This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
The White House is "Judge, Jury and Executioner" of Both Drone and Cyber-Attacks
NBC News reports:
Legal experts expressed grave reservations Tuesday about an Obama administration memo concluding that the United States can order the killing of American citizens believed to be affiliated with al-Qaida — with one saying the White House was acting as “judge, jury and executioner.”
“Anyone should be concerned when the president and his lawyers make up their own interpretation of the law or their own rules,” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame and an authority on international law and the use of force.
***
“This is a very, very dangerous thing that the president has done,” she added.
Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer who writes about security and liberty for the British newspaper The Guardian, described the memo as “fundamentally misleading,” with a clinical tone that disguises “the radical and dangerous power it purports to authorize.”
“If you believe the president has the power to order U.S. citizens executed far from any battlefield with no charges or trial, then it’s truly hard to conceive of any asserted power you would find objectionable,” he wrote.
Senator Wyden said:
Every American has the right to know when their government believes that it is allowed to kill them.
Top constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley notes:
In plain language, [the Obama administration memo] means that [any Americans can be assassinated if] the President considers the citizens to be a threat in the future. Moreover, the memo allows killings when an attempt to capture the person would pose an “undue risk” to U.S. personnel. That undue risk is left undefined.
I think I've seen that movie before ...
Given that drones are being deployed in the American homeland, some fear that the war is coming home.
Indeed, the military now considers the U.S. homeland to be a battlefield. The U.S. is already allowing military operations within the United States. The Army is already being deployed on U.S. soil, and the military is conducting numerous training exercises on American streets. (For more background, see this, this, this, this, and this.)
Similarly, the White House has claimed the unilateral power to launch pre-emptive cyber-strikes against foreign nations. As FireDogLake notes:
Like with the drone program, President Barack Obama is presiding over the creation and development of a power that previous presidents never imagined having. The national security state is effectively appointing him and all future presidents the proverbial judge, jury and executioner when it comes to cyber warfare.
As Greenwald makes clear, virtually all of the U.S. efforts regarding so-called "cyber-security" are actually efforts to create offensive attack capabilities.
And given that the government may consider normal Americans who criticize any government policy to be terrorists - and that the military is fighting against dissent on the Internet - it is obvious that the cyber-attack capabilities are coming home to roost.
Of course, indiscriminate drone strikes are war crimes (and here and here) , and cyber-attacks are a form of terrorism. But that won't stop the U.S. ... because it's only terrorism when other people do what we do.
As Greenwald noted last year:
We supposedly learned important lessons from the abuses of power of the Nixon administration, and then of the Bush administration: namely, that we don’t trust government officials to exercise power in the dark, with no judicial oversight, with no obligation to prove their accusations. Yet now we hear exactly this same mentality issuing from Obama, his officials and defenders to justify a far more extreme power than either Nixon or Bush dreamed of asserting: he’s only killing The Bad Citizens, so there’s no reason to object!
Greenwald notes in an article today:
The core distortion of the War on Terror under both Bush and Obama is the Orwellian practice of equating government accusations of terrorism with proof of guilt. One constantly hears US government defenders referring to "terrorists" when what they actually mean is: those accused by the government of terrorism. This entire memo is grounded in this deceit.
Time and again, it emphasizes that the authorized assassinations are carried out "against a senior operational leader of al-Qaida or its associated forces who poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States." Undoubtedly fearing that this document would one day be public, Obama lawyers made certain to incorporate this deceit into the title itself: "Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a US Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida or An Associated Force."
This ensures that huge numbers of citizens - those who spend little time thinking about such things and/or authoritarians who assume all government claims are true - will instinctively justify what is being done here on the ground that we must kill the Terrorists or joining al-Qaida means you should be killed. That's the "reasoning" process that has driven the War on Terror since it commenced: if the US government simply asserts without evidence or trial that someone is a terrorist, then they are assumed to be, and they can then be punished as such - with indefinite imprisonment or death.
But of course, when this memo refers to "a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida", what it actually means is this: someone whom the President - in total secrecy and with no due process - has accused of being that. Indeed, the memo itself makes this clear, as it baldly states that presidential assassinations are justified when "an informed, high-level official of the US government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the US".
This is the crucial point: the memo isn't justifying the due-process-free execution of senior al-Qaida leaders who pose an imminent threat to the US. It is justifying the due-process-free execution of people secretly accused by the president and his underlings, with no due process, of being that. The distinction between (a) government accusations and (b) proof of guilt is central to every free society, by definition, yet this memo - and those who defend Obama's assassination power - willfully ignore it.
Those who justify all of this by arguing that Obama can and should kill al-Qaida leaders who are trying to kill Americans are engaged in supreme question-begging. Without any due process, transparency or oversight, there is no way to know who is a "senior al-Qaida leader" and who is posing an "imminent threat" to Americans. All that can be known is who Obama, in total secrecy, accuses of this.
(Indeed, membership in al-Qaida is not even required to be assassinated, as one can be a member of a group deemed to be an "associated force" of al-Qaida, whatever that might mean: a formulation so broad and ill-defined that, as Law Professor Kevin
Jon Heller argues, it means the memo "authorizes the use of lethal force against individuals whose targeting is, without more, prohibited by international law".)
The definition of an extreme authoritarian is one who is willing blindly to assume that government accusations are true without any evidence presented or opportunity to contest those accusations. This memo - and the entire theory justifying Obama's kill list - centrally relies on this authoritarian conflation of government accusations and valid proof of guilt.
They are not the same and never have been. Political leaders who decree guilt in secret and with no oversight inevitably succumb to error and/or abuse of power. Such unchecked accusatory decrees are inherently untrustworthy (indeed, Yemen experts have vehemently contested the claim that Awlaki himself was a senior al-Qaida leader posing an imminent threat to the US). That's why due process is guaranteed in the Constitution and why judicial review of government accusations has been a staple of western justice since the Magna Carta: because leaders can't be trusted to decree guilt and punish citizens without evidence and an adversarial process. That is the age-old basic right on which this memo, and the Obama presidency, is waging war.
We've previously pointed out the absurdity of the government's circular reasoning in the context of indefinite detention:
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?
The Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves, as the separation of powers they fought and died for is being destroyed. We’ve gone from a nation of laws to a nation of powerful men making laws in secret, where Congressional leaders themselves aren’t even allow to see the laws, or to learn about covert programs. A nation where Congressmen are threatened with martial law if they don’t approve radical programs.
Indeed, Bush and Obama have literally set the clock back 800 years ... to before the signing of the Magna Carta.
»
- advertisements -
You can add the so-called "al-Quaida Rebels" in Syria that Ovomit has been supporting with libyan/American weapons the CIA has gathered from Al-Quaida Libya and was transferring through Turkey from Benghazi to Al-Quaida Syria. That illegal scam was brought to light with the murder of our ambassador and his security detail. Hildebeast was also well-aware of what was transpiring there.
Bush whacked guys in other countries with drones but they were not citizens of the USA, but we were killing thousands with conventional weapons used in war. Obama is targeting citizens that should have constitutional rights to due process even though they are outside the country. our govt. has done killed people without due process before using guns. I refer you to Ruby Ridge where the FBI executed a child and a mother holding her baby and Waco, Texas where they slaughtered dozens of children supposedly to save them from parental abuse. We can expect drones to be used to kill political opponents behind made up charges without any judicial supervision in a neighborhood near you soon.
Well, we could back a little further. Of course we had that little attempted genocide of Native Americans. Then Lincoln decided to slaughter hundreds of thousands of citizens of sovereign nation. Then we decided we could, and should, police the planet, so we threw in with "the Allies" and slaughtered the Huns. The Huns went away for a few years, but came back with a vengeance, so we went and slaughtered them some more. By which point we really had become the world's policeman, so we slaughtered Vietnamese, Koreans, Chinese, Philippinos, Arabs, Palestinians, Persians. . . And all along the way we pretty much--pretty much--kept hands off of U.S. citizens. But Dunce, you are right--Ruby Ridge, Waco. . . add Kent State and a few other infamous murders, and you can see that the U.S. was joining the "death by government" camp made famous by the Soviets and Nazis and ChiComs. Now, this. It is, of course, the "foot in the door." Oh sure, Obama would only kill Americans who really deserve it. Right? Right!?!?! Well, even we grant him that--that he would kill only those Americans who deserve it--who is to say the next guy won't kill any American who disagrees with him? Any American who refuses to register his firearms? Any American who does not speak Spanish? Any American who is white? Any American who is black? Any American who did not vote for a "Dear Leader"? Any American who "has more than his fair share"?
Talk about a slipper slope. Heck, this is a snowball raging down the slopes of Everest at light-speed.
ObaOneCanute takes the choir lead early one sunday morning in his new house of God!
" Unchain my Drones anna set me Free "
" Sometimes, all i need is the air and a hunch and i'll drone you"
" Oh happy days, oh happy days, oh happy days "
. . . .and well how do you know he's not the 2nd coming? . . ok so he didn't turn water into wine but he turned manufacturing jobs into foodstamps ( and Jesus walked. . . oh happy days ).
Oh come on that is what we want/need our Presidents to do. Just take out the fucking bastards and their families. The Islamic terrorist operates under a different set of values and are not impressed if we act like boy scouts. They only understand/respect brute power.
The ironic thing is that is that most liberal Dems are who are keeping their mouths shut at the moment would be screaming if a Republican administration was acting in the same manner.
That said I would feel better if a select bipartisan committee of some sort was set up to approve the targeted killings. The DOJ memo is so loosely written that virtually any killing could be justified. Some parameters would be reasonable such as only those members of designated terrorist groups, etc.
The USA is at war but the enemy is not a formal nation state so duly considered rules of engagement should be drafted allowing sufficient leeway for swift engagement.
That said, the rules Israel operates under for targeted assassination have a much stricter definition of "imminent" danger whereby killings are permissible. If Israel, which faces more direct threats on a daily basis then the USA, can operate within a formal legal structure, so can we.
"Oh come on that is what we want/need our Presidents to do. Just take out the fucking bastards and their families. "
What do you mean "We," Kimosabe? So, if he can self-identify terrorist, what makes you so damned sure you're not next on his list?
You're way out of your league here Art. Clueless comes to mind.
Wow Arthur, you miss the point. You seem happy that they could also kill you without justification, or is that where you would finally draw the line. And comparing us to Israel is unbelievable, seriously dude. You have some catching up to do and need to sit and think about things.
No. You fools do not get it. There already is a war going on.
The Obama adminstration is just idiotic for broadcasting what the military/CIA is doing. Sure, it is neat to learn how we got Bin Laden and the drone stikes - when they don't fuck them up - but it really should be kept secret. Got the poor bastard Paki doc who helped find BinLaden arrested.
So for all those who gave me a down arrow, what would you do? Stop drone attack's or change the rules of engagement to what??
Personally I would rather launch drone strikes then risk more American lives in Afganistain. A lot more innocents die when we have troops on the ground then when we use drones.
Also, you crazy Cuban, the point with Israel was that the Israelis have more stringent standards for drone use then we do, which I think is wacked. My point was drones good, lack of regulation/ oversight bad.
You all need to grow up and realize the world is not a nice place.
True words.
Look in the mirror.
But Arthur isn't a target becasue he's against the terists.
arthutuuuur u very very smart gay*/*,
Ar(se)thur are you with the programme?
Do you know if it's true that Barry picks his Lottery numbers based on daily drone kills? ( not the injured unless they die before midnight on the same day)
Cuntusmaximus 111
read what I wrote.
The ironic thing is that is that most liberal Dems are keeping their mouths shut at the moment would be screaming if a Republican administration was acting in the same manner.
That said I would feel better if a select bipartisan committee of some sort was set up to approve the targeted killings.
Yeah.
Personally, a committee of select Republican and Democrat politicians wouldn't make me feel any better at all.
so you would do what?
No drones? If so, what is your solution?
If the choice is troops on the ground or drones, I choose drones.
Here is the solution, stop global adventurism against enemies we invent and fund.
Achtung my Fuerher! Next this Black Hitler will make the military swear allegiance to him instead of the Constituion. I would like to know who is pulling this puppets string.
working class dog: UPDATE!
The oath for military officers has been changed. It now states that the officer swears his oath to obey the president. Enlisted ranks oath still swear to uphold and defend the constitution.
WTF are you talking about? Here's what the actual oath(s) say, first enlisted and then officer:
http://www.history.army.mil/html/faq/oaths.html
The wordings of the current oath of enlistment and oath for commissioned officers are as follows:
"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).
"I, _____ (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God." (DA Form 71, 1 August 1959, for officers.)
Soros, Saudis, Neocons, etc. All those with a bloodlust for oil and resources.
SPECIIAL SECRET NULLIFICATION PROGRAMME DEBRIEFING
(somewhere in a turkish bunker 08.30 next tuesday)
" ok men spill the beans"
" well general after 2 weeks covert recon we tracked them down to al shabab district zone 2 on the map here"
" good work go on "
" well sir there are 9 of them holed up now"
"9 you say must be them always operate in odd numbers"
"sir all had beards and wore white smocks with sandles "
" ' nuff said, code purple, operation lights out, send in the drone"
" pork scratching anyone? "
GW, stop f'cking dragging Bush around with you everywhere for God's sake. You're still doing it - it's like a nervous tick with you. Fuck Bush! Focus on the dictator in front of you. Obama is capable of evil all by himself without having to use a white guy as a juxtapositional prop.
We remember Obama was your guy -- you were just wrong. It's OK.... but we knew he was a totalitarian prior to 2008. You were taken in by Obama because your hate for Bush was so great.
Many thanks for finally waking up to Djangobama. Waterboarding 3 people is better than homeland political opposition spying and murder by drone.
GW, time to take the gloves off on Obama. Eg., John Brennan's firm did passport-gate; his mouse-clicker was 24 yo Lieutenant Quaryles, who was shot in the head 3 weeks later, 2 weeks before he was to testify (WAPO). Brennan will be next CIA chief. Drone war plans are his baby.
Gawd, I do not know which is worse: the "left-right" paradigm or the "Bush-O'Blowme" paradigm.
Bush is so Yesterday. We have a real serial killer in town.
All these guys are just filling roles that were likely written a half century ago or longer. Actors. Players.
And yes, they have set the clock back to before the Magna Carta.
You do not own your property, and you may be killed at the discretion of the King (the President) and his Lords (CONgress) with no redress.
DEVO, "Don't Shoot (I'm a man)"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKxhlXZ3hcY
Can anybody find me somebody tooo KIIILLL
find me somebody to kill
find me somebody to kill
somebody somebody somebody
George, William.
Yesterday I saw the Zero Dark Thirty move. But today I read what the War on Terror has become.
It is now apparent that Osama Bin Laden has won, even though his bullet-riddled body lies in the Indian Ocean. OBL's mission to destroy the fabric of American society is being continued by the present and past presidents! In the last decade they are destroying everything the US has stood for, during the previous 200+ years.
Freedom, civil liberties, the rule of law - it is all being turned to dust.
I implore everyone to avoid seeing that CIA propaganda film as well as "Argo". The worst part of the whole thing was the feigned outrage out of Langley that top secret intel was revealed in ZD30-what utter bullshit-THEY FUCKING WROTE AND PRODUCED IT. Hey-Ben Asslick and Hebeywood-can't wait for your "based on actual events" movie about Operation Ajax to hit the big screen. fucking revisionist bastards.
I wandered lonely as a drone
blitzed 70 sus terrorists
and then returned home.
I wandered lonely as a cloud?growing up i wanted to be a cloud but as i showed all the qualities of an evil heartless bastard they made me a drone. still i feel quiet free returning home under cloud cover after a days graft.
The war on terer is ink for the money printer -- its for jobs Inc.!
It's none of our business, it's a family affair!
After 911 I, like most Americans, wanted to strike back... And don't get me wrong, in many respects I believe the military to be the last bastion of what was once a great country... I volunteered for the army during the Nam war... Didn't know how I felt about the war, but knew that the lives of fellow countrymen were being lost there, and I did not believe my life to be worth more than the life of the next man.
But I have long since lost faith in this war on terror. Are we to believe that these so called terrorists are so inept that they can't light their shoes on fire, or their underwear? Or that our intelligence assets have become so adept they manage to thwart the enemy at every turn... At the same time Israel, with only a tiny homeland to secure, gets hit all the time. Are these same terrorists so stupid they can't figure out how to drag a mortar across an almost open Southern border and lob a few shells into some unsuspecting city?
If there is a war on terror then where is it? The only terrorists I am aware are in Washington D.C.
al-Queda in english means "politicians"
The DNC, illegals and his union thugs were all out to nuke Hillary in 2008 and steal the 2008/2012 elections.
The liberal Democrats remain silent and support him all the way.
Don't tell me red team blue team - I get that but when liberal "citizens" support everything he does - they enable it. They did this as much as he did and his elite puppeteers. The RINo shit red team does little to stop him and is probably powerless now.
F them.
Freddie-do you honestly think Hillary would have deviated by so much as a word from the script that O reads from?
I'm sure he is well aware of that otto, he's simply pointing out the fact that the blue team supporters are enabling this activity and so far they seem ok with it.
They both swallow.
The ubiquitous "They" needed a stooge with NO loyalty to the US. They may have been afraid an actual American might have second thoughts when ordered to wipe out 25% of their own country.
Bath House may very well be the last pResident of the US.
I'd say their plan to eliminate us is going pretty well.
Trully hoping the yemeni pakistani afghani and other council housing departments update their tennant computers. would not want to be droned by mistake having moved into Terror Alis old gaff!
Mind you it would be some house warming party.
I seem to remember a certain Chicago area Pastor who spoke in a way one might construe as representing a threat to the United States. If a previous Imperial President had granted himself the same privilege Obama is assuming, and had the same concern for "collateral damage" that this President seems to have (little to none), then we might now be in the 2nd Term of President Hillary Clinton or President John McCain.
Yes, I seem to remember an extended argument (me) around here about what constitutes "torture", the circumstances under which it might be employed and whether or not if it is "voluntary" (as in S&M shops being legal in Frisco & elsewhere) have we not already condoned it as a society.
I now take cold comfort in my fellow man, that at last, we are standing up and saying as one, a Hellfire missle, approved on a whim by one branch of government, streaking into the bedroom window of an American citizen, wherever he or she may be on the face of the planet, has crossed some sort of line we all hold dear...lol.
One final odd point...if they are saying the risk of American soldiers lives prevents them being deployed to capture an American enemy combatant thus they need to use drones to just kill them and be done with it...why did they use multiple Seal Teams to try and capture or kill Bin Hiden (clearly NOT an American citizen), who was down the road from a military officers training academy in Pahhhkeeestahhhn?
I wish they could make up their minds about unacceptable risks, rules of engagement and citizenship ;-)
The SEALs, remember, died shortly after the raid, in a chopper crash.
They found to their chagrin, a stand-in at the Abotobad safe house.
The gaffe was revealing "we confirmed his DNA" well before such a test had time to be completed, on a guy whose face was shot away.
Collectively, I hope the SEALs are figuring out the pResident will be eliminating them as he tightens his girly grip around our throats.
some confussion, or???
garner amero pride/rally around the flag- funny as i was lookin for ya-where were you-lol...
+1 add respect for national borders to that - the very reason why that prison in Guantanamo exists, in this fictional new limbo of not being a US territory (though I'm pretty sure that the stars & stripes flies over it) and not being anything else
which actually means it's a lawless pirate cove?
I believe the pirates of old had more integrity and ethics than what is presumed to be "the leaders of the free world" today.
I hoisted my black flag January 1...at least I'm being honest when I say I'll be taking no prisoners.
And they gave this fucker the Nobel Peace prize....
Barack H. ObamaThe Nobel Peace Prize 2009 was awarded to Barack H. Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".