Obama on drones and extrajudicial killing [View all]
"I think there's no doubt that when an American has made the decision to affiliate himself with al Qaeda and target fellow Americans, that there is a legal justification for us to try and stop them from carrying out plots. What is also true though is that as an American citizen, they are subject to the protections of the constitution and due process.
Understand that when Obama says "due process," he is referring not to courts, but to an internal executive branch review. Following Attorney General Eric Holder's speech in March explaining how "due process" here means that nationals security officials evaluate the evidence against an individual before asking higher-ups for permission to vaporize them, comedian Stephen Colbert quipped that "due process just means there's a process that you do."
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/09/obama-talks-drone-strikes
It is amazing how accepting the public has become of the notion that we as a country can violate a nation's sovereignty anytime we want in order to kill its citizens, but also how accepting we are as a country to our fellow citizens being killed on the say-so of one man who ultimately acts as judge, jury and executioner.
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