Obama's First Full Day as a Tyrant Who Ordered the Assassination of American Citizen Samir Kahn

[William Kelly]

Well Mr. Kelly,

I have about zero knowledge on this particular issue, and just ran across that and tossed it out for folks to read. Thought Mr. Scully might find it interesting, since he is very concerned.

I didn't comment on it one way or the other.

It was just another article. If you don't like the author's views, take it up with them. I didn't make the content and can't comment on it one way or the other.

You need to cut out your attacks. Totally non-professional, not sticking to the content of the article and so forth.

I wouldn't have responded at all if you didn't single me out for mention.

And I realize that you just through these out there and don't know what they are talking about.

And I did respond to the women who wrote the NATO piece and showed where she is wrong without attacking you.

I'm glad you acknowledge you have zero knowledge about this. I won't argue with you.

[Greg Parker]

Well Mr. Kelly,

I have about zero knowledge on this particular issue, and just ran across that and tossed it out for folks to read. Thought Mr. Scully might find it interesting, since he is very concerned.

I didn't comment on it one way or the other.

It was just another article. If you don't like the author's views, take it up with them. I didn't make the content and can't comment on it one way or the other.

You need to cut out your attacks. Totally non-professional, not sticking to the content of the article and so forth.

I wouldn't have responded at all if you didn't single me out for mention.

And I realize that you just through these out there and don't know what they are talking about.

And I did respond to the women who wrote the NATO piece and showed where she is wrong without attacking you.

I'm glad you acknowledge you have zero knowledge about this. I won't argue with you.

Bill, he didn't just stumble on that piece and decide to "throw it out there". Jim is a dyed-in-the-wool Larouchian.

[Thomas Graves]

[...] Jim (Phelps) is a dyed-in-the-wool Larouchian.

A Lilly-Putian LeDouchian.

--Tommy

Edited October 3, 2011 by Thomas Graves

[Guest Tom Scully]

Tom, I think you are dealing with one aspect of a systemic problem that has plagued humankind for a very long time.

While I doubt many would understand the following, no doubt there are some who can put it far better.

IMO:

It is a battle between weaknesses.

A society, group or the world as a whole is defined by how it treats its weakest elements.

The more control that needs to be exerted, the more the fragility of the controllers is revealed.

In essence it is a matter of moral decrepitude.

Given (imo) that the law is asinine it seems futile to expect it to be otherwise.

These moral dilemmas will persist unless there is a systemic change.

John,

With such an economy of words, you've described the problem so clearly. I live in a shrunk down country where more than half my fellow adults can't or won't grasp what you posted or be interested. Just frogs in a pot of water that Obama just turned up the heat on.

http://www.salon.com/2011/09/22/jacobs_3/singleton

Thursday, Sep 22, 2011 6:23 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Dennis G. Jacobs: Case study in judicial pathology

By Glenn Greenwald

....thus fulfilling what Thomas Paine, in his 1790 Dissertations on First Principles in Government, described as the prime duty for preserving freedom for everyone (a passage Dennis Jacobs, if he would ever read it, would likely castigate as “fantasies of persecution”):

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.thus fulfilling what Thomas Paine, in his 1790 Dissertations on First Principles in Government, described as the prime duty for preserving freedom for everyone (a passage Dennis Jacobs, if he would ever read it, would likely castigate as “fantasies of persecution”):

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

....In 2010, Jacobs again appeared before the Federalist Society’s annual conference and delivered the “Barbara K. Olsen Memorial Lecture,” named after the Fox News legal scholar who spent the 1990s churning out every tawdry allegation against Bill and Hillary Clinton before she died in the 9/11 attack. Ironically, Jacobs delivered a 2006 speech — entitled “The Secret Life of Judges” — in which he purported to reveal a pervasive “bias” among the judiciary: reliance on law and legal procedure in lieu of policy judgments.

Of course, Jacobs is the living, breathing embodiment of judicial bias: a devoted servant to corporate and government power, a right-wing hack who barely attempts to hide his political loyalties, and — most of all — a declared enemy of the very few mechanisms that exist to enable the poor and marginalized to receive competent legal representation and for political power to be subject to some minimal checks (what we call “the Constitution”). It should be anything but surprising that a corporate-serving, political-power-revering, highly politicized figure like this produces judicial opinions that are slightly more restrained versions of a Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly rant. He churns out right-wing agitprop masquerading as legal reasoning.

But the reason he’s worth examining is because he’s anything but aberrational. He’s the Chief Judge of the second- or third-most important court in the country. He works in a judicial system that more and more does the opposite of what it was ostensibly designed to do: it is now devoted to shielding political officials from legal accountability and transparency rather than exposing them to it, enabling rather than halting transgressions of the Constitutional limits imposed on them, and most of all, further empowering the most powerful factions against the least powerful rather than equalizing the playing field. In that regard, the life of Dennis G. Jacobs — and his slanderous, contemptuous outburst of yesterday — should be studied as a perfect embodiment of how the American judicial branch has become so corrupted as a tool for the nation’s most powerful factions.

It comes creeping in, but there's a game to watch on tee vee, and there's cold beer in the fridge and the couch feels especially comfortable.....yawn! Somewhere, the spirit of Sylvia Meagher weeps.

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/03/awlaki_7/singleton

Sunday, Oct 2, 2011 10:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time

So much evidence, there’s no need to show it

By Glenn Greenwald

[Don Jeffries]

America has become such an idiocracy that, at this point, I think you could probably get 35% of the people to support the president's right to randomly track down American citizen "terrorists" in their own American homes and assassinate them. Nothing surprises me about the American police state now. The same television networks and big newspapers that have lied repeatedly about the JFK assassination and countless other issues should have zero crediblity with any knowledgable American. Thus, it's meaningless for us to hear talking heads describe someone as a "bad guy" or part of Al Queda or whatever. We don't trust these people about anything. To me, it's akin to trusting the likes of Chris Matthews on the JFK assassination.

If someone had suggested a scenario such as this as recently as the mid-1970s, when virtually the entire Democratic party, at least, was firmly oppposed to assassinating even the worst foreign leaders, they'd have been ignored, ridiculed and promptly gone back into the shadows. No self-respecting politician would have dared to support the killing of an American citizen in a foreign land, no matter what he was alleged to have done. Now, we have "liberals" revelling in this atrocious, unconstitutional, immoral act of the Obama administration. Where have all the civil libertarians gone? Is there no one left in this country who knows the simple difference between right

and wrong?

Thankfully, more and more young people are seeing through the false left-right paradigm. They don't get their news from television, and just the basic usage of a truly free medium like the internet has opened up many, many minds to what is really going on. The Wall Street protesters are just the beginning- you will see more of these kinds of protests until either the police state ups the ante, and just starts murderering people in cold blood, or enough Americans jump start their sleeping consciences and realize just how awful those who lead us have become.

I agree completely with Tom Scully, of course, on this issue. It's mind boggling to me how anyone can support what the Obama administration did. Murder by the state, without any writ of habeous corpus, is about as immoral as something can get in this world. And we have the nerve to call leaders of other countries war criminals and dictators.

[William Kelly]

America has become such an idiocracy that, at this point, I think you could probably get 35% of the people to support the president's right to randomly track down American citizen "terrorists" in their own American homes and assassinate them. Nothing surprises me about the American police state now. The same television networks and big newspapers that have lied repeatedly about the JFK assassination and countless other issues should have zero crediblity with any knowledgable American. Thus, it's meaningless for us to hear talking heads describe someone as a "bad guy" or part of Al Queda or whatever. We don't trust these people about anything. To me, it's akin to trusting the likes of Chris Matthews on the JFK assassination.

If someone had suggested a scenario such as this as recently as the mid-1970s, when virtually the entire Democratic party, at least, was firmly oppposed to assassinating even the worst foreign leaders, they'd have been ignored, ridiculed and promptly gone back into the shadows. No self-respecting politician would have dared to support the killing of an American citizen in a foreign land, no matter what he was alleged to have done. Now, we have "liberals" revelling in this atrocious, unconstitutional, immoral act of the Obama administration. Where have all the civil libertarians gone? Is there no one left in this country who knows the simple difference between right

and wrong?

Thankfully, more and more young people are seeing through the false left-right paradigm. They don't get their news from television, and just the basic usage of a truly free medium like the internet has opened up many, many minds to what is really going on. The Wall Street protesters are just the beginning- you will see more of these kinds of protests until either the police state ups the ante, and just starts murderering people in cold blood, or enough Americans jump start their sleeping consciences and realize just how awful those who lead us have become.

I agree completely with Tom Scully, of course, on this issue. It's mind boggling to me how anyone can support what the Obama administration did. Murder by the state, without any writ of habeous corpus, is about as immoral as something can get in this world. And we have the nerve to call leaders of other countries war criminals and dictators.

Anyone who has followed the Arab revolutions knows that they all started out small - even in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, usually only a few hundred or a few dozen peaceful protesters, who only got popular support after the police state cracked down. This is what happened at Wall Street, and even at on a Youtube demonstration of a group who opened a ten cent lemonade stand in front of the Capitol, and the first act of violence was by a women police officer who tried to prevent a cameraman from filming them making their arrests.

If you think you live under a tyrant in a police state, you don't know what a tyrant or a police state is. To learn, google Youtube newscasts from Bahrain or Syria, where the revolution was started by children, not yet teenagers who wrote graffiti on the walls and were then arrested and tortured.

As for the American Al-Qaeda in Yemen getting hit by a preditor, they are the ones who declared war on us.

And I agree with this judge's legal determination.

Of course now Obama is also a possible target for such assassinations, but he won't be killed by those Al Qaeda guys already taken down.

Thanks to Jim Harwood for calling attention to this legal case, even though I disagree with him.

By EVAN PEREZ

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a challenge to the Obama administration's targeted-killing program, meaning the U.S. can continue to go after a Yemeni-American cleric whom it blames for terrorist plots.

The case, brought by the father of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, raised difficult questions about the breadth of U.S. executive power, but U.S. District Judge John Bates said he couldn't answer them as the father lacked legal standing to bring the case.

The "serious issues regarding the merits of the alleged authorization of the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen overseas must await another day or another (non-judicial) forum," Judge Bates wrote in an 83-page ruling.

The judge acknowledged the "somewhat unsettling nature" of his conclusion "that there are circumstances in which the [president's] unilateral decision to kill a U.S. citizen overseas" is "judicially unreviewable."

The U.S. says Mr. Awlaki is a leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, the group that the U.S. believes was behind the recent thwarted attempt to blow up U.S.-bound planes with package bombs as well as a failed attempt to bomb an airliner last Christmas. AQAP has claimed responsibility for the plots.

Mr. Awlaki is believed to be in hiding in Yemen, where he regularly issues Islamist sermons popular among jihadists on the Internet. He is a target of a U.S. program aiming to kill leaders of terror groups, U.S. officials say.

Mr. Awlaki's father, Nasser al-Awlaki, brought the case with the help of lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights. They argued the father had to bring the case as the younger Mr. Awlaki couldn't seek protection of the courts himself for fear of being killed.

The lawsuit sought to prevent Mr. Awlaki's killing unless he presented an "imminent" threat.

The government, in its court arguments, didn't confirm plans to kill Mr. Awlaki. It argued that the cleric, as a U.S. citizen, could ensure his safety by turning himself in to U.S. authorities or filing suit himself.

Judge Bates wrote that Mr. Awlaki had used the Internet in recent months to issue anti-American messages, while taking no action to indicate he wants the U.S. judicial system to hear his case. To the contrary, the judge wrote, Mr. Awlaki wrote an article in April asserting that Muslims "should not be forced to accept rulings of courts of law that are contrary to the law of Allah."

The judge heard arguments in the case last month on the day a jihadi website published the complete version of Mr. Awlaki's latest anti-American sermon.

Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said the ruling "recognized that a leader of a foreign terrorist organization who rejects our system of justice cannot enjoy the protection of our courts while plotting strikes against Americans."

The court's ruling suggests the government can "carry out the targeted killing of any American, anywhere, whom the president deems to be a threat to the nation," said ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer. "It would be difficult to conceive of a proposition more inconsistent with the Constitution or more dangerous to American liberty."

Write to Evan Perez at evan.perez@wsj.com

[Don Jeffries]

Bill,

For an increasing number of Americans (especially the young), that kind of globalist thinking is obsolete. American society is decaying- our economy is probably beyond all repair. Joblessness is rampant, and reporting ridiculous false figures like sub-10% unemployment rates are fooling no one any longer. Health care is a disgrace, as are wages in general for some 80% of working Americans. So...in light of all that, Arab revolutions and the like are simply not anywere on the priority list at this stage.

We can certainly feel empathy for those in other countries who are suffering under tyrannical rule. We can no longer afford the cost of becoming involved- in terms of human life or just literally, since we simply don't have the money. The idea that this so-called "peace" president, who has already bombed and occupied more countries than Dubya dreamed of, would find the time to worry about an American citizen living abroad is mind boggling. You can cite all the establishment sources about this guy; how bad he was, how much he hated America, etc. We aren't buying that any more. The sources are all tainted. The biggest threats to America are our corrupt and incompetent leaders. They are either failing to take the kind of action necessary to try and quell this monstrous economic crisis, or hatching "solutions" that, defying belief, will actually make things worse. I'm a lot more worried about my local representative than I am about some bogeyman that Fox News, CNN, the New York Times, etc. tell me is so bad he deserved to be assassinated by our own government.

As recently as the 1970s, most Americans would morally have objected to the assassination of even the most despicable foreign tyrants. We couldn't have sold the idea of assassinating Hitler, for instance, to the public during WWII. Now why have we lost our moral compass in such a way that today a large chunk of the people (and all of the msm) support the assassination of an American citizen residing in a foreign land? I think it's a certainty that JFK would have objected strongly to this. Recall how he asked journalist Tad Szulc about the policy of the American government sanctioning assassination, and how he clearly opposed it.

We have no right to criticize the policies of other governments, when we openly murder our own citizens without any due process of law.

[Pat Speer]

Bill,

For an increasing number of Americans (especially the young), that kind of globalist thinking is obsolete. American society is decaying- our economy is probably beyond all repair. Joblessness is rampant, and reporting ridiculous false figures like sub-10% unemployment rates are fooling no one any longer. Health care is a disgrace, as are wages in general for some 80% of working Americans. So...in light of all that, Arab revolutions and the like are simply not anywere on the priority list at this stage.

We can certainly feel empathy for those in other countries who are suffering under tyrannical rule. We can no longer afford the cost of becoming involved- in terms of human life or just literally, since we simply don't have the money. The idea that this so-called "peace" president, who has already bombed and occupied more countries than Dubya dreamed of, would find the time to worry about an American citizen living abroad is mind boggling. You can cite all the establishment sources about this guy; how bad he was, how much he hated America, etc. We aren't buying that any more. The sources are all tainted. The biggest threats to America are our corrupt and incompetent leaders. They are either failing to take the kind of action necessary to try and quell this monstrous economic crisis, or hatching "solutions" that, defying belief, will actually make things worse. I'm a lot more worried about my local representative than I am about some bogeyman that Fox News, CNN, the New York Times, etc. tell me is so bad he deserved to be assassinated by our own government.

As recently as the 1970s, most Americans would morally have objected to the assassination of even the most despicable foreign tyrants. We couldn't have sold the idea of assassinating Hitler, for instance, to the public during WWII. Now why have we lost our moral compass in such a way that today a large chunk of the people (and all of the msm) support the assassination of an American citizen residing in a foreign land? I think it's a certainty that JFK would have objected strongly to this. Recall how he asked journalist Tad Szulc about the policy of the American government sanctioning assassination, and how he clearly opposed it.

We have no right to criticize the policies of other governments, when we openly murder our own citizens without any due process of law.

I actually think the manner in which Awlaki was murdered is an improvement over how things were done in the past. At least this way the American people KNOW who our President has killed, and the purported reasons WHY. This allows us to decide if we want this to continue.

In the past, our Presidents and intelligence agencies killed or attempted to kill those they wanted dead, without the public's knowledge. I would prefer we not return to that condition.

Edited October 4, 2011 by Pat Speer

[John Dolva]

and I don't think the people of the US of A yet know just how strong they are. I also think this is a (desperate theatrics) measure to make sure it stays that way.

[Guest Tom Scully]

Last friday I shook my son out of his "Obama killed a terrorist, good!" complacency, and last night he thanked me for reminding him that it is not necessarily legal, just because the president says it is.

It's unraveling, and consider that the underwear bomber had not been associated with Al Alwaki in the criminal court filings related to his prosecution.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/al-awlaki-strike-kill-bombmaker/story?id=14655903

By Donna Leinwand Leger, and William M. Welch

October 3, 2011

Al-Qaeda's bombmaker in Yemen apparently wasn't among the victims of a U.S. drone strike, disappointing U.S. officials who thought last week's attack might have claimed a third key figure in the terrorist organization.

U.S. intelligence officials had said the strike that killed U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and an American propagandist, Samir Kahn, Friday appeared to have also taken out a bombmaker tied to efforts to bring down jets in 2009 and 2010....

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0110/012210cdam2.htm

Jan 22, 2010 – U.S. intelligence officials have acknowledged the government knowingly allows foreigners whose names are on terrorist watch lists to enter the country in order to track their movement and activities.

In an unusual and startling admission, Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, disclosed the practice during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday....

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/commenter_says_he_was_aboard_n.html

December 26, 2009

....For those of you talking about airline security in this thread, I was next to the terrorist when he checked in at the Amsterdam airport early on Christmas. My wife and I were playing cards directly in front of the check in counter. This is what I saw (and I relayed this to the FBI when we were held in customs):

An Indian man in a nicely dressed suit around age 50 approached the check in counter with the terrorist and said "This man needs to get on this flight and he has no passport." The two of them were an odd pair as the terrorist is a short, black man that looked like he was very poor and looks around age 17(Although I think he is 23 he doesn't look it). It did not cross my mind that they were terrorists, only that the two looked weird together. The ticket taker said "you can't board without a passport". The Indian man then replied, "He is from Sudan, we do this all the time"....

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/female-suicide-bombers-heading-yemen/story?id=9636341&page=2http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/female-suicide-bombers-heading-yemen/story?id=9636341&page=2

Jan. 22, 2010

....Federal agents also tell ABCNews.com they are attempting to identify a man who passengers said helped Abdulmutallab change planes for Detroit when he landed in Amsterdam from Lagos, Nigeria.

Authorities had initially discounted the passenger accounts, but the agents say there is a growing belief the man have played a role to make sure Abdulmutallab "did not get cold feet."

(Who the hell, is "we," Bill...as in "He is from Sudan, we do this all the time," ...and why did "Authorities had initially discounted the passenger accounts," and why, if the U.S. was watching Al Alwalki closely for the past two weeks, and took pains not to strike him near Yemeni civilians, did they shoot missles at him while he was with another unindicted American citizen and why did any official tell the press that a notorious Al Qaeda "bombmaker" was in his company at the time of the strike?

The answer is, you do not know, Bill, so why are you supporting the government in this MESS?)

The government is supplying fake bombs.: (What will the think of next, possibly supplying inoperable Carcano rifles with surplus USMC ammo?)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/27/mohamed-osman-mohamud-portland-car-bomb_n_788695.html

Friday, an agent and Mohamud drove to Portland in a white van that carried six 55-gallon drums with detonation cords and plastic caps, but all of them were inert, the complaint states.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/us/21natbrfs-MANCHARGEDIN_BRF.html

Mr. Hassoun was arrested Sunday after planting the fake explosive device, which was given to him by an undercover agent, the F.B.I. said.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/4-arrested-in-new-york-terror-plot/

....The informer gave the men “a Stinger surface-to-air guided missile provided by the F.B.I. that was not capable of being fired,” as well as three improvised explosive devices, each containing more than 30 pounds of inert C-4 plastic explosives, telling the men that he had obtained them from Jaish-e-Muhammad, the authorities said.

The three men took the weapon materials back to Newburgh, and two days later, joined by Onta Williams, they met to inspect the materials and “further discuss the logistics of the operation,” the authorities said...

http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/judge-slams-sting-in-bronx-synagogue-case-1.3152375

September 7, 2011 6:39 PM

By JOHN RILEY john.riley@newsday.com

A Manhattan federal judge Wednesday lashed out at the government for using a sting to recruit four Newburgh men into a phony 2009 plot to blow up a Bronx synagogue as she sentenced the final defendant to 25 years in prison. ....

...An FBI informant testified about a courtship lasting nearly a year that included financial incentives to lure plot leader James Cromitie and three others into agreeing. The jury rejected an entrapment defense.

"A government understandably zealous to protect its citizens created acts of terrorism out of the fantasies and bravado and bigotry of one man in particular and four men generally, and then made those fantasies come true," the judge said. "The government made them terrorists."

Bill Kelly wrote:

...“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first — verdict afterward.”

Bill, what is there to actually "agree with" in Judge Bates' "legal determination"?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2010/12/07/terror-lawsuit007.html

U.S. judge tosses Muslim cleric case

Last Updated: Tuesday, December 7, 2010 | 11:24 AM ET

The Associated Press

.....But Bates also said the "unique and extraordinary case" raises serious issues about whether the United States can plan to kill one of its own citizens without judicial review....

...Administration officials have confirmed to The Associated Press that al-Awlaki is on a capture or kill list, although the Obama administration declined to confirm or deny it in court proceedings....

....The suit also tried to force the government to disclose standards for determining whether U.S. citizens like his son, born in New Mexico, can be targeted for death.

Administration officials argued the court has no legal authority to review the president as he makes military decisions to protect Americans against terrorist attacks...."

.....As for the American Al-Qaeda in Yemen getting hit by a preditor, they are the ones who declared war on us.

And I agree with this judge's legal determination.

Of course now Obama is also a possible target for such assassinations, but he won't be killed by those Al Qaeda guys already taken down.

Thanks to Jim Harwood for calling attention to this legal case, even though I disagree with him.

By EVAN PEREZ

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a challenge to the Obama administration's targeted-killing program, meaning the U.S. can continue to go after a Yemeni-American cleric whom it blames for terrorist plots.

.....The lawsuit sought to prevent Mr. Awlaki's killing unless he presented an "imminent" threat.

The government, in its court arguments, didn't confirm plans to kill Mr. Awlaki. It argued that the cleric, as a U.S. citizen, could ensure his safety by turning himself in to U.S. authorities or filing suit himself.

Write to Evan Perez at evan.perez@wsj.com

http://ccrjustice.org/files/Al-Aulaqi%20v.%20Obama%20Complaint.pdf

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

NASSER AL-AULAQI,

on his own behalf and as Next Friend of

Anwar Al-Aulaqi

Al-Zubairi Street

Al-Saeed Center

Sana’a, Yemen,

Plaintiff,

v.

BARACK H. OBAMA,

in his official capacity as President of

the United States (et al)

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500;

6. Plaintiff seeks a declaration from this Court that the Constitution and

international law prohibit the government from carrying out targeted killings outside of

armed conflict except as a last resort to protect against concrete, specific, and imminent

threats of death or serious physical injury; and an injunction prohibiting the targeted

killing of U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi outside this narrow context. Plaintiff also seeks

an injunction requiring the government to disclose the standards under which it

determines whether U.S. citizens can be targeted for death.

http://web.archive.org/web/20100921034029/http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/washington/7200064.html

September 14, 2010

The Associated Press:

"The Obama administration is considering filing the first criminal charges against radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in case the CIA fails to kill him and he is captured alive in Yemen....

....Another option, given al-Awlaki's increasingly violent sermons and his collaboration with al-Qaida's propaganda efforts, would be charging him with supporting terrorism. But that charge carries only a 15-year prison sentence, leaving the administration open to questions about how the president can authorize the CIA to essentially impose the death penalty for such a crime....

....If the Justice Department decides to charge al-Awlaki, it's likely he would not be indicted. Rather, charges are more likely to take the form of an FBI complaint. That's because an indicted suspect automatically gets the right to an attorney if he is captured, making it harder for authorities to question him.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/09/14/eight-months-after-putting-anwar-al-awlaki-on-kill-list-doj-considers-charges/

By: emptywheel Tuesday September 14, 2010 6:30 am

....In other words, this doesn’t appear to be an effort to finally use due process before targeting an American citizen with assassination. Rather, it seems to be more about closing off legal options to that American citizen.

Update: Here’s the joint ACLU/CCR statement on this:

Our organizations have long stated that if the government has evidence that Anwar Al-Aulaqi is involved in terrorist activity, it should present that evidence to a court – not authorize his execution without charge or trial. Now, months after the government announced its intent to kill Al-Aulaqi, it may finally bring charges against him. This would be a step in the right direction. The constitutional guarantee of due process relies on the critical distinction between allegations and evidence. If the reports that charges may be brought against Al-Aulaqi are true, the fact that it has taken the government this long – months after having announced his death sentence – suggests that, in this case, the government’s allegations were far ahead of its evidence.

While bringing charges against Al-Aulaqi based on credible evidence would be a step in the right direction, it would not mean that he could now be targeted for killing without trial. It is well established that the government cannot use extrajudicial killing to punish people for past acts, but only to prevent grave and imminent threats. A criminal charge for past crimes does not provide a license to kill.

We continue to believe that the courts must play a role in establishing legal standards for when the government can take the life of one of its own citizens without charge or trial. For that reason, we will continue with our litigation.”

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/closeread/2010/10/should-we-kill-anwar-al-awlaki.html

October 5, 2010

Should We Kill Anwar Al-Awlaki?

Posted by Amy Davidson

...Greenwald asks Sullivan how he knows that al-Awlaki is a terrorist at all. Sullivan is pretty scornful of this one. He cites speeches and documents and dates—he refers readers to Wikipedia—and asks,

Is [Greenwald] really trying to say that despite all this public evidence, and with this record of terror attacks, we need a full civil trial—even if we were able to capture him—to know that this individual is at war with his own country and a direct threat to all of us?

But the very abundance of evidence shows how absurd and dangerous the government’s position is. Sullivan is writing as though court proceedings were solely forensic tools. That is one of their functions. But we try people whose guilt is obvious all the time. (Just look at the awful trial concluded today in Cheshire, Connecticut.) We don’t skip the part with the judge and the lawyers and the actual listing of specific charges—as opposed to applying a general label of “bad” or “dangerous”—just because someone is caught red-handed, or even if it’s just to accept a guilty plea. We go through all that because the rule of law is meaningful to us, and we don’t want the question of whether someone needs or doesn’t need a trial to be left to the frenzy of the moment. Sullivan says that al-Awlaki is “self-evidently” a terrorist. There are truths that we hold to be self-evident in our system, but they speak in favor of going to court. And here is the important thing: If Awlaki is so clearly, blatantly, a terrorist—if we are knee-deep in evidence to that effect—then why, exactly, wouldn’t the government just get some sort of indictment, or at least stand in front of a judge and explain why it wants to kill him?....

So, Bill, the government refuses to cooperate with the court pleading by Al Awalki's father, in fact the Obama administration pleads to the court that its activities related to the matter are beyond the scope of the court's authority to rule, and they tell news orgs that Al Walki is on their assassination list, yet they tell the court they cannot comment due "state's secrects" constraints.

Three months before the court "ruling" a widely disseminated new report says that the government wants to charge Al Alwalki, but has not because they have no potential charge with a penalty greater than 15 years imprisonment, and because it would enhance his right to legal counsel.

You're standing in Al Alwalki's shoes....your father tried and failed to even engage the government, the government admits nothing to the court and tells the court to step aside. News reporting is that the government is avoiding charging you because it would tend to impede its plans to kill you on sight. You have no criminal charge against you pending, and Judge Bates has issued no order related to your safety or protection to influence you to "turn yourself in," but you Bill would do that. You would turn yourself in, in a heartbeat, in those circumstances? Turn yourself in....to face what? You haven't been charged with anything, and the government is clearly off the reservation, making threats to target you for assassination nine months before it even leaks to the press that it is considering filing a lesser charge than a capital charge against you.

Edited October 4, 2011 by Tom Scully

[John Dolva]

and I don't think the people of the US of A yet know just how strong they are. I also think this is a (desperate theatrics) measure to make sure it stays that way.

[Michael Hogan]

From huffingtonpost.com

The Assassination of Al-Awlaki, American Citizen and al Qaeda Martyr

Azeem Ibrahim

October 5, 2011

Excerpt:

Republican presidential candidate, Ron Paul, is calling Al-Awlaki's assassination "an impeachable offense," and says that the administration "flouted the law" and is moving towards "tyranny." These are strong words and not unexpected in campaign season, but they do have a disturbing ring of truth.

This may be the first time the United States government has targeted one of its own citizens after placing him on the enemy combatant kill or capture list, without satisfactorily explaining why he was not entitled to arrest, a fair trial or constitutional "due process of law" like other U.S. citizens.

The Justice Department on October 2, 2011 gave the CIA approval to kill Al-Awlaki on grounds of "self-defense" because he was "targeting U.S. citizens." But so far we have been offered no visible proof that he was anything more than a crazy militant ideologue, instigating others to violence, without firing a shot himself.

.....The justifications for killing Al-Awlaki will continue, but in the meantime, little has been said about the death of his companion, also a U.S. citizen. Samir Khan was an editor of the al Qaeda publication Inspire and has never been accused of plotting attacks against Americans. He was collateral damage in an increasingly murky world where citizens' civil rights are being overlooked in the pursuit of security, and hopes of peace being destroyed in the process.

Full story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/azeem-ibrahim/anwar-al-awlaki-killed_b_996902.html

Dr Azeem Ibrahim is a Fellow and Member of the Board of Directors at the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding and a former Research Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and World Fellow at Yale.

Edited October 6, 2011 by Michael Hogan

[John Dolva]

Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list''

By Mark Hosenball | Reuters – 3 hrs ago

http://news.yahoo.com/secret-panel-put-americans-kill-list-041603267.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate. ...

...

A former official said one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to "protect" the president.

..

When the name of a foreign, rather than American, militant is added to targeting lists, the decision is made within the intelligence community and normally does not require approval by high-level NSC officials.

.....

[William Kelly]

Last friday I shook my son out of his "Obama killed a terrorist, good!" complacency, and last night he thanked me for reminding him that it is not necessarily legal, just because the president says it is.

It's unraveling, and consider that the underwear bomber had not been associated with Al Alwaki in the criminal court filings related to his prosecution.

http://abcnews.go.co...ory?id=14655903

By Donna Leinwand Leger, and William M. Welch

October 3, 2011

Al-Qaeda's bombmaker in Yemen apparently wasn't among the victims of a U.S. drone strike, disappointing U.S. officials who thought last week's attack might have claimed a third key figure in the terrorist organization.

U.S. intelligence officials had said the strike that killed U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and an American propagandist, Samir Kahn, Friday appeared to have also taken out a bombmaker tied to efforts to bring down jets in 2009 and 2010....

http://www.govexec.c...012210cdam2.htm

Jan 22, 2010 – U.S. intelligence officials have acknowledged the government knowingly allows foreigners whose names are on terrorist watch lists to enter the country in order to track their movement and activities.

In an unusual and startling admission, Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, disclosed the practice during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday....

http://www.mlive.com...s_aboard_n.html

December 26, 2009

....For those of you talking about airline security in this thread, I was next to the terrorist when he checked in at the Amsterdam airport early on Christmas. My wife and I were playing cards directly in front of the check in counter. This is what I saw (and I relayed this to the FBI when we were held in customs):

An Indian man in a nicely dressed suit around age 50 approached the check in counter with the terrorist and said "This man needs to get on this flight and he has no passport." The two of them were an odd pair as the terrorist is a short, black man that looked like he was very poor and looks around age 17(Although I think he is 23 he doesn't look it). It did not cross my mind that they were terrorists, only that the two looked weird together. The ticket taker said "you can't board without a passport". The Indian man then replied, "He is from Sudan, we do this all the time"....

http://abcnews.go.co...=9636341&page=2

Jan. 22, 2010

....Federal agents also tell ABCNews.com they are attempting to identify a man who passengers said helped Abdulmutallab change planes for Detroit when he landed in Amsterdam from Lagos, Nigeria.

Authorities had initially discounted the passenger accounts, but the agents say there is a growing belief the man have played a role to make sure Abdulmutallab "did not get cold feet."

(Who the hell, is "we," Bill...as in "He is from Sudan, we do this all the time," ...and why did "Authorities had initially discounted the passenger accounts," and why, if the U.S. was watching Al Alwalki closely for the past two weeks, and took pains not to strike him near Yemeni civilians, did they shoot missles at him while he was with another unindicted American citizen and why did any official tell the press that a notorious Al Qaeda "bombmaker" was in his company at the time of the strike?

The answer is, you do not know, Bill, so why are you supporting the government in this MESS?)

The government is supplying fake bombs.: (What will the think of next, possibly supplying inoperable Carcano rifles with surplus USMC ammo?)

http://www.huffingto...b_n_788695.html

Friday, an agent and Mohamud drove to Portland in a white van that carried six 55-gallon drums with detonation cords and plastic caps, but all of them were inert, the complaint states.

http://www.nytimes.c...RGEDIN_BRF.html

Mr. Hassoun was arrested Sunday after planting the fake explosive device, which was given to him by an undercover agent, the F.B.I. said.

http://cityroom.blog...rk-terror-plot/

....The informer gave the men "a Stinger surface-to-air guided missile provided by the F.B.I. that was not capable of being fired," as well as three improvised explosive devices, each containing more than 30 pounds of inert C-4 plastic explosives, telling the men that he had obtained them from Jaish-e-Muhammad, the authorities said.

The three men took the weapon materials back to Newburgh, and two days later, joined by Onta Williams, they met to inspect the materials and "further discuss the logistics of the operation," the authorities said...

http://www.newsday.c...-case-1.3152375

September 7, 2011 6:39 PM

By JOHN RILEY john.riley@newsday.com

A Manhattan federal judge Wednesday lashed out at the government for using a sting to recruit four Newburgh men into a phony 2009 plot to blow up a Bronx synagogue as she sentenced the final defendant to 25 years in prison. ....

...An FBI informant testified about a courtship lasting nearly a year that included financial incentives to lure plot leader James Cromitie and three others into agreeing. The jury rejected an entrapment defense.

"A government understandably zealous to protect its citizens created acts of terrorism out of the fantasies and bravado and bigotry of one man in particular and four men generally, and then made those fantasies come true," the judge said. "The government made them terrorists."

Bill Kelly wrote:

..."No, no!" said the Queen. "Sentence first — verdict afterward."

Bill, what is there to actually "agree with" in Judge Bates' "legal determination"?

http://www.cbc.ca/ne...lawsuit007.html

U.S. judge tosses Muslim cleric case

Last Updated: Tuesday, December 7, 2010 | 11:24 AM ET

The Associated Press

.....But Bates also said the "unique and extraordinary case" raises serious issues about whether the United States can plan to kill one of its own citizens without judicial review....

...Administration officials have confirmed to The Associated Press that al-Awlaki is on a capture or kill list, although the Obama administration declined to confirm or deny it in court proceedings....

....The suit also tried to force the government to disclose standards for determining whether U.S. citizens like his son, born in New Mexico, can be targeted for death.

Administration officials argued the court has no legal authority to review the president as he makes military decisions to protect Americans against terrorist attacks...."

.....As for the American Al-Qaeda in Yemen getting hit by a preditor, they are the ones who declared war on us.

And I agree with this judge's legal determination.

Of course now Obama is also a possible target for such assassinations, but he won't be killed by those Al Qaeda guys already taken down.

Thanks to Jim Harwood for calling attention to this legal case, even though I disagree with him.

By EVAN PEREZ

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a challenge to the Obama administration's targeted-killing program, meaning the U.S. can continue to go after a Yemeni-American cleric whom it blames for terrorist plots.

.....The lawsuit sought to prevent Mr. Awlaki's killing unless he presented an "imminent" threat.

The government, in its court arguments, didn't confirm plans to kill Mr. Awlaki. It argued that the cleric, as a U.S. citizen, could ensure his safety by turning himself in to U.S. authorities or filing suit himself.

Write to Evan Perez at evan.perez@wsj.com

http://ccrjustice.or...20Complaint.pdf

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

NASSER AL-AULAQI,

on his own behalf and as Next Friend of

Anwar Al-Aulaqi

Al-Zubairi Street

Al-Saeed Center

Sana'a, Yemen,

Plaintiff,

v.

BARACK H. OBAMA,

in his official capacity as President of

the United States (et al)

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500;

6. Plaintiff seeks a declaration from this Court that the Constitution and

international law prohibit the government from carrying out targeted killings outside of

armed conflict except as a last resort to protect against concrete, specific, and imminent

threats of death or serious physical injury; and an injunction prohibiting the targeted

killing of U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi outside this narrow context. Plaintiff also seeks

an injunction requiring the government to disclose the standards under which it

determines whether U.S. citizens can be targeted for death.

http://web.archive.o...on/7200064.html

September 14, 2010

The Associated Press:

"The Obama administration is considering filing the first criminal charges against radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in case the CIA fails to kill him and he is captured alive in Yemen....

....Another option, given al-Awlaki's increasingly violent sermons and his collaboration with al-Qaida's propaganda efforts, would be charging him with supporting terrorism. But that charge carries only a 15-year prison sentence, leaving the administration open to questions about how the president can authorize the CIA to essentially impose the death penalty for such a crime....

....If the Justice Department decides to charge al-Awlaki, it's likely he would not be indicted. Rather, charges are more likely to take the form of an FBI complaint. That's because an indicted suspect automatically gets the right to an attorney if he is captured, making it harder for authorities to question him.

http://emptywheel.fi...siders-charges/

By: emptywheel Tuesday September 14, 2010 6:30 am

....In other words, this doesn't appear to be an effort to finally use due process before targeting an American citizen with assassination. Rather, it seems to be more about closing off legal options to that American citizen.

Update: Here's the joint ACLU/CCR statement on this:

Our organizations have long stated that if the government has evidence that Anwar Al-Aulaqi is involved in terrorist activity, it should present that evidence to a court – not authorize his execution without charge or trial. Now, months after the government announced its intent to kill Al-Aulaqi, it may finally bring charges against him. This would be a step in the right direction. The constitutional guarantee of due process relies on the critical distinction between allegations and evidence. If the reports that charges may be brought against Al-Aulaqi are true, the fact that it has taken the government this long – months after having announced his death sentence – suggests that, in this case, the government's allegations were far ahead of its evidence.

While bringing charges against Al-Aulaqi based on credible evidence would be a step in the right direction, it would not mean that he could now be targeted for killing without trial. It is well established that the government cannot use extrajudicial killing to punish people for past acts, but only to prevent grave and imminent threats. A criminal charge for past crimes does not provide a license to kill.

We continue to believe that the courts must play a role in establishing legal standards for when the government can take the life of one of its own citizens without charge or trial. For that reason, we will continue with our litigation."

http://www.newyorker...-al-awlaki.html

October 5, 2010

Should We Kill Anwar Al-Awlaki?

Posted by Amy Davidson

...Greenwald asks Sullivan how he knows that al-Awlaki is a terrorist at all. Sullivan is pretty scornful of this one. He cites speeches and documents and dates—he refers readers to Wikipedia—and asks,

Is [Greenwald] really trying to say that despite all this public evidence, and with this record of terror attacks, we need a full civil trial—even if we were able to capture him—to know that this individual is at war with his own country and a direct threat to all of us?

But the very abundance of evidence shows how absurd and dangerous the government's position is. Sullivan is writing as though court proceedings were solely forensic tools. That is one of their functions. But we try people whose guilt is obvious all the time. (Just look at the awful trial concluded today in Cheshire, Connecticut.) We don't skip the part with the judge and the lawyers and the actual listing of specific charges—as opposed to applying a general label of "bad" or "dangerous"—just because someone is caught red-handed, or even if it's just to accept a guilty plea. We go through all that because the rule of law is meaningful to us, and we don't want the question of whether someone needs or doesn't need a trial to be left to the frenzy of the moment. Sullivan says that al-Awlaki is "self-evidently" a terrorist. There are truths that we hold to be self-evident in our system, but they speak in favor of going to court. And here is the important thing: If Awlaki is so clearly, blatantly, a terrorist—if we are knee-deep in evidence to that effect—then why, exactly, wouldn't the government just get some sort of indictment, or at least stand in front of a judge and explain why it wants to kill him?....

So, Bill, the government refuses to cooperate with the court pleading by Al Awalki's father, in fact the Obama administration pleads to the court that its activities related to the matter are beyond the scope of the court's authority to rule, and they tell news orgs that Al Walki is on their assassination list, yet they tell the court they cannot comment due "state's secrects" constraints.

Three months before the court "ruling" a widely disseminated new report says that the government wants to charge Al Alwalki, but has not because they have no potential charge with a penalty greater than 15 years imprisonment, and because it would enhance his right to legal counsel.

You're standing in Al Alwalki's shoes....your father tried and failed to even engage the government, the government admits nothing to the court and tells the court to step aside. News reporting is that the government is avoiding charging you because it would tend to impede its plans to kill you on sight. You have no criminal charge against you pending, and Judge Bates has issued no order related to your safety or protection to influence you to "turn yourself in," but you Bill would do that. You would turn yourself in, in a heartbeat, in those circumstances? Turn yourself in....to face what? You haven't been charged with anything, and the government is clearly off the reservation, making threats to target you for assassination nine months before it even leaks to the press that it is considering filing a lesser charge than a capital charge against you.

So you want to put me in the sandals of a terrorist who advocated terrorist acts and killing Americans?

Sullivan said to read about Awlaki in Wiki, well, read it and then tell me that he wasn't a threat to anyone.

Anwar al-Awlaki - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fortunately, his job as a recruiter for al-Qaeda will be a hard job to fill since most of the young Arabs who had any sympathy for his views at all are now being swept up in the Democratic Arab Revolt that is sweeping the region. And if the Imperialist West supports these revolutions, instead of the dictators who they formerly supported because of the supposed support for the war on terror, then maybe instead of having suicide bombers kill us, we will have the support of the vast majority of the populations of these new nations.

You think Awlaki is an important case study? Well what about Shaheed Sadiq Shwehdi - the young Libyan student who came to the USA to study and then returned home and protested the Gadhafi government, was arrested and executed - hung in a Benghazi school gym in front of students?

Where was the outrage against that execution?

Now an American born Arab who advocates terrorism and killing Americans is himself killed, and you suddenly have scruples?

Where were your scruples when others were executed because of their advocacy of democracy and freedom?

You only feel outrage when those who want to kill innocent American citizens are themselves killed?

BK

Revolutionary Program

Edited October 6, 2011 by William Kelly

[Greg Parker]

Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list''

By Mark Hosenball | Reuters – 3 hrs ago

http://news.yahoo.co...-041603267.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials.

There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council, several current and former officials said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate. ...

...

A former official said one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to "protect" the president.

..

When the name of a foreign, rather than American, militant is added to targeting lists, the decision is made within the intelligence community and normally does not require approval by high-level NSC officials.

.....

Secret WH groups doing things at arms length from the incumbent president is not a recent phenomenon. My firm belief is that Oswald was sent to Russia by such a group with Soviet Div of CIA providing support.