US can kill it's own citizens - they have the right

[Suesumba]

Washington: A confidential memo obtained by media and published today spells out the US government’s legal justification for killing US citizens linked to Al Qaeda.

The memo offers a rare look at one of the most secretive policies of President Barack Obama’s administration.
“The president has authority to respond to the imminent threat posed by Al Qaeda and its associated forces, arising from his constitutional responsibility to protect the country,” as well as the right to national self-defence and congressional authorisation for military force against Al Qaeda, the 16-page document reads.

http://www.firstpost.com/world/us-can-kill-its-own-citizens-linked-to-al-qaeda-615063.html

sweet

[My Looh]

The whole "you're either with us or against us", thing is scary. So now what, if you are not "with them" you are going to be branded a terrorist and hunted down?

God help the U.S.A.!

[Suesumba]

do you think the memo was *leaked* to instill paranoia in the masses?

[RichD]

I don't think this is any different than it has always been

if they sen police for you and you resist what happens?

[remo]

God help the U.S.A.!

Lol.....dem doing aarite
God should start helping the poorer countries now.......

[jah_yout]

do you think the memo was *leaked* to instill paranoia in the masses?

No this is common knowledge among the informed...
the NDAA has been discussed here before

[jah_yout]

I don't think this is any different than it has always been

if they sen police for you and you resist what happens?

Come on now...blasting someone out of the sky with missiles is the same as resisting cops?

[RichD]

Come on now...blasting someone out of the sky with missiles is the same as resisting cops?

talking about the end result and the American society's acceptance of taking life as a solution to these kinds of conflicts.

[Wahalla]

last week there was a report that more yanki soldiers killed yanki soldiers than afgans killed yanki soldiers..

What the reported said was that more veterans from the Afgan campaign commited suicide than were killed in Afganistan...

so y should yanki state not kill yankis ? Is this any more terrible than yankis killing non yankis ? R non yankis not equal to yankis ?

[blugiant]

http://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/imagecache/feature400/yes_we_can_murder.jpg

Obama and Co. Make Up the Law as They Kill


A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

The president's men drib and drab out their rationale for how President Obama decides which Earthlings live or die. A newly leaked “white paper” claims the president can transfer his killing authority to unnamed, unranked “informed, high level” officials. Thus, the people-killing process “is whatever the president or the nearest 'informed, high-level official of the U.S. government' says it is.



Obama and Co. Make Up the Law as They Kill

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

“The white paper empowers Obama to delegate the kill-at-will authority.”

Unlike the bombast that characterized the Bush administration’s assaults on U.S. and international law, the Obama regime tends to dribble out its rationales for gutting the Bill of Rights and every notion of global legality. This president prefers to create a fog – let’s call it the fog of his war against human rights – as he arrogates to himself the power to perpetually imprison or to summarily execute anyone, at any time, anywhere in the world. Obama assures us such authority is constitutionally rooted – it’s in there, believe me, he tells us – but he never produces legal chapter and verse to prove that presidential dictatorship is lawful. Instead, we get dribs and drabs of the administration’s position from lawyers defending Obama’s preventive detention law in the courts, or from informal statements by the attorney general, or even little tidbits gleaned from an Obama conversation with comedian Jon Stewart.

The latest hors d'oeuvre to be dished out comes in the form of a leak. I say “dished out” because leaked documents are commonly placed in public view by the administration in power, to test the political waters. This leaked Justice Department “white paper” appears to have been drawn up after the execution-by-drone of U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki, in Yemen. It justifies the killing of anyone occupying a position of status in al-Qaida, or with the ever-changing universe of groups said to be “associated” with al-Qaida. The document stretches the definition of “imminent threat” to cover anyone engaged in activities directed against the U.S., whether or not an actual operation is planned or in progress. Most interestingly, the white paper empowers Obama to delegate the kill-at-will authority to "an informed, high-level official of the U.S. government." Which has a certain logic, since dictators certainly have the power to delegate the carrying out of their unjust acts to whomever they choose.

“It justifies the killing of anyone occupying a position of status in al-Qaida.”Eleven U.S. senators are asking for further clarification of the administration’s legal position. But that is just more fog, since the Congress overwhelmingly passed Obama’s preventive detention law – twice!! – a law based on the same assumption that due process of law does not apply when the president says it’s wartime. Therefore, the commander-in-chief can lock up any American, without charge or trial, forever, or until he declares peace. The U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder, has made the administration’s position clear enough. Due process, he says, does not necessarily mean access to the judicial process – meaning, a trial. The process is whatever the president or the nearest “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government" says it is. Obama had redefined war, itself. The president told the Congress, after bombing Libya for eight months, that by his definition – which is the only one that counts – no state of war exists unless Americans become casualties, even if the U.S. kills tens of thousands, or millions. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was fond of saying that the arc of history bends towards justice. In the long term, that may be true. But Martin’s arc is not bending towards justice under this administration. It bends towards fascism, with a Black presidential face.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/obama-and-co-make-law-they-kill