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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.
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“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.
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The principles underlying the Peace prize vote are basically the same principles underlying the governance of most of the world's countries.
Why be surprized at the outcome?
Take the time to learn who they are.
He is a little close to the target. At my range, slugs must be fired no closer than 25 yards.
The most cunning move by the Men Behind the Curtain was fronting an Obama as the new face for The Agenda. The Right is wrapped up in apoplectic rage at them thar Mooslim savages... the Left's unquestioning luv of all things Barry continues unabated. If Shrub were pushing this crap you wouldn't hear the end of it, but the opposition has been sidelined.
BOHICA.
Glen Ford's "More Effective Evil."
http://blackagendareport.com/content/why-barack-obama-more-effective-evil
This seems to be his bridge to far!
These bastards just aren't afraid of us at all!
They never where http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siege and now it's legal.
Political Psy ops. If you have a weak poker hand you pretend you have a strong hand, and visa versa. He's saying his guns are bigger than ours. But he knows he can't use his or it's all over for him. Scaring people with drones if we don't do what Obama wants is creepy, but very childish. He'll only peel off a few pussies, make the rest stronger.
He's a long long way from killing homeland political opposition yet. MSM will have to do a lot more demonization of Mormons and white Christian gun owners before people will accept blasting away at their dwellings while they are at dinner table -- 6 months?
DroneDjango really stepped in it with the gun grab agenda. Even stark raving liberals are rushing out to get guns. It's crazy and this will wake then up more.
Agreed that "gun control" is hopeless, but I see no reason why goobermint would bother to assault the strongholds of Liberty Lovin' Patriots who don't wanna play by the rules no more if they decide to drop the hammer hard.
They need simply "ground you" like a kid sent to his room. If they don't like what you're doing with your phone or internet, they can switch it off, just as they can your access to bank accounts and credit. Or burn it via microwaves, EMP-like.
Like a grounded kid, why would they care if you sit there stewing in your armory? Be good or don't come out.
What are you gonna do about it, especially without communication?
They won't be once they take away our guns, but first they'll have to Molon Labe!
WB7 hits another out of the park.
now that needs to be a poster
Brilliant.
Related:
Inside Drone HQ:
"L-T, zoom in on that car! Is that an NRA sticker?"
"Yes- and an Impeach Obama sticker!"
"Fire at will."
"It's target rich on the freeway this morning, sir! Look, that car has an American Flag decal!"
"We need more Drones!"
George: after securing the heavyweight title for truth-tellin the other day, this is no time to be resting on your laurels....
how can there be any hope of ending this madness unless the real perps pulling the strings of these puppets you propose as the villains are outed? The "WHITE HOUSE"? You've dialed a wrong number son!
The real face of AlQaeda is a sionist israeli dressed up as a jihadi raghead in a studio somewhere being filmed by a CIA man who will then foward the charade to complicit media headquarters for mass distribution, while agents of other tentacles of the ZOG octopus round up anybody bold enough to yell 'fake'...and send them on rendition flights to torture chambers around the world.
Meanwhile, politico-judicial tools compromised by Mossad-run pedophilic honey traps pass ever more draconian laws to authorize the use of max force against resistors and those who would question the right of dual-citiizened aliens to sequester and send billions of $ that Merikans' no longer even have to the tiny terrorist-statelet where all this is controlled from. You will either destroy this nest of vipers or they will squelch your remaining freedoms to even write about their puppets. Pullin punches now will lead to FemaCamp lunches, later.
How bout it Champ? Don't be a drone head...you got a crown to defend now. Be a crowd pleaser, not a strip n teaser!
joyful
after deep thought to your expose'
my thoughts;
Who are these people? (too know your enemy).
It must start as survival, as a wolf pack ordains the alpha male.
but in nature the range of this control has limits and similar to the american indian.
simply put too much territiry and it can not be controlled effectivly; driven by the need for food.
simple construct that follows the natural laws. no where does this construct manifest needless killing.
It just don't happen, seeking food has a dual mandate nutrition and control of survival territory.
At the fertil cressant mankind 'evolved' to gathers (ishmal) and the coursae of history was changed.
move forward to today and our mechanisms of survival are very much secondary(thank the carbon evolve), but that territorial thing remains in tact.
These self ordained few that lust for this power to control will stop at nothing. They have no set of morals, they are using EVERY concievable idea to obtain (quite possibly unobtainable) control.
The natural laws of power/ control can be overcome (at least temporarily and by technology and with all these concievable ideas that most would not understand as we are moral).
My further thought leads to a group, as this objective requires more than one could orchestrate (think wolf pack with shared alpha characteristics and shared lust/reward-possible only at an extreme level of intelligence) and your conclusion singles out a nerve center.
this group moves forward in concert and follows a path paved by history preying on fellow humans through their inherent weaknesses.
a very long period of darknes is upon us as a species very soon if an opposistion is not garnered.
please comment as you see fit...
excuse the grammer too.
gamester,
search out and read the archived comments of one i-dog here on ZH...you will have the answers you seek. And more...but then another question arises...
where is i-dog...when we need him most? Though I tell myself he's just taking time off to complete his promised master opus...my heart is heavy with the fear that he did not completely weigh the risks of speaking out on line in this age of full spectrum dominance...the use of all available cover is now de rigeur for resistors...yet many still prefer to believe that this is still just a dream...instead of waking nightmare...and therefore fail to protect themselves.
They're picking us off, one at a time. Form up into loose bands of guerrilla horsemen now, a la JL Tone's The Fatal Knot: The Guerrilla War in Navarre and the Defeat of Napoleon in Spain...
or die broken on the rack of the talmudist torturers. Time be short gentlemen, and waits for no man - or dog amongst us.
shall do.
i too have given thought to survival. small groups of well orchestrated like mind and trusted survivers. ban f'g detos, shall it be.
i strarted with the basics-practice hunting each other first, as that seems as important as finding food and shelter (or maybe the same)...
certainly very few burdens.
last thought;
the humility to understand iq and phys weakness will be your strengths equel to the strengths inherent.
seek complimenary likes...
enuf blather.
Nice!
By all the smoke going sideways on the WH photo, it looked like Obama was chooming it out of a shotgun to mock gun owners.
American Idiot circa 2004
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGUp973HQhw
WB7-this brinksmanship between you and GW needs to stop before you drag us all into Gotterdamerung
The only brink around here is the one they have reserved for all of us.
I think it is important to summarize the thesis of this 16 page memo. I read the memo last night, so I am paraphrasing it in lay terms:
The President can lawfully decide to terminate a Citizen of the United States if:
1. he determines in his sole and absolute discretion that such person is a senior member of Al Qaeda, or an associate thereof (no evidentiary standard or review process specified);
2. such person poses an immanent threat of attack (although no evidence is necessary);
3. It is not feasible to apprehend such person (for example if another state refuses to cooperate).
When you ask a lawyer if something is legal, and he sends you back a 16 page memo, you have nothing but another MERS opinion.
This is the kind of Orwellian claptrap generated by Eric Holders Department of Injustice. Start with the desired conclusion and add window dressing.
Two words: Catch-22
Would not two words be Catch-Twenty Two. Did you have Joe Biden count the words for ya.?
Just pulling your chain. Love your work.
It's crazy and I don't understand why an there isn't more outrage about this and other actions (NDAA comes to mind).
I tend to run in "liberal" circles and the level of denial is extreme. After 8 years of Bush, yes people wanted change but they haven't gotten it and pointing this out has gotten me labelled as extremist, closet republican, tea party supporter, etc.
Voices that keep me sane are Matt Taibbi, Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald (andZerohedge) and Jesse. I know there are a few others that see what I see and that it is not going to end well.
Arkadaba,
There isnt more outrage because most people dont even know these issues exist. The state run media does not report this stuff so the sheeple dont know about it. The state run media is the propaganda wing of the statist party. Since you are paying attention and doing your own research to find this issues exist, you are labled an extremist. Its how the sheeple deal with their cognotive dissonance that you create when you bring things up.
Quite literally, there is no hope anymore. This shit show is only going to go one direction. The welfare/warfare state will expand. Your worst nightmare, as a freedom loving person, will come to pass. There are just some things about human nature that are immutable.
>>I don't understand why an there isn't more outrage
people don't believe that this will ever be used against them... just 'the terrorists'.... too dumb to see that the government is under the control of people who see humanity as a threat, and thus a target.
We don't need "rights" anymore. We prefer iPhones.
I am constantly approached by liberal and conservative purists who want to enlist me to bash the otherside.
My consistent response has been if you think the problem is this versus that you just don't see the big picture.
Pardon me for interrupting this thread, but as we watch presidents laugh at the Magna Carta and soil the U.S. Constitution, we should ask ourselves: " What has happened to this once great nation that extolled the virtues of the rule of law?"
GW mentions the Constitutional seperation of powers. Exactly when did that "check and balance" disappear. Others may point to other seminal events, but I harken back to August 7, 1964, when the U.S. Congress abdicated its power to declare war by passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution - athorizing the president to "use whatever force necessary" to protect the Republic of VietNam. The authorization for the Iraq war had almost identical wording. Now, here I would normally point to the corruption of the media and politics by monied interests, but that ignores the simple motivations and mechanics of the abdication. Let us note, that LBJ bore the brunt of the political lynching enabled by Congress' abdication. I see this as the functional equivalent of Pontius Pilate, washing his hands, allowing the will of the mob to rule.
If we wish to re-establish the rule of law, we must first elect representatives who recognize and value the constitutionally established authorities of the U.S. Congress. It sometimes seems that the last of those died with Robert Byrd.
From where I sit, this memo is reminiscent of the Reichstag Fire Decree which ushered in martial law in pre-war Germany. Welcome to the Fourth Reich!
Tell them you seek the TRUTH and their head blows up.
"does not compute, DR Smith"
Awesome!
And people fret about a "kill switch":
http://www.slashgear.com/boeing-tests-electronics-killing-champ-microwave-missle-23253630/
Like they're ever gonna bother with seizing guns.
Ah, William, she died a long time before Skeeter picked up a gun!
it's more like Bush and Obama have set us back 80,000 years.
It turns out all those civil libertarians and anti war types during the Bush years were just anti Bush and really didnt give a shit about civil liberties, freedom or war. In fact, they cheer wildly now about the things they used to protest. What a bunch of fucking tools they are.
I take offense. I happen to be an anti-war type person. I despise Barack Obama. I consider him a murderer. He is quite a bit better orator than was Mr. Bush but his policies, from the surge in Afghanistan to pulling the trigger on Alwaki, are equally depraved. I decided to vote for Nader in 08 precisely because Obama not only voted for the FISA, that allows spying on Americans, he vociferously touted its virtues.
The driving force behind both the left and right is control to be used to implement their particular concept of survival.
It doesn't matter that both their concepts have been shown to be failures, it's the desire to control others that is important. They are satisfying an evolutionary need.