Posts
Welcome to 9-11 Movies
-
The idea behind this site is to present the most rudimentary, simplified,
common-sense information about the anomalies that fuel our doubts about the
offic...
Showing posts with label Anwar al-Awlaki. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anwar al-Awlaki. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Our Pitilessly Intoxicating Drones
Project Censored
Andy Lee Roth
A combination of divided oversight and economic conflicts of interest have kept Congress from effectively holding the White House, the CIA, or JSOC accountable. As theWashington Post’s Greg Miller has reported, congressional lawmakers “receive scant information about the administration’s drone program,” and executive claims of secrecy typically muzzle them from discussing the little information they do receive. Meanwhile, drone manufacturers—including Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Atomics—lobby Congress for increasingly lucrative federal contracts through industry organizations such as AUVSI, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. AUVSI lobbyists and similar industry groups meet willing sponsors in Congress: The House of Representatives has its own drone caucus with over fifty bipartisan members. Divided oversight and corporate lobbying combine to render Congress ineffective in challenging the White House, CIA, and JSOC on drones.
Andy Lee Roth
The initial US response to the deadly attack on the nation’s Libyan embassy includes deploying spies, Marines, and drones. Currentreports indicate that US drones operating in Libyan airspace will be limited to surveillance. But the decision to deploy them in this highly volatile situation ought to force American citizens to reflect on a somber anniversary. It warns against believing that drones provide a costless way to curb our terrorist enemies.
Americans should remember September 30, 2011, the day that drones unleashed by the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) targeted American citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi, killing him and at least three other people, including a second US citizen, Samir Khan. Al-Aulaqi had been on CIA and JSOC “kill lists” since late 2009 or early 2010, and the target of previous drone strikes. Although US officials alleged that Khan was not a target in the September 2011 strike, they contended that he too played an active role in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. A subsequent US drone strike in Yemen on October 14, 2011, killed seven people, including Al-Aulaqi’s 16-year old son, Abdulrahman, also an American citizen.
Their deaths were part of an ongoing, systematic program of US drone strikesagainst suspected terrorists in countries outside the context of armed conflict. The US has conducted targeted killings in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia since 2002, though this campaign intensified dramatically in 2009 after President Obama took office.
The anniversary of Anwar Al-Aulaqi’s death underscores two interrelated and intractable problems with our reliance on drones. Internationally, drones intensify our enemies’ resolve because drones, no less than the suicide bombers and roadside devices that Americans have come to dread, are instruments of terror and lawless death. Domestically, drone strikes against US citizens on foreign soil usurp even the pretense of legal due process.
Force, Simone Weil once observed, is pitilessly intoxicating to those who possess it. So it is not surprising that neither the American public nor their leaders have sought an informed public debate about the use of drones for targeted killings. Does their deployment makegood sense in terms of national security? Is the nation’s drone-based response to terrorism even legal under the US constitution and international law?
By invoking vague, shifting legal standards and asserting secrecy in the name of national security, government officials, including President Obama himself, have effectively situated the drone campaign on the periphery of public concern. With few exceptions, the corporate media have followed officials’ leads.
Government officials seldom provide the public with evidence that targeted individuals posed specific and imminent threats, except for the assertion that they were “on the list.” This was true in Al-Aulaqi’s case. Government officials, including Obama’s counterterrorism chief Michael Leiter, compared al-Aulaqi to Osama bin Laden. Just as exaggerated descriptions of bin Laden as a “terrorist mastermind” oversimplified the complexity of Islamist terrorist networks, so comparisons of Al-Aulaqi to bin Laden overemphasized al-Aulaqi’s importance to Al Qaeda and his threat to US security. The corporate media dutifully conveyed these official views while describing Al-Aulaqi as an “alleged” or “suspected” terrorist.
By and large, the American public seems to have accepted the government’s argument of guilt by assertion and rhetorical association: A February 2012opinion poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News found that 83 percent of Americans approved of drone strikes against terrorists overseas, including 65 percent who approved even when “those suspected terrorists are American citizens living in other countries.”
Neither President Obama nor Republican challenger Mitt Romney has shown any inclination to make targeted killings a campaign issue. Overshadowed by the hoopla of the Democratic National Convention, President Obama conducted a brief, formal interview with CNN’s Jessica Yellin in which he acknowledged that drones are “one tool we use” in order “to keep the American people safe.” Obama affirmed that targets must be “authorized by our laws” and pose threats that are “serious and not speculative.” In response to Yellin’s question, “Are the standards different when the target is an American?” Obama avowed that American citizens “are subject to the protections of the constitution and due process.” Neither Yellin nor Obama mentioned Al-Aulaqi, and Yellin chose not pursue the contradiction between the President’s claim and the facts regarding September 30, 2011.
A combination of divided oversight and economic conflicts of interest have kept Congress from effectively holding the White House, the CIA, or JSOC accountable. As theWashington Post’s Greg Miller has reported, congressional lawmakers “receive scant information about the administration’s drone program,” and executive claims of secrecy typically muzzle them from discussing the little information they do receive. Meanwhile, drone manufacturers—including Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Atomics—lobby Congress for increasingly lucrative federal contracts through industry organizations such as AUVSI, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. AUVSI lobbyists and similar industry groups meet willing sponsors in Congress: The House of Representatives has its own drone caucus with over fifty bipartisan members. Divided oversight and corporate lobbying combine to render Congress ineffective in challenging the White House, CIA, and JSOC on drones.
In June 2012, a sharply worded letter to President Obama from Rep. Dennis Kucinich and 25 additional members of Congress questioned the authority for so-called “signature” strikes, characterizing drones as “faceless ambassadors” that cause both civilian deaths and “powerful and enduring anti-American sentiment.” Corporate media all but ignored this congressional rebuke, thus contributing to a counter-democratic dynamic in which the American public is unaware of developing Congressional opposition, while a majority in Congress will not take a position against targeted killing until their constituents demand that they do so.
Due to the persistence of civil rights groups, the courts may be the first branch of government to hold the illegal drone campaign’s commanders accountable. A July 2012 lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union names Defense Secretary and former CIA Director Leon Panetta, Commander of US Special Operations Command William McRaven, JSOC Commander Joseph Votel, and CIA Director David Petraeus as defendants in the deaths of Anwar Al-Aulaqi, Samir Khan, and Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi. Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta argues that the targeted killing of Anwar Al-Aulaqi was not “a last resort to protect against a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury” and is therefore a violation of both the US Constitution and international human rights law. It also charges that the defendants failed in their obligations, under the Constitution and international law, “to take measures to prevent harm to Samir Khan, Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi, and other bystanders.”
As present, the government’s global drone campaign operates with minimal transparency, accountability, or oversight. The lawsuit could force the defendants to reveal the process used to determine that Al-Aulaqi must die and the evidence for that decision. If Rep. Kucinich is right—drone strikes pose significant threats to national security because they promote widespread, powerful anti-American sentiment—then the court’s decision in Al-Aulaqi v. Panetta could do more to protect the US and its citizens than was accomplished by the targeted killing of Al-Aulaqi and other alleged terrorists. The case could sober the American public enough to reckon with the reality that, although drones seem a costless substitute for boots on the ground, our intoxication with them threatens our national security and our most cherished values.
Andy Lee Roth, PhD, is associate director of Project Censored and co-editor of Censored 2013: Dispatches from the Media Revolution, which includes the study on which this analysis is based.
Friday, September 28, 2012
An American Group Is Heading To The Troubled Pakistan Tribal Areas To Protest Drone Strikes
Business Insider
Michael Kelley
The delegation, organized by the activist group CODEPINK, will meet with the families of drone victims, lawyers, academics, Pakistani politicians and U.S. officials.
On October 7 they will join thousands of Pakistanis—including politician and U.S. critic Imran Khan — in a march to South Waziristan in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to protest U.S. drone strikes that have killed more than 2,500 people, including hundreds of civilians.
"President Obama's counter-terrorism chief John Brennan insists that U.S. drones strikes aren't harming innocent Pakistanis, but we know that’s not true, especially since the Obama administration calls all military-age males in the area ‘militants’," said CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin, who wrote the book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.
The protest comes in the wake of a scathing report by NYU and Stanford lawyers that details how drone warfare affects citizens and humanitarian workers in Pakistan.
Here's a video of Benjamin calling out Brennan as he spoke about U.S. counter-terrorism policy in Washington.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Pentagon, CIA Sued for Lethal Drone Attacks on U.S. Citizens
Wired
David Kravets
Survivors of three Americans killed by targeted drone attacks in Yemen last year sued top-ranking members of the United States government, alleging Wednesday they illegally killed the three, including a 16-year-old boy, in violation of international human rights law and the U.S. Constitution.
David Kravets
Survivors of three Americans killed by targeted drone attacks in Yemen last year sued top-ranking members of the United States government, alleging Wednesday they illegally killed the three, including a 16-year-old boy, in violation of international human rights law and the U.S. Constitution.
“The government has killed three Americans. It should account for its actions. This case gives us an opportunity to do that,” Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a press call.
The suit, (.pdf) is being litigated by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU. It seeks unspecified damages and highlights the government’s so-called unmanned “targeted killing” program. The ACLU and the Center maintain the drone attacks have killed thousands, including hundreds of innocent bystanders overseas. (Other estimates of the campaign come to widely different conclusions.)
The suit, the first of its kind, alleges the United States was not engaged in an armed conflict with or within Yemen, prohibiting the use of lethal force unless “at the time it is applied, lethal force is a last resort to protect against a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury.” The case directly challenges the government’s decision to kill Americans without judicial scrutiny.
At bottom, Jaffer said, “the question is whether the government is justified in killing without charging them or trying them for anything.”
The suit is brought on behalf of Anwar Al-Awlaki, a radical cleric and a native of New Mexico. He was originally known for his incendiary blog and YouTube videos. But according to the Obama administration, Awlaki’s role morphed from marketer to operational planner and recruiter for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. U.S. authorities claim he had contacts with the 9/11 hijackers, the underwear bomber and others.
He was killed Sept. 30 last year. Also killed was Samir Khan, the editor of the English magazine Inspire, which allegedly was published by Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
Two weeks later, the cleric’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, was killed in a separate Yemen attack.
The defendants include Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, CIA Director David Petraeus, U.S. Navy Adm. William H. McRaven and U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Votel.
Citing U.S. officials, the Washington Post has reported that the son and Khan were not intended targets.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond for comment. The administration refuses to release the Justice Department memo that legally justifies targeting Americans, and according to the New York Times, President Obama approves or denies who gets added to the “kill list.”
But Attorney General Eric Holder said in a March speech at Northwestern University Law School that “Our legal authority is not limited to the battlefields in Afghanistan.” He said the legal authority Congress passed following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks covers Yemen and Somalia, where other unmanned drone attacks have been carried out.
Holder said the administration takes action with “the consent of the nation involved or after a determination that the nation is unable or unwilling to deal effectively with a threat to the United States.”
In another suit, the ACLU is invoking the Freedom of Information Act seeking details of the government’s drone program. In that case, the CIA refuses to confirm or deny the covert military use of drones to kill suspected terrorists overseas.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
CREW calls on Holder to release secret drone strike memo
RawStory
Eric W. Dolan
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and other groups on Monday called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to release a memo that provided legal justification for the killing of American terror suspects overseas.
“By withholding this memo, DOJ seems to be trying to evade the accountability that stems from transparency,” said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan. “Insisting that the memo remain secret is all the more surprising given President Obama’s stated commitment to an open government.”
Drones operated by the U.S. reportedly killed al Qaeda operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Kahn last year in Yemen. Both men were U.S. citizens. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, who was born in Colorado, was reportedly killed by a drone strike about two weeks later.
Despite an executive order banning assassinations, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) had issued a legal memorandum justifying the targeted killing of al-Awlaki if it was not feasible to capture him. The Justice Department has so far ignored requests by members of Congress and others to publicly disclose the memo.
“Americans shouldn’t be kept in the dark when the U.S. government authorizes the targeted killing of one of its own citizens on foreign soil,” continued Sloan. “Further, the memo’s existence is about as secret as the drone program or Stuxnet. As with the torture memos, insisting on secrecy is ridiculous and counterproductive.”
In March, Holder defended the use of drone strikes against American terror suspects without specifically mentioning Awlaki, giving some clues as to what might be in the legal memo.
“The principle of necessity requires that the target have definite military value,” he explained. “The principle of distinction requires that only lawful targets – such as combatants, civilians directly participating in hostilities, and military objectives – may be targeted intentionally. Under the principle of proportionality, the anticipated collateral damage must not be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage. Finally, the principle of humanity requires us to use weapons that will not inflict unnecessary suffering.”
Eric W. Dolan
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and other groups on Monday called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to release a memo that provided legal justification for the killing of American terror suspects overseas.
“By withholding this memo, DOJ seems to be trying to evade the accountability that stems from transparency,” said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan. “Insisting that the memo remain secret is all the more surprising given President Obama’s stated commitment to an open government.”
Drones operated by the U.S. reportedly killed al Qaeda operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Kahn last year in Yemen. Both men were U.S. citizens. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, who was born in Colorado, was reportedly killed by a drone strike about two weeks later.
Despite an executive order banning assassinations, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) had issued a legal memorandum justifying the targeted killing of al-Awlaki if it was not feasible to capture him. The Justice Department has so far ignored requests by members of Congress and others to publicly disclose the memo.
“Americans shouldn’t be kept in the dark when the U.S. government authorizes the targeted killing of one of its own citizens on foreign soil,” continued Sloan. “Further, the memo’s existence is about as secret as the drone program or Stuxnet. As with the torture memos, insisting on secrecy is ridiculous and counterproductive.”
In March, Holder defended the use of drone strikes against American terror suspects without specifically mentioning Awlaki, giving some clues as to what might be in the legal memo.
“The principle of necessity requires that the target have definite military value,” he explained. “The principle of distinction requires that only lawful targets – such as combatants, civilians directly participating in hostilities, and military objectives – may be targeted intentionally. Under the principle of proportionality, the anticipated collateral damage must not be excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage. Finally, the principle of humanity requires us to use weapons that will not inflict unnecessary suffering.”
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
“Militants”: media propaganda
Salon
Glenn Goldman
To avoid counting civilian deaths, Obama re-defined "militant" to mean "all military-age males in a strike zone"
Virtually every time the U.S. fires a missile from a drone and ends the lives of Muslims, American media outlets dutifully trumpet in headlines that the dead were ”militants” – even though those media outlets literally do not have the slightest idea of who was actually killed. They simply cite always-unnamed “officials” claiming that the dead were “militants.” It’s the most obvious and inexcusable form of rank propaganda: media outlets continuously propagating a vital claim without having the slightest idea if it’s true.
This practice continues even though key Obama officials have been caught lying, a term used advisedly, about how many civilians they’re killing. I’ve written and said many times before that in American media discourse, the definition of “militant” is any human being whose life is extinguished when an American missile or bomb detonates (that term was even used when Anwar Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son, Abdulrahman, was killed by a U.S. drone in Yemen two weeks after a drone killed his father, even though nobody claims the teenager was anything but completely innocent: “Another U.S. Drone Strike Kills Militants in Yemen”).
This morning, the New York Times has a very lengthy and detailed article about President Obama’s counter-Terrorism policies based on interviews with “three dozen of his current and former advisers.” I’m writing separately about the numerous revelations contained in that article, but want specifically to highlight this one vital passage about how the Obama administration determines who is a “militant.” The article explains that Obama’s rhetorical emphasis on avoiding civilian deaths “did not significantly change” the drone program, because Obama himself simply expanded the definition of a “militant” to ensure that it includes virtually everyone killed by his drone strikes. Just read this remarkable passage:
What kind of self-respecting media outlet would be party to this practice? Here’s the New York Times documenting that this is what the term “militant” means when used by government officials. Any media outlet that continues using it while knowing this is explicitly choosing to be an instrument for state propaganda — not that that’s anything new, but this makes this clearer than it’s ever been.
Glenn Goldman
To avoid counting civilian deaths, Obama re-defined "militant" to mean "all military-age males in a strike zone"
Virtually every time the U.S. fires a missile from a drone and ends the lives of Muslims, American media outlets dutifully trumpet in headlines that the dead were ”militants” – even though those media outlets literally do not have the slightest idea of who was actually killed. They simply cite always-unnamed “officials” claiming that the dead were “militants.” It’s the most obvious and inexcusable form of rank propaganda: media outlets continuously propagating a vital claim without having the slightest idea if it’s true.
This practice continues even though key Obama officials have been caught lying, a term used advisedly, about how many civilians they’re killing. I’ve written and said many times before that in American media discourse, the definition of “militant” is any human being whose life is extinguished when an American missile or bomb detonates (that term was even used when Anwar Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son, Abdulrahman, was killed by a U.S. drone in Yemen two weeks after a drone killed his father, even though nobody claims the teenager was anything but completely innocent: “Another U.S. Drone Strike Kills Militants in Yemen”).
This morning, the New York Times has a very lengthy and detailed article about President Obama’s counter-Terrorism policies based on interviews with “three dozen of his current and former advisers.” I’m writing separately about the numerous revelations contained in that article, but want specifically to highlight this one vital passage about how the Obama administration determines who is a “militant.” The article explains that Obama’s rhetorical emphasis on avoiding civilian deaths “did not significantly change” the drone program, because Obama himself simply expanded the definition of a “militant” to ensure that it includes virtually everyone killed by his drone strikes. Just read this remarkable passage:
Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.For the moment, leave the ethical issues to the side that arise from viewing “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants”; that’s nothing less than sociopathic, a term I use advisedly, but I discuss that in the separate, longer piece I’ve written. For now, consider what this means for American media outlets. Any of them which use the term “militants” to describe those killed by U.S. strikes are knowingly disseminating a false and misleading term of propaganda. By “militant,” the Obama administration literally means nothing more than: any military-age male whom we kill, even when we know nothing else about them. They have no idea whether the person killed is really a militant: if they’re male and of a certain age they just call them one in order to whitewash their behavior and propagandize the citizenry (unless conclusive evidence somehow later emerges proving their innocence).
Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.
This counting method may partly explain the official claims of extraordinarily low collateral deaths. In a speech last year Mr. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s trusted adviser, said that not a single noncombatant had been killed in a year of strikes. And in a recent interview, a senior administration official said that the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under Mr. Obama was in the “single digits” — and that independent counts of scores or hundreds of civilian deaths unwittingly draw on false propaganda claims by militants.
But in interviews, three former senior intelligence officials expressed disbelief that the number could be so low. The C.I.A. accounting has so troubled some administration officials outside the agency that they have brought their concerns to the White House. One called it “guilt by association” that has led to “deceptive” estimates of civilian casualties.
“It bothers me when they say there were seven guys, so they must all be militants,” the official said. “They count the corpses and they’re not really sure who they are.”
What kind of self-respecting media outlet would be party to this practice? Here’s the New York Times documenting that this is what the term “militant” means when used by government officials. Any media outlet that continues using it while knowing this is explicitly choosing to be an instrument for state propaganda — not that that’s anything new, but this makes this clearer than it’s ever been.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Drone strikes in Yemen soar as U.S. stokes 'secret war'
Canada
America has dramatically stepped up its "secret war" in Yemen with the U.S. ordering dozens of drone attacks on al-Qaida hotspots, which have also killed scores of civilians.
With the backing of Yemen's fragile government, President Barack Obama has authorized a rapid increase in attacks since last May, with 26 incidents recorded.
The pace appears to be accelerating, with nine attacks so far this year and at least five this month, including a strike last week near the terrorist hotbed of Zinjibar. Up to 30 militants were killed in three separate missile strikes on the town, witnesses said.
Nationwide the figures are comparable to those in Pakistan, where America has struck on 10 occasions this year, despite a fierce public reaction.
Research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism at London's City University has found that as many as 516 people have been killed in the Yemen attacks - mostly suspected members of al-Qaida's local ally al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). As many as 104 were civilians.
The majority of the attacks were carried out by the CIA or U.S. special forces command from a base in nearby Dijbouti but American officials refused to confirm any details. President Obama has made plain his determination to go after AQAP, which he has described as "a network of violence and terror". It has attracted a number of U.S. citizens to its cause, including the radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki.
Awlaki was killed last September, with Samir Khan, the editor of AQAP's English-language propaganda magazine Inspire, which had been blamed for recruiting Western-raised youths.
Days later a follow-up attack killed other militants - as well as Awlaki's 16-year old son and 17-year old nephew - disabling AQAP's ability to speak to an English-language audience.
 |
| America has dramatically stepped up its "secret war" in Yemen with the U.S. ordering dozens of drone attacks on al-Qaida hotspots, which have also killed scores of civilians. Pictured, this video image released courtesy of SITE Intelligence Group, shows a never-before-released pictures of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a CIA drone strike on September 30, 2011. |
With the backing of Yemen's fragile government, President Barack Obama has authorized a rapid increase in attacks since last May, with 26 incidents recorded.
The pace appears to be accelerating, with nine attacks so far this year and at least five this month, including a strike last week near the terrorist hotbed of Zinjibar. Up to 30 militants were killed in three separate missile strikes on the town, witnesses said.
Nationwide the figures are comparable to those in Pakistan, where America has struck on 10 occasions this year, despite a fierce public reaction.
Research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism at London's City University has found that as many as 516 people have been killed in the Yemen attacks - mostly suspected members of al-Qaida's local ally al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). As many as 104 were civilians.
The majority of the attacks were carried out by the CIA or U.S. special forces command from a base in nearby Dijbouti but American officials refused to confirm any details. President Obama has made plain his determination to go after AQAP, which he has described as "a network of violence and terror". It has attracted a number of U.S. citizens to its cause, including the radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki.
Awlaki was killed last September, with Samir Khan, the editor of AQAP's English-language propaganda magazine Inspire, which had been blamed for recruiting Western-raised youths.
Days later a follow-up attack killed other militants - as well as Awlaki's 16-year old son and 17-year old nephew - disabling AQAP's ability to speak to an English-language audience.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Here’s Why the Government Thinks It Can Kill You Overseas
Wired
Spencer Ackerman
The Obama administration calls it “targeted killing.” Steven Seagal would call it getting marked for death. It’s the practice of singling out an individual, linked to a terrorist group, for killing, and it’s been played out hundreds of times in the 9/11 era — including, more recently, against U.S. citizens like al-Qaida’s YouTube preacher, Anwar al-Awlaki. The Obama team has said next to nothing about how it works or what laws restrict it. Until Monday.
Attorney General Eric Holder explained the administration’s reasoning for killing American citizens overseas — and only overseas — with drone strikes and other means during a Monday speech at Northwestern University. Holder claimed that the government can kill “a U.S. citizen who is a senior operational leader of al-Qaida or associated forces” provided the government — unilaterally — determines that citizen poses “an imminent threat of violent attack”; he can’t be captured; and “law of war principles,” like the use of proportional force and the minimization of collateral damage, apply.
“This is an indicator of our times,” Holder argued, “not a departure from our laws and our values.”
The debate over killing Awlaki, whom Holder barely discussed, began long before a Hellfire missile fired from a drone killed him and fellow propagandist Samir Khan in September. Awlaki’s father sued the Obama administration in 2010 to compel it to reveal its legal rationale for the long-telegraphed strike. (Full disclosure: My wife works for the ACLU, which helped Nasser al-Awlaki with his lawsuit.) The administration refused, with a judge’s support.
For months after Awlaki’s killing, the government never disclosed any evidence supporting its decision that Awlaki posed an imminent danger to Americans, beyond his rhetoric of incitement. But during the February sentencing of the “Underwear Bomber,” the government put forward a court filing claiming that Awlaki worked intimately with convicted would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253. Holder referred to that connection in his speech.
Spencer Ackerman
Attorney General Eric Holder explained the administration’s reasoning for killing American citizens overseas — and only overseas — with drone strikes and other means during a Monday speech at Northwestern University. Holder claimed that the government can kill “a U.S. citizen who is a senior operational leader of al-Qaida or associated forces” provided the government — unilaterally — determines that citizen poses “an imminent threat of violent attack”; he can’t be captured; and “law of war principles,” like the use of proportional force and the minimization of collateral damage, apply.
“This is an indicator of our times,” Holder argued, “not a departure from our laws and our values.”
The debate over killing Awlaki, whom Holder barely discussed, began long before a Hellfire missile fired from a drone killed him and fellow propagandist Samir Khan in September. Awlaki’s father sued the Obama administration in 2010 to compel it to reveal its legal rationale for the long-telegraphed strike. (Full disclosure: My wife works for the ACLU, which helped Nasser al-Awlaki with his lawsuit.) The administration refused, with a judge’s support.
For months after Awlaki’s killing, the government never disclosed any evidence supporting its decision that Awlaki posed an imminent danger to Americans, beyond his rhetoric of incitement. But during the February sentencing of the “Underwear Bomber,” the government put forward a court filing claiming that Awlaki worked intimately with convicted would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253. Holder referred to that connection in his speech.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Iran's nuclear scientists are not being assassinated. They are being murdered
The Guardian
Mehdi Hasan
Killing our enemies abroad is just state-sponsored terror – whatever euphemism western leaders like to use
Mehdi Hasan
Killing our enemies abroad is just state-sponsored terror – whatever euphemism western leaders like to use
 |
| Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the Iranian nuclear scientist killed in Tehran on January 11, with his son, Alireza. |
On the morning of 11 January Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, the deputy head of Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, was in his car on his way to work when he was blown up by a magnetic bomb attached to his car door. He was 32 and married with a young son. He wasn't armed, or anywhere near a battlefield.
Since 2010, three other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in similar circumstances, including Darioush Rezaeinejad, a 35-year-old electronics expert shot dead outside his daughter's nursery in Tehran last July. But instead of outrage or condemnation, we have been treated to expressions of undisguised glee.
"On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear programme in Iran turn up dead," bragged the Republican nomination candidate Rick Santorum in October. "I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly." On the day of Roshan's death, Israel's military spokesman, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, announced on Facebook: "I don't know who settled the score with the Iranian scientist, but I certainly am not shedding a tear" – a sentiment echoed by the historian Michael Burleigh in the Daily Telegraph: "I shall not shed any tears whenever one of these scientists encounters the unforgiving men on motorbikes."
These "men on motorbikes" have been described as "assassins". But assassination is just a more polite word for murder. Indeed, our politicians and their securocrats cloak the premeditated, lawless killing of scientists in Tehran, of civilians in Waziristan, of politicians in Gaza, in an array of euphemisms: not just assassinations but terminations, targeted killings, drone strikes.
Their purpose is to inure us to such state-sponsored violence against foreigners. In his acclaimed book On Killing, the retired US army officer Dave Grossman examines mechanisms that enable us not just to ignore but even cheer such killings: cultural distance ("such as racial and ethnic differences that permit the killer to dehumanise the victim"); moral distance ("the kind of intense belief in moral superiority"); and mechanical distance ("the sterile, Nintendo-game unreality of killing through a TV screen, a thermal sight, a sniper sight or some other kind of mechanical buffer that permits the killer to deny the humanity of his victim").
Thus western liberals who fall over one another to condemn the death penalty for murderers – who have, incidentally, had the benefit of lawyers, trials and appeals – as state-sponsored murder fall quiet as their states kill, with impunity, nuclear scientists, terror suspects and alleged militants in faraway lands. Yet a "targeted killing", human-rights lawyer and anti-drone activist Clive Stafford Smith tells me, "is just the death penalty without due process".
Cognitive dissonance abounds. To torture a terror suspect, for example, is always morally wrong; to kill him, video game style, with a missile fired from a remote-controlled drone, is morally justified. Crippled by fear and insecurity, we have sleepwalked into a situation where governments have arrogated to themselves the right to murder their enemies abroad.
Nor are we only talking about foreigners here. Take Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamist preacher, al-Qaida supporter – and US citizen. On 30 September 2011, a CIA drone killed Awlaki and another US citizen, Samir Khan. Two weeks later, another CIA-led drone attack killed Awlaki's 21-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman. Neither father nor son were ever indicted, let alone tried or convicted, for committing a crime. Both US citizens were assassinated by the US government in violation of the Fifth Amendment ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law").
Since 2010, three other Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in similar circumstances, including Darioush Rezaeinejad, a 35-year-old electronics expert shot dead outside his daughter's nursery in Tehran last July. But instead of outrage or condemnation, we have been treated to expressions of undisguised glee.
"On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear programme in Iran turn up dead," bragged the Republican nomination candidate Rick Santorum in October. "I think that's a wonderful thing, candidly." On the day of Roshan's death, Israel's military spokesman, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, announced on Facebook: "I don't know who settled the score with the Iranian scientist, but I certainly am not shedding a tear" – a sentiment echoed by the historian Michael Burleigh in the Daily Telegraph: "I shall not shed any tears whenever one of these scientists encounters the unforgiving men on motorbikes."
These "men on motorbikes" have been described as "assassins". But assassination is just a more polite word for murder. Indeed, our politicians and their securocrats cloak the premeditated, lawless killing of scientists in Tehran, of civilians in Waziristan, of politicians in Gaza, in an array of euphemisms: not just assassinations but terminations, targeted killings, drone strikes.
Their purpose is to inure us to such state-sponsored violence against foreigners. In his acclaimed book On Killing, the retired US army officer Dave Grossman examines mechanisms that enable us not just to ignore but even cheer such killings: cultural distance ("such as racial and ethnic differences that permit the killer to dehumanise the victim"); moral distance ("the kind of intense belief in moral superiority"); and mechanical distance ("the sterile, Nintendo-game unreality of killing through a TV screen, a thermal sight, a sniper sight or some other kind of mechanical buffer that permits the killer to deny the humanity of his victim").
Thus western liberals who fall over one another to condemn the death penalty for murderers – who have, incidentally, had the benefit of lawyers, trials and appeals – as state-sponsored murder fall quiet as their states kill, with impunity, nuclear scientists, terror suspects and alleged militants in faraway lands. Yet a "targeted killing", human-rights lawyer and anti-drone activist Clive Stafford Smith tells me, "is just the death penalty without due process".
Cognitive dissonance abounds. To torture a terror suspect, for example, is always morally wrong; to kill him, video game style, with a missile fired from a remote-controlled drone, is morally justified. Crippled by fear and insecurity, we have sleepwalked into a situation where governments have arrogated to themselves the right to murder their enemies abroad.
Nor are we only talking about foreigners here. Take Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamist preacher, al-Qaida supporter – and US citizen. On 30 September 2011, a CIA drone killed Awlaki and another US citizen, Samir Khan. Two weeks later, another CIA-led drone attack killed Awlaki's 21-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman. Neither father nor son were ever indicted, let alone tried or convicted, for committing a crime. Both US citizens were assassinated by the US government in violation of the Fifth Amendment ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law").
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Pentagon Says U.S. Citizens With Terrorism Ties Can Be Targeted in Strikes
The Blaze
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.
“Within the executive branch the views and opinions of the lawyers on the president’s national security team are debated and heavily scrutinized, and a legal review of the application of lethal force is the weightiest judgment a lawyer can make,” he said. “And, when these judgments start to become easy, it is time for me to return to private law practice.”
Mr. Johnson also emphasized that even though the conflict is against an unconventional force, the administration believes that it must apply conventional legal principles – like the Geneva Conventions, international laws of armed conflict, and traditional ways of interpreting domestic wartime statutes – in waging it.
“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.
“Within the executive branch the views and opinions of the lawyers on the president’s national security team are debated and heavily scrutinized, and a legal review of the application of lethal force is the weightiest judgment a lawyer can make,” he said. “And, when these judgments start to become easy, it is time for me to return to private law practice.”
Mr. Johnson also emphasized that even though the conflict is against an unconventional force, the administration believes that it must apply conventional legal principles – like the Geneva Conventions, international laws of armed conflict, and traditional ways of interpreting domestic wartime statutes – in waging it.
Monday, December 5, 2011
The Constitution Is Dead: The Gradual Transition towards an Orwellian Police State
Global Research
Devon DB
Many in America still believe that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and that politicians, both Republican and Democrat alike, still hold that view and ensure that any and all legislation passed does not violate it. However, in today’s America, the Constitution is effectively a null and void document, nothing more than a symbol politicians pay lip service to.
Devon DB
The destruction of the Constitution began soon after 9/11 when the Patriot Act was pushed through Congress. In the heat of the moment it seemed as if the legislation was meant to protect us from terrorism, however it was later revealed that certain provisions blatantly violated the First, Fourth, and Sixth Amendments. [1] Interestingly enough, however, this didn’t stop the Senate from to extending the Patriot Act earlier this year [2]. In doing this, the government revealed just how much they respect the Constitution.
The next unconstitutional act to take place was under President Obama. Despite his “hope and change” rhetoric during the campaign, the only thing Obama changed was to further erode the Constitution and the power of checks and balances in government. Obama argued that the UN mandate gave him the right to bombard Libya, however the mandate has nothing to do with the fact that such an action was unconstitutional [3] as the power to declare war in held solely by Congress, not to mention the fact that it violated the War Powers Act. In carrying out this action, Obama did even more to expand the imperial presidency and showed his blatant hypocrisy as in 2007 he clearly stated that “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” [4] (emphasis added) However, in later months he would take this disregard of the Constitution to the extreme.
Just two months ago, Obama authorized the assassination of American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. While al-Awlaki was a member of Al Qaeda, he was still a US citizen at the time of his death [5] and thus he still had rights as a citizen, specifically the right due process. This never occurred with al-Awlaki. Due to al-Awlaki’s assassination, it sets a legal precedent which allows the current and future Presidents to assassinate US citizens and withhold damning evidence- if there even is any- from the public under the guise of “national security.”
Today, we see due to the brutal crackdown of the Occupy Wall Street movement in Oakland, New York, and most recently Los Angeles, that Americans are being denied their First and Third amendment rights. Mayors are sending the message that if one decides to pose a serious challenge to the status quo, they will be violently crushed.
The Constitution is dead and with it the beliefs and ideals America was founded on have also passed away. The most terrifying occurrence, however, is that Americans are seeing their freedoms eroded are still in denial that a police state is slowly, but surely on its way.
Notes
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
