Obama’s Nixonian Precedent
ON March 17, 1969, President Richard M. Nixon began a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia, sending B-52 bombers over the border from South Vietnam. This episode, largely buried in history, resurfaced recently in an unexpected place: the Obama administration’s “white paper” justifying targeted killings of Americans suspected of involvement in terrorism.
President Obama is reportedly considering moving control of the drone program from the Central Intelligence Agency to the Defense Department, as questions about the program’s legality continue to be asked. But this shift would do nothing to confer legitimacy to the drone strikes. The legitimacy problem comes from the secrecy itself — not which entity secretly does the killing. Secrecy has been used to hide presidential overreach — as the Cambodia example shows.
On Page 4 of the unclassified 16-page “white paper,” Justice Department lawyers tried to refute the argument that international law does not support extending armed conflict outside a battlefield. They cited as historical authority a speech given May 28, 1970, by John R. Stevenson, then the top lawyer for the State Department, following the United States’ invasion of Cambodia.
Since 1965, “the territory of Cambodia has been used by North Vietnam as a base of military operations,” he told the New York City Bar Association. “It long ago reached a level that would have justified us in taking appropriate measures of self-defense on the territory of Cambodia. However, except for scattered instances of returning fire across the border, we refrained until April from taking such action in Cambodia.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/22/opinion/obamas-nixonian-precedent.html?_r=0
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Lately (early June 2013) there has been lots of talk about a "George W. Obama" parody picture published by Huffington Post on 6 June 2013.
This thread suggests that "Richard Milhous Obama" might be just as appropriate, maybe even more so. Consider Obama's recent attacks on the press and, as in this thread, his expansion of war making independent of Congressional authorization.
The word "Hope" so prominent on the President's 2008 campaign posters has been revised, so it seems, to "Nope". "Yes We Can" is now "No I Won't" (indict Wall Street bankers, seek Congressional approval for drones, promote a single payer health care plan, etc.) 
