ACLU/CCR Lawsuit challenges Obama administration’s “targeted killing” of US citizens

[Panaconda]

Rights Groups File Challenge To Targeted Killing By U.S.

August 30, 2010

ACLU And CCR Charge That Practice Violates The Constitution And International Law

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) today filed a lawsuit challenging the government's asserted authority to carry out “targeted killings” of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone.

The authority contemplated by the Obama administration is far broader than what the Constitution and international law allow, the groups charge. Outside of armed conflict, both the Constitution and international law prohibit targeted killing except as a last resort to protect against concrete, specific and imminent threats of death or serious physical injury. An extrajudicial killing policy under which names are added to CIA and military “kill lists” through a secret executive process and stay there for months at a time is plainly not limited to imminent threats.

“The United States cannot simply execute people, including its own citizens, anywhere in the world based on its own say-so,” said Vince Warren, Executive Director of CCR. “The law prohibits the government from killing without trial or conviction other than in the face of an imminent threat that leaves no time for deliberation or due process. That the government adds people to kill lists after a bureaucratic process and leaves them on the lists for months at a time flies in the face of the Constitution and international law.”

The groups charge that targeting individuals for execution who are suspected of terrorism but have not been convicted or even charged – without oversight, judicial process or disclosed standards for placement on kill lists – also poses the risk that the government will erroneously target the wrong people. In recent years, the U.S. government has detained many men as terrorists, only for courts or the government itself to discover later that the evidence was wrong or unreliable.

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http://www.aclu.org/national-security/rights-groups-file-challenge-targeted-killing-us

[ThomWV]

1. No reading of the Constitution can give the President this power

and in fact using it makes him a common murderer.

[sabrina 1]

2. Imagine if Bush did this. I'm coming to believe that the 'left'

is what the rightwingers I used to fight with, told me they were, hypocritical. When Bush was in the WH progressive boards lit up whenever he did something that violated our and international laws.

But now, there is virtual silence from the left when this most abhorrent violation of our laws is coming from their team.

I am so glad the ACLU has not changed ITS position on these laws because there appears to be no one else willing to defend this country's laws. Right and Left, increasingly the similarities are more noticable than the differences.

[Panaconda]

3. Maybe it's necessary to differentiate between

what is actually the left and what is referred to in mass media and political parlor discussions as "the left."

Much of what people call "the left" is an orchestrated misperception. It results from the common but erroneous lumping together of liberals et al & socialists et al, & conceiving of both these 2 groups as residing in one big tent called "The Left." In reality, socialists are NOT merely a species of "strident & angry-sounding" liberal Democrats. The 2 groups have fundamentally opposed orientations towards almost everything, from capitalism & the real character of the 2-party system, to their views of the forces driving history & determining social and economic structures.

In most ways, socialists & liberals are more genuinely opposed to one another than liberals & conservatives. (Indeed, liberals and conservatives jointly comprise the Established Order, while socialists seek to overthrow that order.)

Another consideration is that since leftists desire a genuine transformation of society, leftists are necessarily involved in a far more theoretical & speculative enterprise than are most liberals. There are no perfect manuals or street-maps written that lay out exactly how to get where leftists want to go. Therefore, there is necessarily more room for differences of opinion, even among those who seriously desire the leftwards transformation of society.

The confusion on this point then causes someone to see the "the left" as identified by liberalism rather than what the left really is.

[sabrina 1]

4. Well, I was thinking more of all the people I remember on

DU and other Democratic boards during the Bush administration. An OP like this if the president was Bush, would have had hundreds of recs and probably hundreds of outraged comments.

Where did all those people go? Did they all leave DU after Democrats won? Were they replaced by a whole new 'community'? Or were they just pretending to be outraged over human rights, the violation of our laws etc. when Republicans were responsible for them, and now it's okay because it's Democrats?

It's remarkable that now we actually have people on this board DEFENDING these violations of International Laws when just a few years ago they would have been thoroughly outraged. I am just puzzled by what I see in the small world of political blogs and the excuses I'm seeing for war crimes etc. We trashed Freepers for doing this when Bush was president.

[Hannah Bell]

5. bush *did* do it. most presidents have.

PDF] Targeted Killing as an Element of U.S. Foreign Policy in the War ...
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
by MAJMJ Machon - Cited by 2 - Related articles
4 David Johnston and David E. Sanger, “Bush Authorized Targeted Killings,” The New York. Times, 6 November 2002. 5 Josh Meyer, “CIA Expands Use of Drones in ...
www.fas.org/irp/eprint/machon.pdf - SimilarAssassination - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


An assassination is the targeted killing of a public figure, ...... the CIA from assassinations, was relaxed by the George W. Bush administration. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination - Cached - Similar

The Bush administration is not the first to attempt this sort of operation. Experts say President Clinton relaxed the executive order banning assassinations to allow for targeted killings. In 1998, following evidence that al-Qaeda was behind twin bombings of the U.S. embassies in Sudan and Tanzania, Clinton ordered a missile strike on an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and a factory in Sudan...

http://www.cfr.org/publication/9627/targeted_killings.html.


all those cia murders of foreign leaders circa 50s & 60s, for example...and the ones we didn't hear about....


our presidents are murderers, in that sense...all big power politicians are. & some small power ones too.

murder is a standard operating tool of politics.

[sabrina 1]

6. Yes, I know they've been doing it for a long time.

But they tried to keep it quiet. What I meant about 'if Bush did it' was how blatantly the announcement that this administration had ordered the assassination of an American citizen. As if it was an acceptable thing to do.

I know there were reports of Bush doing it, and there was a huge uproar on Democratic boards.

But this OP eg, has only a few comments. Democrats seem to have lost their sense of outrage over crimes like this.

[Hannah Bell]

7. yeah, they do seem more out in the open with it. & because the media doesn't act like it's shameful

the public doesn't seem to think it is either.

or at least we don't hear from those segments of the population who still think it's shameful, horrific, anti-american, anti-democratic.

[H2O Man]

8. Recommended.

I support the ACLU. And I think the CCR is the best!