NewYork Times: Pentagon Says U.S. Citizens With Terrorism Ties Can Be Targeted in Strikes

[stockholmer]

http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/22/pentagon-says-u-s-citizens-with-terrorism-ties-can-be-targeted-in-strikes/

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s top Pentagon lawyer on Wednesday said that American citizens who join Al Qaeda can be targeted for killing and that courts should have no role in reviewing executive branch decisions about whether someone has met such criteria.

“Belligerents who also happen to be U.S. citizens do not enjoy immunity where non-citizen belligerents are valid military objectives,” said Jeh C. Johnson, the Defense Department general counsel, in a speech at Yale Law School.

Mr. Johnson’s remarks offered an unusually comprehensive and public declaration of the Obama administration’s national security legal policy views in the war against Al Qaeda and its allies. While the outlines of those views have been aired in pieces before, officials usually discuss such matters only on condition of anonymity.

In raising the targeted killing of an American citizen, Mr. Johnson emphasized that he was not talking about any particular operation. The administration has declined to discuss its killing last September of Anwar Al-Awlaki, a New Mexico-born radical Islamist cleric who died in a drone strike in Yemen that technically remains a covert operation. Still, Mr. Johnson invoked a lawsuit filed by Mr. Awlaki’s father before the killing that had sought an injunction against targeting his son, citing with approval a district judge’s decision to dismiss the case and saying that targeting decisions are not suited to court review because they must be made quickly and based on fast-evolving intelligence.

snip

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ACLU Sues U.S. for Information on Targeted Killing Program

http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/aclu-sues-us-information-targeted-killing-program

Today we filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to demand that the government release basic — and accurate — information about the government’s targeted killing program.

Our government’s deliberate and premeditated killing of American terrorism suspects raises profound questions that ought to be the subject of public debate. Unfortunately the Obama administration has released very little information about the practice — its official position is that the targeted killing program is a state secret — and some of the information it has released has been misleading.

snip

Soon after the fall 2011 strikes, we submitted a FOIA request http://www.aclu.org/national-security/foia-request-regarding-targeted-killing-anwar-al-awlaki to the CIA, Department of Defense, and Department of Justice (DOJ). Three months later, we have yet to receive a single document in response. Outrageously, the CIA http://www.aclu.org/national-security/central-intelligence-agency-response-al-awlaki-foia-request and the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel http://www.aclu.org/national-security/doj-office-legal-counsel-response-al-awlaki-foia-request responded by refusing to confirm or deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to our request. Essentially, these agencies are saying the targeted killing program is so secret that they can’t even acknowledge that it exists.



This response is incredible, in the original sense of that word—it simply lacks credibility. The press has reported since early 2010 that Anwar al-Awlaki had been placed on “kill lists” maintained by the CIA http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/06/world/la-fg-yemen-cleric7-2010apr07 and JSOC, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/26/AR2010012604239.html and articles have discussed in detail the secret process http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005 by which he was placed there. After the killings of the three U.S. citizens last fall, newspapers reported extensive details about the strikes, including how the CIA http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/strike-on-aulaqi-demonstrates-collaboration-between-cia-and-military/2011/09/30/gIQAD8xHBL_story.html and JSOC coordinated http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/under-obama-an-emerging-global-apparatus-for-drone-killing/2011/12/13/gIQANPdILP_story.html and the number of drones involved. The Times described a “secret” OLC memo that lays out http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/secret-us-memo-made-legal-case-to-kill-a-citizen.html the Administration’s legal justifications for placing al-Awlaki on the kill lists and killing him. Much of the reporting was based on statements by government officials, albeit officials who were unwilling to be quoted for attribution.

snip

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Obama defends illegal drone attacks

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Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta acknowledged that the U.S. has assumed the authority to conduct targeted assassinations of U.S. citizens on the recommendations of the CIA Director and the Secretary of Defense and pursuant to the President’s authorization:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7396830n&tag=segementExtraScroller;housing

-------------------------------------------------------

Jake Tapper vs. Jay Carney on President Killing U.S. Citizens.
The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality.

TAPPER: The White House keeps praising these journalists who are — who’ve been killed –

CARNEY: I don’t know about “keep” — I think -

TAPPER: You’ve done it, Vice President Biden did it in a statement. How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court?

You’re, currently I think that you’ve invoked it the sixth time, and before the Obama administration, it had only been used three times in history. You’re — this is the sixth time — you’re suing a CIA officer for allegedly providing information in 2009 about CIA torture. Certainly that’s something that’s in the public interest of the United States. The administration is taking this person to court. There just seems to be disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don’t want it in the United States.

-----------------------

[msongs]

1. "I can kill anybody I want, anytime I want...long as it's with drones...". ok nt

[saras]

2. Next step - target them WITHIN the US. NEXT step - expand the scope to ecoterrorists...

...not to mention people like Bradly Manning. Wouldn't a nice clean drone have been much better than this long, drawn-out torture scene? Wouldn't it have conveyed a more effective message to the next person who wants to expose government criminality and corruption?

Within the next ten or twelve years, there WILL be another Republican president. They WILL use every power they are given.

[Politicalboi]

3. When do they start hacking computers

And down loading files into our computers the government thinks is terrorist activity. Just one e-mail from someone on their list, and you could be next.

[madokie]

4. Thats trash talking if you ask me

every fucking bit of it

[Bonobo]

5. This

"The Obama administration’s top Pentagon lawyer on Wednesday said that American citizens who join Al Qaeda can be targeted for killing and that courts should have no role in reviewing executive branch decisions about whether someone has met such criteria. "

...is something that is utterly disgusting and beyond defense. Something that would have been unthinkable had the Bush Administration done it. But if they had, rest assured that everyone at DU would have been 100% violently in opposition to.

Make no mistake about the fact that........ I will defend it because it is my President.

[JNathanK]

6. The reason we have judicial proceedings isn't to protect criminals but those wrongly accuded...

...of being criminals. All the Republican bullshit right now is just a distraction from what's seriously wrong with both parties.

[stockholmer]

17. a huge K&R for:

"All the Republican bullshit right now is just a distraction from what's seriously wrong with both parties."

It is the classic 'I would rather be beaten than shot' conundrum.

Lesser of two evils and all that. The bat-shit crazier the Rethugs act, the more leeway the Dems have to ram through further horrid legislation.

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy.


- Carrol Quigley, Tragedy and Hope (1966)

[Cali_Democrat]

18. I

"Make no mistake about the fact that........ I will defend it because it is my President."

...see you've developed a new posting style.

[Bonobo]

19. It

"...see you've developed a new posting style. "

...is just an idea I've been toying with. I think by having cryptic and meaningless headers to my posts, I will draw people in that want to read what I cut and paste while at the same time annoying the hell out of people that I don't want to read the cut and paste drivel I like to purvey.

[Agony]

7. Good

innocent until proven guilty is just quaint. mere suspicion is plenty in my book. •patoosh•

[surfdog]

8. Well

They could turn themselves in for a trial to prove their innocence.

After all , suspects get shot while fleeing police all the time , they never get a trial , why not take up their cause ?

Does that make the police assassins ?

[morningfog]

13. False analogy. For many reasons.

Suspects to not get targeted and killed for fleeing. Certainly not all the time.

Some, not terribly often, are killed in an actual planned use of lethal force. If the cop thinks they or someone else's life is immediately at risk, they may response with lethal force.

Can you provide some statute or police guideline that permits police to use lethal force for fleeing suspects?

[sudopod]

15. A certain standard of evidence must be met before a warrant is signed.

Who decides what actions put us into the "belligerent" category? What controls are there on that process?

[Javaman]

9. I'm waiting for the first drone strike here in the US.

it will happen. just a matter of time.

[Vidar]

10. A pity the Pentagon can't be so easily targetted.

[woo me with science]

11. Americans need to face that this is not red versus blue anymore.

We have a government purchased by the one percent. We are losing our country to corporate fascism through the actions of this administration and both parties in Congress. The one percent are ruling us.

It is time to fight back. It is imperative that we get the money out of our political system now, because they are putting structures into place that will make it impossible for us to fight back in the future.

Occupy now. It has never been more important.

[stockholmer]

12. +100 well put

"they are putting structures into place that will make it impossible for us to fight back in the future"


so so true

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. "Bring it on!" "Smoke 'em out!" All that's missing is the cowboy boots.

[woo me with science]

16. K&R