Posted on 12/01/2012 9:33:11 AM PST by Seizethecarp
In a January online chat, Obama said strikes in Pakistan are “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists.” In a September CNN interview, he offered assurances that drones were used only to prevent “an operational plot against the United States.”
Then, in October, on “The Daily Show” of all places, Obama said, “One of the things we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place . . . to make sure that not only am I reined in, but any President’s reined in” regarding the use of this potent weaponry.
As Obama has correctly concluded, the U.S. is well within its rights to kill members of Al Qaeda and affiliates who have America in their cross hairs. State Department legal adviser Harold Koh has explained that “individuals who are part of such an armed group are belligerents and, therefore, lawful targets under international law.”
Selecting someone for assassination requires extraordinary care, as does avoiding harm to innocent parties.
While refusing to confirm even the existence of a drone strategy, officials have said the President is deeply involved in target approval.
Still, as The Times reported, in the runup to the election last month, the White House stepped up work “to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new President would inherit clear standards and procedures.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
Obvious question: If US citizens can be deemed "belligerents" and "approved targets" abroad, how long will it be before US citizens inside the US can be deemed "armed group" belligerents and thus "approved targets" by a relentlessly lawless president and his enablers? Who and what can restrain a president who considers himself above the law?
I do have a problem with a president so lacking in moral character that he lies all day every day as he attempts to evade rather than uphold the Constitution! What self-restraint is remotely evident in our president and his coterie of radical leftists that would prevent him from designating his political enemies as enemy combatants and subjecting them to drone strikes or other lethal measures if they stood in the way of their agenda or threatened to actually hold him to his oath of office?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_combatant
“In the 1942 Supreme Court of the United States ruling Ex Parte Quirin, the Court uses the terms with their historical meanings to distinguish between unlawful combatants and lawful combatants:
“Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful. The spy who secretly and without uniform passes the military lines of a belligerent in time of war, seeking to gather military information and communicate it to the enemy, or...
“...an enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property, are familiar examples of belligerents who are generally deemed not to be entitled to the status of prisoners of war, but to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals.”
TRANSLATION: "Since I (Hussein) have no intention of ever obeying the law, it won't be a problem for me. But I want to make sure that the next Republican President is completely hamstrung."
The sky would be the limit.
don’t worry I am so sure Obama will be very strict on himself. lol
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