Sep 30 2011
Looks Like Obama May Have Finally Assassinated An American Citizen
Did an American president just assassinate a US Citizen without any due process, without any court case or verdict of guilty?
While the death of a blood thirsty Islamo Fascist is on par with the death of a blood thirsty Nazi who slaughtered innocent Jews in a concentration camp, the fact is Nazi mass murderers still received due process – even during the war.
Not so for American citizen, turned rabid Islamist cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki:
The US-born radical Islamist cleric and suspected al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki has been killed in Yemen, the country’s defence ministry reported.
Unnamed US administration officials confirmed the reports.
Awlaki, of Yemeni descent, has been on the run in Yemen since December 2007.
The US had named him a “specially designated global terrorist” for his alleged role in a number of attacks and US President Barack Obama is said to have personally ordered his killing.
al–Awlaki was a key player in the Ft. Hood Massacre, 9-11 and other failed attacks in the US. But what we never got with this thug was a trial and a guilty verdict. And that is where this administration went way beyond the rule of law – especially when compared to the reserve shown by President Bush, the other post 9-11 president.
President Bush learned that stupid bureaucrat rules (not laws, just rules) had drifted so far towards clear cut easy (which means bureaucrats don’t have to make hard calls, they have simpleton check-off lists to cover their arses) that legitimate threats identified and tracked from outside this country could not be followed when terrorists entered into this country. When Bush discovered this to be true, he did something about it.
It was not the fantasized snooping paranoid liberals moaned about for years while Congresses and Courts passed and authorized Bush’s changes. What Bush said was if anyone was detected communicating with KNOWN terrorists, then law enforcement could be alerted and assess the risk of that person. It was under court review and monitoring, and only 2-3 people in Justice had the authority to allow it to happen. They also had to show just cause in the FISA court as well.
Obama and Holder decided this was too much, and put back a lot of those barriers when they came to office – which is why we ended with The Ft Hood massacre and nearly successful Christmas Day Bomber.
But now contrast the left’s over reaction to making sure people in contact with known and monitored terrorists are assessed for their risk to America and Americans, and this assassination of a US Citizen who – as far as we know – was never tried in a court of law. The same court of law this administration wants to bring GITMO detainees to for their day in court. Apparently al-Awlaki’s constitutional rights were unceremoniously removed by this president.
I will never shed a tear for al-Awlaki, but I will note that this may be (and hopefully is) the first time a US President has suspended the constitution and assassinated a US Citizen who was still presumed innocent. And that disturbs me. Even under Bush’s surveillance changes, he himself could never order the suspension of rights. And all the way through the burden of proof was on the administration, and the end result of surveillance was court, not a pine box.
We are on a deadly and steep slippery slope.
Update: The rare instance where AJStrata and uber-liberal Glenn Greewald agree.
An interesting angle on the assassination that I hadn’t considered. Thanks, AJ
We were already on a deadly and steep slippery slope with FDR’s rules as well as how the Democrats removed all “rights” from the blacks and enacted the Jim Crowe laws after the death of the last founding father.
FDR forced many journalists into prison and told children to rat out their parents.
Plus we had the Japanese concentration camps…
I certainly hope this administration, who has just dispatched a US citizen by their own rules, becoming judge, jury and executioner does not deem you, me, Sarah Palin or the Tea Party TERRORIST, else what are the limits of behavior they would shackle themselves with?
Oh wait they already called us that and worse?
Suspension of elections perhaps? Oh they already called for THAT?
A million dollar missile on our heads or homes?
They already hung Sarah in effigy in Hollywierd?
These same criminals and crooks who would murder an unborn baby in its last trimester, yet fight the legal execution of a known cop killer (Troy Davis) after a judge and jury decided his fate, now just outright assassinate a US citizen.
I will not lose any sleep over this guys death, but sleepless nights may follow the tactics and rhetoric this Lyin kING is using to drum up his supporters against Americas businessmen and producers.
Gunruuner and this, Republicans show us you deserve our consideration and IMPEACH this guy.
Or face a third party!
AJ, it looks like it was two-fer on US citizens, apparently a Samir Khan was in the convoy. In both cases, I am not sure why we did not put them on trial in absentia? There is adequate evidence that these gentlemen would have been found guilty. Lurker9876, detention camps is the proper description, not concentration camps. BTW, some of this started back in Lincoln’s day with putting people in jail with no charges being levied against them and no plans to ever bring them to trial. I am not trying to show moral equivalence here but War Time circumstances seem to be the common thread in regards to how our government takes care of inconvenient problems caused by our own citizenery. Also, we can expect no outrage over this sanctioned exection of two US citizens, so do we start a pool on when will this happen here?
imagine how the Left would be howling for impeachment if Bush had ordered this.
In a way, it’s useful – it points out that the absolute moral hypocrisy at the heart of the left today. No wonder everything they touch turns into Fraud, since at the core to be a Leftist means to be an amoral, disgusting Fraud through and through.
Glenn Greenwald’s update is priceless.
Al, You are wrong about this being unprecedented. Our Top CIA man stationed in Rhodisia, who’s job was to assist the Rhodesian government in fighting the Communist Insurgency, when Jimmy Carter became President, told me that the first thing Carter did was order all CIA agents in subSahara Africa to change sides and work with the Communist insurgents. He said when he refused, resigned from the CIA, and took a job working for the Rhodesian Government, Carter put a price on his head. He said he got out of Africa by the skin of his teeth, and once back in the USA, was forced to take independent contractor jobs like crop dusting so he couldn’t be traced via his social security number until Carter was out of office. Obama is not the only Islamist loving and Sharia promoting President we have had. Carter not only installed the Ayatollahs in Iran but he also installed the genocidal tyrant dictator, Robert Mgabwe, in once prosperous Rhodesia which was renamed Zimbabwe, which was immediately turned into an all black basket case, after all whites were slain or escaped.
I hate islamists with a passion few have, due to my ancestors, who suffered greatly at the hands of the ottoman turks.
But I also witnessed and lived under a dictatorship in which the whim of the very few, at the top of the “workers’s paradise”, was the rule of the day.
So, I am very saddened to see that the rule of law, afforded under the Constitution to all the American citizens, was not respected.
We must fight to restore the rule of the law, otherwise we may end up at the receiving end of a whimsical decision of who knows who.
Obama is getting a pass on his vile record on human rights. On my blog today I have a post about the reports of abuse by the Border Patrol in the Tucson sector. From 2006-2008 there were 300 abuse reports. The left went after GWB. Just released is a report (done by liberals) that is so bad, I am still trying to comprehend what is going on. From 2008 – 2010 the same sector has catalogued 30,000 reports of abuse.
I doubt if anyone will say a thing. I gather with the Obama Administration, they ‘don’t need no stinkin’ Constitution’.
SJR
The Pink Flamingo
The United States invades the airspace of nations with drones and kills their citizens on a regular basis. Its a matter of time before “the state” turns these drones on US citizens on U.S soil…….
More drones and goon squads to protect freedom?
You can’t waterboard them you can cook them will a hellfire missile to more than well done.
A bit of a disconnect going on there.
I don’t think there was any doubt about his guilt; and, I am glad he is gone. I did not initially feel bad about the drone strike; but, there is something in the back of my mind that nags at me about it.
However, AJ does raise valid concerns and it is a slippery slope. We killed him with a drone in Yemen….would we have killed him with a drone in the US? That’s a troubling thought. We definately need to have a conversation about this as a people and a government before we continue the strategy. This is a different kind of war; and most difficult to fight. We are going to make mistakes in how we prosecute it. We did under Bush and we will under future Presidents also. If our strategy goes astray, however, we need a course correction.
I disagree.
Once they take up jihad, they become “enemies of all humanity”, just like pirates.
You find ’em, you kill ’em. Just like cockroaches.
I also disagree. Both were an American citizens, true. But, they were on foreign soil waging battle against our soldiers and plotting the death of many American citizens on both our shores and abroad. They considered themselves members of an enemy army. Therefor, they made themselves military targets.
Eff him, let them burn.
If Bush had done it, it would have been an impeachable offense!
I don’t want to hear about water-boarding and torture ever again Democrats.
This is what you get when you decide that the most important priority is the closing of the prison at Gitmo. It follows that you really don’t want any “high value” prisoners entering the facility (and Congress has already forbid them being transferred to the US), so the only reasonable alternative is to gun them out, without mercy.
Shoot, Eric Holder was out in just the last couple of weeks reemphasizing that Gitmo will close. It’s almost as though they were saying “merciless deaths ahead.”
AJ,
American citizens fought for Nazi Germany in WWII. Not many. But we are not talking about many here either.
Some were captured during or after the war. Others were no doubt simply killed in the war. Still others lived through it.
Certainly, some of the American traitors who become propagandists would have been actively targeted.
Don’t worry about these terror turds. They are ‘citizens’ in name only. Actually, not even that.
I’m with Phil 351.
He would have been arrested here. A drone would not have been needed.
He crossed the line.
BTW. Obama should not get any credit other than his teleprompter announcement.
Awlaki was an anchor baby born of two Yemen (?) citizens who were students in the US at that time. His parents took him back to Yemen when he was 7. He was no longer (if he ever was) under the jurisdiction of the US government which is a requirement for citizenship. I don’t regard him as having been an American citizen. He was just the product of two foreign students her in the US for a few years.
This anchor baby junk has to cease. If the parents are not citizens neither should be the child. This is one case where times have changed from the 18th century and the born in this country thingy has been tarnished big time. Back then people came to stay and assimulate. And there was no immigration process. You came…you were accepted as citizens because you wanted to be here. Now all the anchor baby stuff is just to cirumvent the system. Other people wait years for their request to be processed. It is not fair for women to illegally come to this country in the last stages of pregnancy so their child can be an American. It is a ploy to have whole families come to the US legally.
I watched the All Star Panel last Friday addressing this topic. Kirsten Powers tried to defend Al-Awlaki’s constitutional rights. She got slammed by both Jonah Goldberg and Charles Krauthammer. Charles used the Civil War as an example for the killing of US citizens.
Interesting analogy.
I personally think that Al-Awlaki already got due process and doesn’t deserve due process either. After reading a few articles, I no longer see this issue as a slippery slope.
That said, Charles Krauthammer also alluded to a conflict between DoJ wanting to try the GITMO detainees in our US civil legal system when these GITMO detainees are NOT US citizens versus killing Al-Awlaki who became an insurgent against our country; therefore, no longer a US citizen.