raped along the way, by the admission of drunken union soldiers own diaries.
Then, we can compare and contrast Andersonville POW camp (which never fails to manufacture outrage among yankee apologists) with Camp Douglas in Chicago or another in Elmyra NY.
No links...preferring to have those interested enough to research it, come to their own conclusions and judgement.
I've already made mine.
Same tactic that Polk used against the Mexicans (to grab more land for the Empire).
Lincoln also initiated the concept and use of Executive Orders.
And the technology to ruthlessly crush dissent and monitor all dissidents.
This country is becoming a VERY SCARY place to live in. The bitch is finding another nation that even comes close to some of the current freedoms we (for now) retain.
I work in Chile and think you should give it a try.
OK I can move. Do they need Wal-Mart greeters? Hola! Welcomo tu El Walmarto?
Try Hong Kong. Citizen there went on a walking demonstration which then brought down the Beijing appointed Hong Kong governor.
Except that it isn't scary at all. You really ought to think about this stuff before you just post.
Any wonder why Obama loves Abe so much? Obama's memorial will be that of him sitting on a throne too.