Targeted Killing Program Emblematic of How Disgraceful America is Ten Years After 9/11

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Targeted-Killing-Program-E-by-Kevin-Gosztola-110909-394.html

To mark the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the ACLU released a report that looks at how "ever-expanding claims of national security" have subverted freedoms and justified an assault on civil liberties. The report scrutinizes how racial and religious profiling has become common, the expansion of surveillance in society, the impunity that has been granted to Bush administration officials who created legal justification for torture and the framework that has dominated America since the attacks--the belief that America is in an "everywhere and forever war" that justifies any programs that might undermine civil liberties or the rule of law.

One of the programs instituted in the aftermath of 9/11 that the ACLU highlights is the US government's "targeted killing" program. The program started by the Bush administration and "vastly expanded" by the Obama administration depends on secret "kill lists" of targets. The "legal criteria" for targeted killing decisions, such as what can get one placed on a "kill list," is kept secret by the government. As the ACLU notes, "There is no way for the American public to know whether the targeted killing program is lawful, let alone whether the specific people the government kills in the name of our security truly present an imminent threat to our nation."

However, the ACLU makes clear:

In the decade since 9/11, the government has repeatedly labeled people as terrorists--including at Guantanamo--only for us to find out later (or for a court to find) that the government's evidence was exaggerated, wrong, or nonexistent. If we invest the government with unchecked authority to impose death sentences on people who are far from any battlefield and who have never been convicted of or even charged with a crime, it is inevitable that--despite the government's unverifiable claims to the contrary--innocent people will be executed.


More at the link --