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Leaked: Obama's Rules For Assassinating American Citizens
cathyreisenwitz writes "For over a year now journalists, civil liberties advocates, and members of Congress have been asking the Obama administration to release internal memoranda from the Office of Legal Counsel justifying Obama's targeted killing program. While the White House continues to deny that such memos exist, NBC is reporting that it has acquired the next best thing: A secretish 16-page white paper from the Department of Justice that was provided to select members of the Senate last June." Spencer Ackerman at Wired says the leaked rules "[trump] traditional Constitutional protections American citizens enjoy from being killed by their government without due process" by redefining the concept of "imminence."
Governments involved in clandestine assassinations. Who would have thought? And of course, it only happens in other countries, to Al Qaeda and the like. Surely. Oh, and if you believe this, I have a bridge or two I can sell you....
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I'd like to think that this is going to change or this leak will help but I've pretty much given up on that.
Most people don't care and even if they did, they couldn't do anything. AND if they got to a position to do something I think they would become an imminent threat.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
This calls for Impeachment and trial of everyone involved. It will not happen of course, because murder is not as big a deal as getting a blowjob from an intern.
Then they have declared they can do whatever they want. If the standard is they just "determine" who is a member of al queda and whether there is some vague emminant danger, the big question is, who, either before or after the fact, has standing to question these determinations?
If there is nobody who can bring this to court, and no way to have oversight, then this is nothing more than a declaration that Due Process is optional in their eyes and they can suspend it whenever they determine they have the need.... because assasination is de facto denial of due process.
These standards should be considered criminally negligent.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Which party exactly is the party of limited government and civil liberties? It sure isn't the Democrats or the Republicans, and it sure isn't the Libertarians either as they are now thoroughly politicized.
There's one-party rule in the United States, and it comes in two subtly different flavors. No matter who you vote for, you're ultimately voting for the Banks, the Healthcare industry, the Military Industrial Complex and a few unions thrown in to make it all look fair.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Why would the GOP ever impeach him for this when they're quite happy to have this power if and when they retake the Oval Office?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
1. The person who leaked this memo.
.
.
.
Have gnu, will travel.
1. When someone makes a comment supporting MicroSoft.
2. When someone makes a comment bashing Apple.
3. When someone responds to their own post.
4. When someone screws up tags>br.
5. When someone suggests Cowboy Neal as an option in Slashdot polls.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
This doesn't surprise me considering how far removed the US government is from understanding her primary function - to protect her own citizens. What's to stop them from declaring a leader of a political movement as dangerous, having “recently” been involved in “activities” posing a threat of a violent attack - for example, declaring that the government has no right to interfere with private enterprises, or even supporting 2nd amendment rights?
US citizens relinquished citizenship and due process if they joined an enemy army of the US, whether it was the Redcoats, Germans, or Al Cada.
Its important to set clear boundaries. Joining the US Communist party or neo-nazis should not have had the same consquences because it never declared war on the US.
Plus I am concerned about growing use of domestic drone technology like for the in the Alabama kidnapping this week. Only a short step to arm them.
This is the country that sings "Land of the free and home of the brave". Talk about second amendment and the right/duty of the citizens to guard against tyranny. Then we go to our airports to be gate raped by TSA agents. The lunacy of the procedure is beyond comprehension. There was a picture of a returning war veteran removing his belt and boots to place on the conveyor belt, while a friendly smiling helpful TSA agent was holding his service rifle for him. The stupidity of the situation seemed to escaped both of them.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
My experience has been that whenever this comes up in conversation with actual adults who, while not brilliant, are not stupid either ... they get this dismissive look on their face. It is obvious they are thinking "oh, you are one of those conspiracy nuts, there is no way this could be real".
Most people don't believe this has actually happened.
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
The Bush policy was extraordinary rendition and a stay at Guantanamo until guilt or innocence could be determined -- and that was for non-citizens!
When they take two parking spaces so that their expensive car doesn't get a scratch. Double parking too.
When they refuse to tip the waitress AND leave a smug, self righteous remark.
When they commit a violent crime with a weapon
When they have committed up to 9 violent crimes without a weapon
When they engage in malfeasance with investor funds in any bank or financial institution
When they engage in bribery of ANY public official (federal, state and local) anywhere at any time (Both the public official and the bribee). Campaign funds should explicitly be considered bribes.
That'll do for a start.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
And thankfully this power is not systematically abused with no fear of reprisal or any chance of the abusers being held to account for their actions...
Right?
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
The difference is, "American Citizens" are protected by the US Constitution, a document the POTUS has sworn to uphold. ... at the very least, people should care.
Depriving a US citizen of their life without due process of law is a direct violation of that oath.
Yes, it should be an offense worthy of impeachment
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
And you're just a waste of oxygen if the best response you can come up with is "It's unlikely that you and your guns can stop tyranny, so you shouldn't have your guns."
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
for much of the rest of world to think that US is going even more nuts:
a - murdering with drones, collateral murders don't matter, no court system/laws involved, no war declared (endless war), getting more pissed off, keep the mill going
b - TSA shows at airports
c - 2-class humans - NON-Americans, Americans perceived as arrogant/bullies,
(leaving the Israel/nuclear/Iran next theater show out)
obey the government, and work within the system to gain power. Don't bother trying to overthrow the Matrix.
The US Government, like all governments, has the exact same power structure as any other government, and that is: the strong get to rule over the weak.
You freedom-loving libertarians need to understand this concept. It really is a flaw among you libertarians to think that you somehow live in a "free" country. No, you do NOT live in a free country. You never have. Try breaking a law, and see how much freedom you have.
You're better off accepting that you have no power, rather than thinking you have any sort of power under a democracy. The key is, if you accepted how powerless you were, you would form different methods of gaining power, instead of through silly methods such as through the 2nd amendment, which was designed to help government control you...
Nobody at this point actually thinks their pathetic handgun is going to protect them against tyranny by a government armed with SWAT teams, drones, and nuclear missiles, do they? And their power was actually demonstrated via a civil war where Gen. Sherman burnt down half the south to clear out the rebellious traitors..
It really is shameful that Americans are taught that they have any sort of power, and it's sad seeing them come to the conclusion that they actually don't. The "freedom"-loving libertarian's ego is apparently the hardest thing to destroy, but it must be destroyed for them to actually gain real freedom and power.
Again, we have to make sure people understand that American do NOT have freedom, and that any attempt to make it look that way is the powerful attempting to control the weak by giving the weak an illusion of power.
In summation:
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
So does the Govt have to prove the said person did whatever they did which led to their relinquishing citizenship?
I don't think you'll find many libertarians who believe they live in a free country.
You can probably find many who believe this was originally intended to be a free country, and that it could become one by following the original design.
This is all nonsense. By most people's reckoning and the US Government's own declaration, every Confederate killed at Antietem or Gettysburg was a US Citizen. By what legal authority did the Federal Government kill them? Shall the ACLU and their decendents sue the Government for killing them without due process?
Oh wait.. they were in open rebellion and waging war against the Republic. Citizens who join Al-Qeda are in open rebellion and are waging war against the Republic. The simple fact is, when you join the enemy and wage war, you can be killed. War is War. No convoluted legal reasoning is needed to kill the enemy in war. If you think otherwise, your mind is clouded with nonsense and you are lost in non-reality.
Bullshit. The 5th Amendment protects US citizens, PERIOD. You really have no fucking clue, do you?
It's just a piece of paper that people lie in their oaths about protecting.
More Twoson than Cupertino
"Nobody at this point actually thinks their pathetic handgun is going to protect them against tyranny by a government armed with SWAT teams, drones, and nuclear missiles, do they?"
Yes. Actually taking out an entire army strike team is pretty easy with the right stuff. Full armor, It's not hard at all to injure the lot of them and then use them as bait to get more. Drones are zero effort to take down. 30-06 hunting rifle will down one in seconds. Or are you brain dead and think the US army drones are like what you see when you play Black Ops II.. Sorry kid. But a lot of hunters have guns that make the army's M16 a girly gun. I hunt bear and use a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.700_Nitro_Express 700 Nitro Round in my rifle. That round will kill someone in armor because it will be the same as a sledgehammer to the chest. Buddy of mine has a Barret 50. That will take out most helicopters and hit a target behind a brick wall by shooting through it.
I suggest you look at how the Taliban has pretty much spanked the US army really hard in Afghanistan with only rocks and mules. In the USA there area LOT more resources for an uprising to decimate the Military and police. Plus you have the problem that it's hard to make a soldier kill his own family and friends, so the US army sent in against the American citizenry will end with a lot of officers accidently killed by grenades. In viet-nam officers were fragged by the troops quite a bit.
So the fools like you that have zero education in history and negative education in combat or even firearm use have no clue at all.
Here the Department of Justice concludes only that where the following three conditions are met, a US operation using lethal force in a foreign country against a US citizen who is a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or an associated force would be lawful;
This is not a memo on how to "assassinate" just any US citizen. Rather, it is a memo on how when lethal force can be applied to a "citizen gone bad" if you will -- if one could even call "a senior operational leader of al-Qa'ida or an associated force" a US citizen (see: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1481). What's really sad is that the memo is plastered with the NBC logo all over, making it hard to read. Given this, and the apparently lack of reading comprehension and cherry picking of words, it seems NBC was too eager to up their readership with bold claims of assassinations of US citizens.
No they wouldn't, they'd put you in a certain prison camp in Cuba.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
So, do Democrats consider this a corroboration of the Bush policy (which means they'll have to admit they were wrong about Bush), or a corruption of their leader (which means they'll have to admit they were wrong about Obama)?
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Which is the crux of the matter. These people have NOT been stripped of their citizenship (which is a judicial process) but deemed unlawful combatants by (secret) executive decision. No due process, no "cease and desist" letter, your first hint "you're on the list" is a smoke trail moving rapidly towards your window. What is fine for a guy building bombs, but becomes very weak for someone making speeches on the internet.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
Which shows just how ideologically blind many libertarians are, given how intimately the "original design" of this country depended on the labor of certain "3/5 people".
There's even more cause for condemnation of Obama on this score: The Bush policy was a stay at Gitmo until guilt or innocence could be determined. The Obama policy, in the case of about 2/3 of the people currently in Gitmo, is that you stay there even if you've been declared innocent (they recently shut down the office that was handling sending innocent prisoners back to their homes).
Oh, and you'll notice I call them prisoners. Calling them "detainees" was nonsense, when they've been locked up for over a decade.
I am officially gone from
I honestly believe that the exact same thing would have happened with McCain or Romney as president. I also think Bush would probably have done the same thing if he'd had the drones available at the time. I can't prove it of course, but i do feel the fact that a bipartisan group of Senators were asking for the criteria used to kill Americans rather than demanding that it not happen at all kind of supports the idea. For the same reason i don't think Obama will be impeached or even seriously criticized by Congress over this. (If all the Republicans get together and try to pass a law that would effectively stop things like this i would get behind them on this one issue. But it ain't gonna happen.)
I voted for Obama in both of the previous elections. I didn't vote for him because i honsetly thought he would Change anything. One can always hope, but i didn't believe it would really happen, so i wasn't that disappointed when it didn't. I voted for him because i believed he wouldn't do _most_ of the things the Republicans said they wanted to do, and _maybe_ he'd actually manage to do one of two good things. And that's pretty much what happened. He's managed to do a couple things i view as good, and _mostly_ hasn't done the things the Republicans said they wanted.
I would rather have had a president who didn't do _any_ of the crappy things i believe the Republicans would do, but realistically there was no way to achieve that. In game theory terms i got the best outcome (from my perspective) that was possible under the current system. Under any kind of instant run-off system Obama would not have been my first choice. He might not even have been my second or third choice.
And both the Republicans and the Democrats know they can get away with a lot of crap exactly because of the two party system. "What are you going to do, vote for the Greens or Libertarians instead? Ha ha, go ahead, see how well that works out for you."
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I don't think you'll find many libertarians who believe they live in a free country.
Define "Freedom".
Some folks think freedom is just riding a motorcycle or owning some mass produced, stamped steel piece of shit assault rifle.
Others believe it is to do what the fuck they want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else.
And there are others who think they can do whatever they want on their own land - even if that means down the road it hurts others. - like dumping toxic waste on their land that eventually poisons the water table.
Where Libertarianism fails: the commons. (See the sea)
> I don't think you'll find many libertarians who believe they live in a free country.
As a foreigner who admires their idealism, I don't think American libertarians will believe they live in a free country, when put in ANY country in existence today.
The "original design" did not depend on the labor of certain "3/5 people". It's easy to document that most founders, including Jefferson, opposed slavery. The situation they were in was that the Constitution needed to be ratified by all the colonies so that the whole would be greater than the sum of the parts. So, while they wrote the Constitution with certain compromises so that they could get citizens to ratify it, they incorporated sunset clauses to certain parts of slavery.
You need to do some deeper research rather than make broad assumptions based on certain, pragmatic, compromises.
There's a difference between expedience and casualties.
If the police come to arrest you, and you pull a gun on them, they are not going to risk getting shot and are going to shoot you instead. No trial.
If you have a 5-year-old in a bunker, and the police think you're about to cause harm to them they are not going to risk it and they're going to shoot you instead. No trial.
If you are hiding out in enemy territory where any American coming to get you is going to be shot on sight, there's no reason for us to risk the lives of Americans to come force you to trial when you don't want to go.
When you make it clear that you would rather kill the people coming to arrest you than be arrested, you're going to get killed. This should be obvious.
If you want to remove yourself from the rule of law, you can't complain when you lose the benefits of the rule of law you removed yourself from.
paintball
Jefferson opposed slavery so deeply that he remained a slave-owner (and slave-raper) for his whole life, while hammering out compromises to make sure others could do the same (including "sunset clauses to certain parts of slavery", aside from the "total ownership of another human being" parts). Obviously a fundamental commitment to the core of human freedom!
No, it's worse than that. It's "OMG WE LIVE IN A TYRANNICAL SOCIETY AND IT WILL ALWAYS BE THUS! DESPAIR, SHEEPLE! DESPAIR!!!!"
AC evidently sees the world in black and white, free or oppressed. "Try breaking a law, and see how much freedom you have," is particularly precious.
Yes that was the Bush policy, except you couldn't see a lawyer and you would never actually get a trial (maybe a military tribunal aka kangaroo court)
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
The original design was sovereign States who delegated a small, well-defined subset of their powers to a common body
That common body was structured so as to make it somewhat self-limiting, somewhat difficult to expand its reach..
It was also structured with layers of increasing responsibility that theoretically would help elevate the finest people to higher offices, even as it filtered out to a degree some of the more extremist voices.
Why the secrecy then? Why not legislate for this type of killing out in the open if it's all so reasonable and dandy?
Mistakes happen. Death is irreversible. Oopsies, sowwy.
Besides, the Global War on Terror is open-ended, the battlefield is everywhere.
And one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
And ... finally, who trained Osama Bin Laden - former head of al Queda - so conveniently disposed of without a day in court, hmm? Oh yeah, fealty is so fickle ... Might makes right, nothing to see here, move along, say ... you sound sympathetic to the enemy, don't want to end up on our list now ...
Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
"power to kill a US citizen abroad who is ACCUSED OF threatening US lives."
FTFY
If the government has evidence to back up this ACCUSATION, it should be presented to a grand jury and they should get an arrest warrant from a judge.
Unless an arrest warrant is issued and criminal charges have been filed, how is a person even supposed to know that they are being accused of criminal activity? Exactly how is the government offering them the chance to give themselves up before the bomb hits?
A few observations:
Some people, with reasonable cause, do not trust Obama. Their suspicions have been vindicated.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
ALL of human interaction is trust based. Once you realize this, it gets much easier.
Every single construct of humanity is based on trust of the parties. Where trust does not exist, we create additional parties to verify the conditions. And we then must trust that those additional parties are trustworthy, else we set up yet another layer of verification. It's turtles all the way down.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Nobody at this point actually thinks their pathetic handgun is going to protect them against tyranny by a government armed with SWAT teams, drones, and nuclear missiles, do they?
You completely miss the point with this statement! Tyranny never starts with the government using the military to impose its will on the people (though it sometimes reaches maturity that way). Tyranny starts with "brownshirts".
The tool of the tyrant who is not yet firmly in control is unofficial (but government sponsored) armed gangs of thugs. They rely on terror and inability to resist to project power, but there are few people in modern culture willing to act that way. With an unarmed populace, 1-2% willing and eager to use violence to suppress dissent will win. But it only takes a similar number to be willing to fight back, to put themselves at risk when the browshirts come for their neighbors, and shoot the fuckers dead. Since most of us are not as brave as we'd like to be, that means you need ~20% of the population to be armed and have a strong moral compass, so that the bravest 5-10% of them actually act.
That is possible. That works.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You are responding to an A.C. troll. I don't know where anyone would get the idea that Jefferson had anything to do with the Constitution. He was an ambassador to France at the time. Also not involved was John Adams (who, by the way, was not a slave owner).
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Nice bit of revisionist history. The 3/5 compromise was forced by the non-slave states to reduce the power of the slave owning states, not out of some secret desire to help the slaves' votes from being used against themselves.
It is important to understand that there cannot be a 'War on Terror'. Terror is a tactic, thus not something that can be defeated. The terrorists are the ones to be defeated, and they will not be defeated if we approach this as a traditional war, such as a 'police action' would require. The way to fight terrorists is with Letters of Marque and Reprisal (which Congress is authorized to grant) and ending of policies that invite such hatred toward, such as military bases in foreign nations (and drone strikes).
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Somalia with its several competing gang-based governments is a free country? When I say the word free, this is what comes to your mind?
Such a fascinating word association. No doubt if I asked what word came to mind if I said 'love,' you might respond with 'rape' or 'slavery.'
I am John Hurt.
Yea because this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946) clearly never happened and didn't work according to your logic.
Orwell was an optimist.
Let's cut the crap about totalitarianism. Do you think Obama wants to be a despot? Do you think Bush did? The real issue here is that the America people have given their president a mission that he does not have the powers to complete. The world is changing. We can't declare war on our enemies anymore. We can't identify them by the colors they're wearing. Now we're directing our government to put down organizations that exist in many different countries and feature people of many nationalities (even American citizens!). Our institutions were not designed to fight this kind of war. We must design them. We should be passing a constitutional amendment that handles these sorts of situations. There should be a dialogue going on where we the people determine what values should be involved. We need new, big ideas for a new world. Unfortunately, we don't want to discuss big ideas anymore. Everything needs to be pushed away while we stick to talking points and bureaucracy. As a result, the president is making these decisions on his own behind closed doors. This is unacceptable. It's a shame too, because I'm sure we could reach a broad consensus. But until we're willing to have adult conversations about these things, our government will continue to change in the shadows.
Use evil to fight evil.
Ah, the approach of Stalin, Hitler, Pol-pot...
No mass murderer ever thought his evil wasn't justified by some perceived greater evil.
Somebody give that man a Nobel Peace Prize.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-fifths_compromise
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.