Posted on 03/04/2012 1:41:40 PM PST by Theoria
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected Monday to provide the most detailed explanation yet of the Obama administration’s secret decision-making leading up to the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen last year in Yemen.
Holder’s speech Monday afternoon at Northwestern Law School in Chicago is the result of months of internal Obama administration deliberations over how much can be made public about the decisions leading up to the strike.
The Justice Department wrote a still-classified memo that provided the legal rationale for the targeting of American-born Anwar al-Awlaki that also included intelligence material about his operational role within al-Qaeda’s affiliates in Yemen.
Holder is expected to say that the killing of Awlaki was legal under the 2001 congressional authorization of the use of military force and that the United States, acting in self-defense, is not limited to traditional battlefields in pursuit of terrorists who present an imminent threat, including U.S. citizens, according to an official briefed on the speech. The official would only discuss the address on the condition of anonymity because it will not be released until shortly before Holder speaks.
Awlaki, a U.S. citizen born in New Mexico, was the chief of external operations for al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen, which has attempted a number of terrorist attacks on the United States, according to administration officials. He had been placed on “kill lists” compiled by the CIA and and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command. Awlaki was killed in September in Yemen in a joint CIA-JSOC drone operation.
The Awlaki operation was carried out after the administration requested and received an opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel saying that targeting and killing U.S. citizens overseas was legal under domestic and international law.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
We need to get the people used to it slowly. It’s ‘them’, ‘over there’. Not you, we’ll come for you last. We promise, the government is here to help you.
I would rather hear his rationale for sending guns into Mexico that killed an American Border Patrol Agent, and hundreds of Mexicans.
Thay aint ‘his people’. Next?
This isn’t even controversial here. Only “nuts” like Ron Paul care. That’s why there is no hope for the USSA.
I don’t agree with Holder on anything I can think of except perhaps this. Just because you are a US citizen doesn’t mean you can’t also be a terrorist. When you are a terrorist we won’t use conventional rules. (Or we should use conventional rules.)
Alaki was an enemy combatant and a traitor. Enemy combatants, even if they aggravate that by also being traitors, are always subject to military elimination, just like Admiral Yamamoto in WWII. Amamoto, by the way, was a Japanese patriot, not a vile traitor like Alaki.
Elucidate your rule(s) please.
He has to target them abroad because it’s still against
the law to target them here, at least for now.
Let me see if I get this right:
Holder said we should provide foreign Gitmo terrorists with trials and assume that they have all constitutional rights as US citizens.
US citizens deemed terrorists, however, can be killed outright.
And foreign born nationals can be president, if they’re Democrat.
Citizens of adjacent countries can cross the border and reside and expect all the privileges of citizenship. They can traffic cocaine, methamphetamine and take pot shots at US citizens and border agents. They can trespass private property and trash whatever lies on the way over public lands.
That sums it up.
Why the hell not? The entire purpose of Operation Fast And Furious, AKA Murdergate, was to get lots of Mexicans killed, and some Americans too.
He could care less about killing Americans.
pfl
If you’re not “his people”, he doesn’t give a damn where he shoots you. But, if you’re “his people”, you don’t even have to be worried about being caught.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.