Title: Two 'Rule Of Law' Republicans Dissent On Torture And Assassinations
Date: November 13, 2011
Source: Atlantic
Abstract: In Saturday's debate, the starkest divide among the GOP candidates
concerned their willingness to adhere to the law while waging the War on
Terrorism. Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul affirmed that they would do so.
Every other candidate embraced unlawful positions that would've been
unthinkable before 2001. The most important: the use of torture and
presidential orders to assassinate American citizens.
Torture
Mitt
Romney, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and
Newt Gingrich all favor "enhanced interrogation techniques," a euphemism
for torture. Lest you doubt that waterboarding, the specific technique
they've endorsed, is in fact torture, first note that it too is a
euphemism. It refers to blindfolding someone, strapping them to a table,
elevating their head, covering their mouth, forcing water through their
nose into their sinuses until their lungs fill, and demanding that they
reveal their secrets on the promise that if they do, you'll stop
forcibly drowning them. If a Pakistani terrorist kidnapped Laura Bush,
strapped her to a board, covered her mouth, and forced water through her
nose until her lungs filled, would that be torture?
Jon Huntsman made the most eloquent case against waterboarding.
"This
country has values," he said. "We have a name brand in the world...
I've been an ambassador for my country three times. I've lived overseas
and done business. We diminish our standing in the world and the values
that we project that include liberty and democracy, human rights and
open markets when we torture. We should not torture. Water-boarding is
torture. We dilute ourselves down like a whole lot of other countries
and we lose our ability to project values that a lot of people in a lot
of corners of the world are still relying on the United States to stand
up for."
Assassinating American Citizens
President Obama
insists that he has the authority to order the assassination of American
citizens who haven't been convicted of any crime or afforded due
process so long as he first declares -- in a secret process the details
of which we're not allowed to know -- that the target is a terrorist.
Said one of the moderators during the debate, "Is it appropriate for the
American president -- on the president's say so alone -- to order the
death of an American citizen suspected of terrorism?"
Mitt Romney fielded the question.
"Absolutely,"
he said. "In this case, this is an individual who aligned himself with a
group who had declared war on the United States of America. And if
there's someone who is going to join a group that declares war on
America and we're in a war with that entity, then of course, anyone
bearing arms with that entity is fair game for the United States of
America." What Romney doesn't mention is that if al-Awlaki, the American
citizen we've already assassinated, could be killed "on the president's
say so alone," than anyone can be killed. Limiting the president's
killing authority to targets who "declare war on America" is meaningless
if someone can be found guilty of having declared war on America based
on the president's say so alone.
That brings us to Newt Gingrich's frightening answer.
MODERATOR:
"As president of the United States would you sign that death warrant
for an American overseas who you believe is a terrorist suspect?"
GINGRICH:
"Well, he's not a terrorist suspect. He's a person who was found guilty
under review of actively seeking the death of American citizens."
MODERATOR:
"Not found guilty by a court, Sir. He was found guilty by a panel who
looked at it and reported to the president. That's extra-judicial. It's
not the rule of law."
GINGRICH: "It is the rule of law. That is
explicitly false. It is the rule of law. If you engage in war against
the United States, you are an enemy combatant. You have none of the
civil liberties of the United States. You cannot go to court... Waging
war on the United States is outside criminal law.
What is Gingrich ignoring?
In
Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld,
the Supreme Court addressed the case of an American citizen declared an
enemy combatant by the Bush Administration, which asserted that he took
up arms and fought with the Taliban. As Sandra Day O'Connor affirmed in
her majority opinion, "due process demands that a citizen held in the
United States as an enemy
combatant be given a meaningful opportunity to contest the factual
basis for that detention before a neutral decision-maker."
Ron Paul was the savior on this issue.
"We're
at war against a tactic and therefore there's no limit to it," he said,
condemning Obama's assassinations. "We create these monstrosities and
we do things outside the law... You want to live within the law. And
obey the law. Because otherwise it's going to be very bad for all of us.
And this whole idea that now we can be assassinated by somebody we
don't even like to run our medical care, they're giving this power to
the president to be the prosecutor, the executor, the judge and the
jury." As Adam Serwer mused on Twitter, "Paul remark goes at heart of
contradiction of modern conservatism: Government is only infallible when
it kills people."
Conclusions
Perhaps the most
substantively absurd moment of the debate was when Michele Bachmann
said, "Today under Barack Obama, he is allowing the ACLU to run the
CIA." In fact, the ACLU has explicitly criticized the way Obama has
waged the War on Terrorism generally, and actually joined the Center for
Constitutional Rights in filing the lawsuit that tried to prevent the
assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki. Bachmann is either breathtakingly
ignorant here or else lying.
Either way, she is just one of many
candidates in the GOP field to show the folly of running to Obama's
right on foreign policy. He surged troops into Afghanistan, killed Osama
bin Laden, launched an undeclared war on Libya in violation of the War
Powers Resolution, is waging another undeclared war using drones in
Pakistan, and has taken most of the steps his hawkish critics say they'd
implement in Iran. In other words, there actually is no coherent
critique from the right to make unless it's so extreme in its
war-mongering that a country tired of spilling blood and treasure abroad
will pass.
Among the candidates at the debate, Huntsman and
Paul are the only ones who can credibly attack Obama on the foreign
policy grounds where he is weakest: his radicalism on executive power,
illegal war in Libya, civil liberties violations, the destabilizing
effect of his drone war on Pakistan, and the fact that he has an
assassination list with the names of American citizens crossed off it
(Atlantic, 2011).
Title: Ron Paul Warns Journalists: You Could Be Next On Obama’s ‘Kill List’
Date: October 7, 2011
Source: Yahoo News
Abstract: At a recent luncheon at the
National Press Club,
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul warned journalists that they could be placed on a “kill list” should the government deem them a threat to
national security.
The Associated Press reported
that the Texas congressman encouraged journalists and citizens alike to
condemn the President’s actions, lest they find themselves placed on
the list for their own views.
“Can you imagine being put on a
list because you’re a threat?” an exasperated Paul asked. “What’s going
to happen when they come to the media? What if the media becomes a
threat? … This is the way this works. It’s incrementalism.”
His statements come in the aftermath of the assassination of Anwar
al-Awlaki, an American citizen killed by a CIA drone in Yemen last
month.
Decisions about whom to place on the “kill list” are reportedly made by secret panel of
federal government officials whose deliberations are withheld from public view.
“There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s
National Security Council, several current and former officials said,”
Reuters reported
Thursday. ”Neither is there any law establishing its existence or
setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.”
The role of the president in the process is unclear, although he is informed of the panel’s decisions.
Rep. Paul is not the only critic of the government’s actions.
In a statement last week, ACLU legal director Jameel Jaffer condemned
the administration for what he called “a program under which American
citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own
government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and
evidence that are kept secret not just from the public but from the
courts.”
“It is a mistake to invest the
President — any President — with the unreviewable power to kill any
American whom he deems to present a threat to the country,” Jaffer
concluded.
Although the Obama administration
has refused to release evidence that definitely links al-Awlaki to
specific acts of terrorism, it has claimed he was behind two failed
terror attempts on American soil.
In a statement made after
al-Awlaki’s death, President Obama said it represented a “significant
milestone in the broader effort to defeat al Qaida and its affiliates”
(Yahoo News, 2011).
Title: Secret Panel Can Put Americans On "Kill List'Date: October 5, 2011 Source: Reuters Abstract: American
militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a
secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the
president of its decisions, according to officials.
There is no public record of
the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White
House's National Security Council, several current and former officials
said. Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting
out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.
The
panel was behind the decision to add Awlaki, a U.S.-born militant
preacher with alleged al Qaeda connections, to the target list. He was
killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen late last month.
The
role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a
citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss
anything about the process.Current
and former officials said that to the best of their knowledge, Awlaki,
who the White House said was a key figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian
Peninsula, al Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate, had been the only American
put on a government list targeting people for capture or death due to
their alleged involvement with militants.
The
White House is portraying the killing of Awlaki as a demonstration of
President Barack Obama's toughness toward militants who threaten the
United States. But the process that led to Awlaki's killing has drawn
fierce criticism from both the political left and right.
In
an ironic turn, Obama, who ran for president denouncing predecessor
George W. Bush's expansive use of executive power in his "war on
terrorism," is being attacked in some quarters for using similar
tactics. They include secret legal justifications and undisclosed
intelligence assessments.
Liberals criticized the drone attack on an American citizen as extra-judicial murder.
Conservatives
criticized Obama for refusing to release a Justice Department legal
opinion that reportedly justified killing Awlaki. They accuse Obama of
hypocrisy, noting his administration insisted on publishing Bush-era
administration legal memos justifying the use of interrogation
techniques many equate with torture, but refused to make public its
rationale for killing a citizen without due process.
Some
details about how the administration went about targeting Awlaki
emerged on Tuesday when the top Democrat on the House Intelligence
Committee, Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, was asked by reporters
about the killing.
The process
involves "going through the National Security Council, then it
eventually goes to the president, but the National Security Council does
the investigation, they have lawyers, they review, they look at the
situation, you have input from the military, and also, we make sure that
we follow international law," Ruppersberger said.
LAWYERS CONSULTED
Other officials said the role of the president in the process was murkier than what Ruppersberger described.
They
said targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level
National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations
are then sent to the panel of NSC "principals," meaning Cabinet
secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval. The panel of
principals could have different memberships when considering different
operational issues, they said.
The officials insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive information.
They
confirmed that lawyers, including those in the Justice Department, were
consulted before Awlaki's name was added to the target list.
Two
principal legal theories were advanced, an official said: first, that
the actions were permitted by Congress when it authorized the use of
military forces against militants in the wake of the attacks of
September 11, 2001; and they are permitted under international law if a
country is defending itself.
Several
officials said that when Awlaki became the first American put on the
target list, Obama was not required personally to approve the targeting
of a person. But one official said Obama would be notified of the
principals' decision. If he objected, the decision would be nullified,
the official said.
A former
official said one of the reasons for making senior officials principally
responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to
"protect" the president.
Officials
confirmed that a second American, Samir Khan, was killed in the drone
attack that killed Awlaki. Khan had served as editor of Inspire, a
glossy English-language magazine used by AQAP as a propaganda and
recruitment vehicle.
But rather
than being specifically targeted by drone operators, Khan was in the
wrong place at the wrong time, officials said. Ruppersberger appeared to
confirm that, saying Khan's death was "collateral," meaning he was not
an intentional target of the drone strike.
When
the name of a foreign, rather than American, militant is added to
targeting lists, the decision is made within the intelligence community
and normally does not require approval by high-level NSC officials.
'FROM INSPIRATIONAL TO OPERATIONAL'
Officials
said Awlaki, whose fierce sermons were widely circulated on
English-language militant websites, was targeted because Washington
accumulated information his role in AQAP had gone "from inspirational to
operational." That meant that instead of just propagandizing in favor
of al Qaeda objectives, Awlaki allegedly began to participate directly
in plots against American targets.
"Let
me underscore, Awlaki is no mere messenger but someone integrally
involved in lethal terrorist activities," Daniel Benjamin, top
counterterrorism official at the State Department, warned last spring.
The
Obama administration has not made public an accounting of the
classified evidence that Awlaki was operationally involved in planning
terrorist attacks.
But officials
acknowledged that some of the intelligence purporting to show Awlaki's
hands-on role in plotting attacks was patchy.
For
instance, one plot in which authorities have said Awlaki was involved
Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to blow up a
Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day 2009 with a bomb hidden in
his underpants.
There is no doubt
Abdulmutallab was an admirer or follower of Awlaki, since he admitted
that to U.S. investigators. When he appeared in a Detroit courtroom
earlier this week for the start of his trial on bomb-plot charges, he
proclaimed, "Anwar is alive."
But
at the time the White House was considering putting Awlaki on the U.S.
target list, intelligence connecting Awlaki specifically to
Abdulmutallab and his alleged bomb plot was partial. Officials said at
the time the United States had voice intercepts involving a phone known
to have been used by Awlaki and someone who they believed, but were not
positive, was Abdulmutallab.
Awlaki
was also implicated in a case in which a British Airways employee was
imprisoned for plotting to blow up a U.S.-bound plane. E-mails retrieved
by authorities from the employee's computer showed what an investigator
described as " operational contact" between Britain and Yemen.
Authorities
believe the contacts were mainly between the U.K.-based suspect and his
brother. But there was a strong suspicion Awlaki was at the brother's
side when the messages were dispatched. British media reported that in
one message, the person on the Yemeni end supposedly said, "Our highest
priority is the US ... With the people you have, is it possible to get a
package or a person with a package on board a flight heading to the
US?"
U.S. officials contrast
intelligence suggesting Awlaki's involvement in specific plots with the
activities of Adam Gadahn, an American citizen who became a principal
English-language propagandist for the core al Qaeda network formerly led
by Osama bin Laden.
While Gadahn
appeared in angry videos calling for attacks on the United States,
officials said he had not been specifically targeted for capture or
killing by U.S. forces because he was regarded as a loudmouth not
directly involved in plotting attacks (Reuters, 2011).
Title: Confirmed: Obama Authorizes Assassination Of U.S. CitizenDate: April 7, 2010
Source: Salon
Abstract: In late
January, I wrote
about the Obama administration’s “presidential assassination program,”
whereby American citizens are targeted for killings far away
from any battlefield, based exclusively on unchecked accusations by
the Executive Branch that they’re involved in Terrorism. At the
time, The
Washington Post‘s Dana Priest had noted deep in a long article that Obama had continued Bush’s
policy (which Bush never actually implemented) of having the Joint
Chiefs of Staff compile “hit lists” of Americans, and Priest suggested
that the American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was on that
list. The following week, Obama’s Director of National Intelligence,
Adm. Dennis Blair, acknowledged in Congressional testimony that the
administration reserves the “right” to carry out such assassinations.
Today, both The New York Times and The Washington Post confirm
that the Obama White House has now expressly authorized the CIA to kill al-Alwaki no matter where he is found, no
matter his distance from a battlefield. I wrote at length about the
extreme dangers and lawlessness of allowing the Executive Branch the power
to murder U.S. citizens far away from a battlefield
(i.e., while they’re sleeping, at home, with their children, etc.) and
with no due process of any kind. I won’t repeat those arguments —
they’re here
and here
— but I do want to highlight how unbelievably Orwellian and tyrannical
this is in light of these new articles today.
Just
consider how the NYT
reports on Obama’s assassination order and how it is justified:
The Obama
administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted
killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks
on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.
. . .
American counterterrorism
officials say
Mr. Awlaki is an operative of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the affiliate
of the terror network in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. They say they believe that he
has become a recruiter for the terrorist network, feeding prospects into plots
aimed at the United States and at Americans abroad, the officials said.
It is
extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for
targeted killing, officials said. A former senior legal official in the
administration of George W. Bush said he did not know of any American who was
approved for targeted killing under the former president. . . .
“The danger
Awlaki poses to this country is no longer confined to words,” said an American official, who like other current and former
officials interviewed for this article spoke of the classified counterterrorism
measures on the condition of anonymity.
“He’s gotten involved in plots.”
No due
process is accorded. No charges or trials are necessary. No
evidence is offered, nor any opportunity for him to deny these accusations
(which he has done vehemently through his family). None of
that.
Instead, in
Barack Obama’s America, the way guilt is determined for American citizens
— and a death penalty imposed — is that
the President, like the King he thinks he is, secretly decrees someone’s
guilt as a Terrorist. He then dispatches his aides to run to America’s
newspapers — cowardly hiding behind the shield of anonymity which they’re
granted — to proclaim that the Guilty One shall be killed on sight because the
Leader has decreed him to be a Terrorist. It is simply asserted that
Awlaki has converted from a cleric who expresses anti-American views and advocates attacks on American military targets (advocacy
which happens to be Constitutionally protected) to Actual
Terrorist ”involved in plots.” These newspapers then print this
Executive Verdict with no questioning, no opposition, no investigation, no
refutation as to its truth. And the punishment is thus
decreed: this American citizen will now be murdered by the CIA
because Barack Obama has ordered that it be done. What kind of
person could possibly justify this or think that this is a legitimate
government power?
Just to get
a sense for how extreme this behavior is, consider — as the NYT reported — that not
even George Bush targeted American citizens for this type of extra-judicial
killing (though a 2002 drone attack in Yemen did result in the death of an
American citizen). Even more strikingly, Antonin Scalia, in the
2004 case of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, wrote an Opinion (joined
by Justice Stevens) arguing that it was unconstitutional for the U.S.
Government merely to imprison (let
alone kill) American citizens as “enemy combatants”; instead, they argued,
the Constitution required that Americans be charged with crimes (such as
treason) and be given a trial before being punished. The full
Hamdi Court held that at least some due
process was required before Americans could be imprisoned as “enemy
combatants.” Yet now, Barack Obama is claiming the right not merely
to imprison, but to assassinate far from any battlefield, American citizens with no due process of any kind. Even
GOP Congressman Pete Hoekstra, when questioning Adm. Blair, recognized the
severe dangers raised by this asserted power.
And what
about all the progressives who screamed for years about the Bush
administration’s tyrannical treatment of Jose Padilla? Bush merely imprisoned Padilla for years without a trial. If
that’s a vicious, tyrannical assault on the Constitution — and it was — what should they be saying about the
Nobel Peace Prize winner’s assassination of
American citizens without any due process?
All of this
underscores the principal point made in this
excellent new article by Eli Lake, who compellingly and comprehensively
documents what readers here well know: that while Obama’s
“speeches and some of his administration’s policy rollouts have emphasized a
break from the Bush era,” the reality is that the administration has retained
and, in some cases, built upon the core Bush/Cheney approach to civil liberties
and Terrorism. As Al Gore asked in his superb 2006 speech protesting Bush’s ”War on the
Constitution”:
Can it be
true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution?
If the answer is yes, then under
the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on
their face be prohibited?
If the
president has the inherent authority to eavesdrop on American citizens without
a warrant, imprison American citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and
torture, then what can’t he do?
Notice the
power that was missing from Gore’s indictment of Bush radicalism: the
power to kill American citizens.
Add that to the litany — as Obama has now done — and consider how much
more compelling Gore’s accusatory questions become.
When
Obama was seeking the Democratic nomination, the Constitutional Law
Scholar answered a questionnaire about executive power distributed by The Boston Globe‘s Charlie Savage, and this was one
of his answers:
5. Does the Constitution permit a
president to detain US citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants?
[Obama]: No.
I reject the Bush Administration’s claim that the President has plenary
authority under the Constitution to detain U.S. citizens without charges as
unlawful enemy combatants.
So back
then, Obama said the President lacks the power merely to detain U.S. citizens without charges. Now, as
President, he claims the power to assassinate them
without charges. Could even his hardest-core loyalists try to reconcile
that with a straight face? As Spencer Ackerman documents today, not even John Yoo claimed
that the President possessed the power Obama is claiming here.
If
you’re going to go into the comment section — or anywhere else — and argue that
this is all justified because Awlaki is an Evil, Violent, Murdering Terrorist
Trying to Kill Americans, you should say how you know that. Generally,
guilt is determined by having a trial where the evidence is presented and the
accused has an opportunity to defend himself — not by putting blind
authoritarian faith in the unchecked accusations of government leaders, even if
it happens to be Barack Obama. That’s especially true given how many times accusations of Terrorism by the
U.S. Government have proven to be false.
Congratulations,
Barack Obama: you’re now to the Right of National Review on issues of executive power
and due process, as Kevin Williamson objects: ”Surely there has to
be some operational constraint on the executive when it comes to the killing of
U.S. citizens. . . . Odious as Awlaki is, this seems to me to be setting an
awful and reckless precedent. “ But Andy McCarthy — who is about the
most crazed Far Right extremist on such matters as it gets, literally — is as pleased as can be with what Obama is doing (or, as Gawker puts it, “Obama Does Something
Bloodthirsty Enough to Please the Psychos”) (Salon, 2010).
Title: Can Obama Assassinate Americans?Date: February 25, 2010Source: CATO Institute Abstract: On September 14 in Somalia, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a
long-sought link between al-Qaida and its East African allies, was in a
vehicle bombed by a helicopter flying from an American ship off the
Somali coast. As Karen DeYoung and Joby Warrick reported in a front-page
Washington Post story -- "Under Obama, more targeted killings than
captures in counterterrorism efforts" (Feb. 13) -- another U.S.
helicopter "set down long enough for troops to scoop up enough of
(Nabhan's) remains for DNA verification."
That news story offered a telling consequence: "the opportunity to
interrogate one of the most wanted U.S. terrorism targets was gone
forever." And a senior military officer, careful not to give his name,
lamented: "We wanted to take a prisoner. It was not a decision that we
made."
That decision came from Obama, our commander in chief, who, as I've
previously reported, has authorized in his first year more such
assassinations than Bush and Cheney in their last years. The result,
as the Washington Post noted, "has been dozens of targeted killings
and no reports of high-value detentions."
After all, there can be no fierce arguments about whether a charred
corpse should be tried in a federal civilian court or by a military
commission. Some American citizens, believed to be highly connected to
al-Qaida or its affiliates, are also on these "hit" lists. In Pakistan
and Afghanistan, pilotless U.S. drone planes have perpetrated these
assassinations.
Thanks to the First Amendment, an increasing number of these summary
executions have been revealed in the Washington Post and on the
Internet. The executive branch alone decides who shall die instantly.
And there are no defense attorneys to raise objections, even when an
American citizen is marked for oblivion.
During a Feb. 3 hearing before the House Intelligence Committee,
Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair testified that the U.S.
intelligence community, when dealing with direct terrorist threats to
the United States, does "take direct action against terrorists"
(Washington Post, Feb. 4).
And "if we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that."
Glenn Greenwald, a former constitutional lawyer turned news analyst,
avoids euphemisms. "Special permissions" without judicial authorization,
says Greenwald, amounts to "basically giving the president the power
to impose death sentences on his own citizens without any charges or
trial" (Salon.com, Feb. 4).
Focusing on American targets, Ben Wizner, a staff attorney of the ACLU
National Security Project, in a Feb. 4 press release emphasizes: "It is
alarming to hear that the Obama administration is asserting that the
president can authorize the assassination of Americans abroad, even if
they are far from any battlefield and may have never taken up arms
against the U.S., but have only been deemed to constitute an
unspecified 'threat.'"
I would add that if the threat has indeed been specified, the deceased
target will have had no chance to test its accuracy. Is this America?
Wizner explains:
"This is the most recent consequence of a troublingly overbroad
interpretation of Congress's 2001 Authorization for the Use of
Military Force. This sweeping interpretation envisions a war that
knows no borders or definable time limits and targets an enemy that
the government has refused to define in public. This policy is
particularly troubling since it targets U.S. citizens, who retain their
constitutional right to due process even when abroad."
Adds Jonathan Manes, legal fellow with the ACLU National Security
Project: "While there is little doubt that a U.S. citizen fighting for
an enemy army could lawfully be killed on the battlefield in the
course of fighting, this policy goes far beyond the ordinary
parameters of battlefield combat."
Does President Obama agree with George W. Bush's first attorney
general, John Ashcroft? And the silent Obama avoids any responsibility
for the growing number of innocent civilians killed by the
insistently growing number of strikes by our pilotless drones.
When will members of Congress also ask these questions? And how about
we, the people, getting involved in finding out whether some of these
killings committed in our name are -- by our own laws and
international treaties -- actual war crimes?
Where are our chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Eric
Holder, Republican leaders and the Tea Party legions opposed to
boundless big government?
(CATO Institute, 2010).
Pentagon dinner guest and Osama bin Laden fill-in Anwar al-Awlaki was in FBI custody
but the agency let him go, FBI assistant director Mark Giuliano has
told the House Appropriations Committee. The incident occurred in
October, 2002, at the JFK airport. The American born cleric was a top
CIA target and named a serious threat by the head of Britain’s Secret
Intelligence Service at the time.
