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Ron Paul: US-born al-Qaida cleric 'assassinated'

The way you put it...its an excellent question..its a tough call...my first reaction was good im glad he got whacked and Im still glad btw he was not a good guy..nor was he an american...he may have been a citizen...but he was no american.
However, you are right in posing the question is it right to execute american citizens.

if they declare war on you, absolutely. i don't recall the federal forces attempting to arrest southern armies during the civil war - despite the fact that they maintained that each and every one of those individuals was an american citizen.

you declare jihad on the United States, we will declare a jihad on you right back. and we have Predator drones :D.
 
Ron Paul did have a valid point, but his claim that Al-Awlaki "might" have been a radical terrorist is not only blind stupidity, but shows how he's very unelectable
 
It's not an opinion that serving in a group that is waging war against the United States is treason and punishable by death.

Once you are tried and found guilty.

I believe that due process was well-served, when you consider the fact that there is no question that awlaki was guilty of treason.

Nor is there a question as to what Jared Lee Loughner did but he will get a trial.
 
What was the verdict in KSM's trial? Oh, wait he hasn't been tried, because we've spent nearly 9 years trying to figure out exactly what are beliefs are, so we can feel all warm and fuzzy about giving him a fair trial.

KSM does not have a Constitutional right to a trial. We have always taken prisoners of war and simply held them.
 
For those who are upset about Anwar Al-Awlaki being killed by drones, would you have a problem if he had been captured and taken to Gitmo? If so, where was your rage when Himdy Yaser, a man born in Baton Rouge, LA, was detained at Gitmo and when Jose Padilla (born in Brooklyn, NY) was detained in a military brig. The left was decrying these actions loudly at that that time saying that these men deserved due process since they were US citizens and the US had them in custody.

Yaser is prisoner #746 at this link to DOD list of prisoners at Gitmo from 2002 to 2006 (PDF): http://www.dod.mil/news/May2006/d20060515 List.pdf

Here is proof GWB's administration knew Hamdi was a US citizen and had gone to court (Himdy had filed the case) arguing his status as an enemy combatant had stripped him of his rights to habeus corpus and due process: HAMDI et al. v. RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, et al :: 542 U.S. 507 :: 2004 :: Full Text :: US Supreme Court Cases from Justia & Oyez)

Here is proof that the GWB's administration knew Padilla was a US citizen and the opinion of the SCOTUS that Padilla's due process rights had been violated by imprisoning him in a military jail and attempting to try him in a military court: RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE v. PADILLA et al :: 542 U.S. 426 :: 2004 :: US Supreme Court Cases from Justia & Oyez
 
You mess with the bull, you get the horns.

Al-Awlaki knew which side he was on. He signed up to fight for the enemy. Sorry, I can't muster any sympathy; my Give-a-Damn's all busted.

Obama is mostly following the policies of the previous administration (which he criticized to no end), and I congratulate him--and especially our military--for their successes.

It isn't about Al-Awlaki.
 
Ron Paul did have a valid point, but his claim that Al-Awlaki "might" have been a radical terrorist is not only blind stupidity, but shows how he's very unelectable

I really hate this type of talk also BUT it's actually how officials must address those accused of things until found guilty. Unfortunately, Loughner is still an alleged shooter.
 
Seems Ron Paul thought too many folks were seeing him as more-mainstream, so he had to do something to remind us that he is essentially a kook.

Folks, if an American citizen, in Pudunk, Iowa, gets a gun, and takes hostages in an McD's because he didn't get any ketchup with his fries, what is the "due process" ? If he whacks a hostage, what is the due process ? If he threatens to whack more, what is the due process ? At what point is he due the process of a sniper bullet doing process through his brain ?

Whacking Al-Dirtbag is not that dissimilar. To think otherwise, as Ron Loon Paul has done, is to suspend common sense. Had Al-Dirtbag been able to engineer the detonation of a small nuke in a town larger than Podunk, and kill maybe 250K or more, then lets anticipate cheering President Ron Paul when he visits ground zero in a nuke suit saying "We followed due process".

OBTW, were such to happen, and the Founders able to come back from the grave, they would shoot Ron Paul.
 
except it is about the specifics of his case.

when you declare war against the United States of America, you are renouncing your citizenship. it is not worth the lives of citizens who are still citizens of this nation to hold on to the fiction that you did not.
 
For those who are upset about Anwar Al-Awlaki being killed by drones, would you have a problem if he had been captured and taken to Gitmo?

I don't think anyone is upset that he was killed by drones.

If so, where was your rage when Himdy Yaser, a man born in Baton Rouge, LA, was detained at Gitmo and when Jose Padilla (born in Brooklyn, NY) was detained in a military brig. The left was decrying these actions loudly at that that time saying that these men deserved due process since they were US citizens and the US had them in custody.

They both were ruled to have Constitutional rights, no? Padilla was tried and found guilty. Yaser was deported after voluntarily giving up his citizenship. The Bush administration was wrong to have held them without a trial and the courts said so.

It's wrong to hold a citizen without a trial but not to kill them?
 
except it is about the specifics of his case.

when you declare war against the United States of America, you are renouncing your citizenship. it is not worth the lives of citizens who are still citizens of this nation to hold on to the fiction that you did not.

The courts have ruled specifically what must happen for a citizen to lose their rights and that has not happened.
 
The courts have ruled specifically what must happen for a citizen to lose their rights and that has not happened.

:shrug: i really couldn't care less what the courts have ruled in this case - the citizen retains his sovereignty, which means he is free to dispose of his citizenship as he see's fit with or without the courts' approval. al-Awlaki chose to remove his, and that was his right. then he chose to declare war on the US, and that was his right too. so we chose to kill him, and that was our right as well.
 
:shrug: i really couldn't care less what the courts have ruled in this case - the citizen retains his sovereignty, which means he is free to dispose of his citizenship as he see's fit with or without the courts' approval. al-Awlaki chose to remove his, and that was his right. then he chose to declare war on the US, and that was his right too. so we chose to kill him, and that was our right as well.

He never chose to remove his rights as a citizen. Just because you feel he is no longer deserving of the protections doesn't count. This is the same position the Bush administration took concerning Padilla and the courts ruled he was wrong.
 
It isn't. It's about the big picture whether or not the United States can kill citizens without due process.

Back in April 2010, the President added this guy to the CIA Kill List at their specific request. That was reported in the news. What? Oh, well. The people's right to know, I guess. The ACLU and his father filed suit on the specific grounds that it was illegal to target an American citizen.

The U.S. District Court threw the case out, and the lawsuit's dead. The court's position was that it was not up to the courts to decide if an American citizen was an enemy combatant; it was up to the President, in this case.

"There are circumstances in which the (president's) unilateral decision to kill a U.S. citizen overseas is constitutionally committed to the political branches and judicially unreviewable," U.S. District Judge John Bates concluded last year.

Read more: Some question president's power to kill a US citizen overseas - KansasCity.com

Had al-Awlaki been in the battlefield "shooting back," he would have been a legal target. The United States (and the rest of the world) has never taken the position that an enemy combatant must be in the battlefield to be targetted. He was not targetted for being a propogandist, but because he had gone operational.

From the Director of National Intelligence last year:

Blair's public testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in February 2010 amounted to the first confirmation that the Obama administration had procedures in place to lethally target Americans. The officials can cite, in part, a 1942 Supreme Court case in which justices reasoned that the U.S. citizenship of an enemy belligerent "does not relieve him from the consequences" of war.

Read more: Some question president's power to kill a US citizen overseas - KansasCity.com

I'm quite confident that this was amply reviewed beforehand -- by the US District Court and Congressional Hearings. The check-and-balance in this instance would be impeachment, and that is not going to happen.
 
He never chose to remove his rights as a citizen. Just because you feel he is no longer deserving of the protections doesn't count. This is the same position the Bush administration took concerning Padilla and the courts ruled he was wrong.

I do not believe it the same at all. All issues concerning Bush and combatants, etc., had to do with their rights once in US custody. The "due process" afforded in custody.

Were Al-Dirtbag in custody, or it had been deemed that he could have easily been taken into custody, then this issue has more traction. But those things did not occur.
 
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Back in April 2010, the President added this guy to the CIA Kill List at their specific request. That was reported in the news. What? Oh, well. The people's right to know, I guess. The ACLU and his father filed suit on the specific grounds that it was illegal to target an American citizen.

The U.S. District Court threw the case out, and the lawsuit's dead. The court's position was that it was not up to the courts to decide if an American citizen was an enemy combatant; it was up to the President, in this case.

The USSC has ruled otherwise.

Had al-Awlaki been in the battlefield "shooting back," he would have been a legal target. The United States (and the rest of the world) has never taken the position that an enemy combatant must be in the battlefield to be targetted. He was not targetted for being a propogandist, but because he had gone operational.

It would be a different question if he had been killed while fighting with the enemy as opposed to being specifically targeted for assassination.

I'm quite confident that this was amply reviewed beforehand -- by the US District Court and Congressional Hearings. The check-and-balance in this instance would be impeachment, and that is not going to happen.

Bush was not impeached when the courts ruled that he was wrong concerning Padilla.
 
I do not believe it the same at all. All issues concerning Bush and combatanats, etc., had to do with their rights once in US custody. The "due process" afforded in custody.

Were Al-Dirtbag in custody, or it had been deemed that he could have easily been taken into custody, then this issue has more traction. But those things did not occur.

A trial could have deemed it all moot. I would have had no problem if he had been tried with the government argueing he was a threat to the U.S. and there was no reasonable chance of capturing him.
 
He never chose to remove his rights as a citizen

indeed he did. this goes at the very root of what we believe society is. either it is sovereign individuals who choose to enter into social contract with each other, or it is not. al-awlaki declared himself in a state of war with the United States. :shrug: not our fault he made that call.
 
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This entire al-Awlaki thing is wrong and extremely dangerous for all US citizens. al-Awlaki was still as US citizen when he was killed (Was Anwar al-Awlaki still a U.S. citizen? | FP Passport). Now, the ability to kill US citizens “if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests.” originally came from Bush (U.S. military teams, intelligence deeply involved in aiding Yemen on strikes), but this was illegal as in 1981, then-President Reagan issued an Executive Order (Executive Order 12333 - United States Intelligence Activities) which stated that "No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination. However, President Bush did it and Obama continues to do it. The serious problems come in when one takes into account 2 things: the fact that al-Awlaki was still a US citizen and therefore had rights and the fact that the President can now name anyone a terrorist.

The fact that al-Awlaki was still a US citizen at the time of his death means that he still had the rights of an American. The Constitution (U.S. Constitution - Article 3 Section 3 - The U.S. Constitution Online - USConstitution.net) defines treason as "consist[ing] only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court." We do not know whether or not al-Awlaki actually did what he was being accused of because the US government is not going to give out any of the evidence. Further, when one realizes that the US government can declare anyone a terrorist (Rounding Up U.S. Citizens » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names) such as "Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush’s [or Obama's] list of 'terrorist' organizations, or who speaks out against the government’s policies could be declared an 'unlawful enemy combatant' and imprisoned indefinitely," this means bad news for US citizens. This means that the government can declare US citizens to be terrorists, not give the information condemning them, not hold a trial to prove them innocent, and send in a drone (or whatever) to kill them. The al-Awlaki assassination is dangerous as it sets a precedent, thus from here on out, any US citizen who the government deems a terrorist and kills, the government can justify the killing by saying that the al-Awlaki assassination sets a precedent and thus it is therefore legal for the US government to kill its own citizens.

EDIT: Also, al-Awlaki cannot lawfully be accused of treason as there must be "the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court," according to the Constitution.
 
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worth noting - that's not a full quote of Reagan's E.O. He was modifying the original "thou shalt not assasinate" executive order from Truman to include the provision that "however, any action taken in good faith by an agent on an other wise approved mission" can be considered free of the implications of Trumans original order.

IE: we can't assassinate anyone. unless we really want to. :D
 
Again, Mr. Invisible, that is horse manure. As noted, such as SWAT teams can but a bullet through a perp's head if they deem, in the due process between their ears, that the perp poses an imminent threat to causing the death of an innocent.

We do allow non-judicial "due process". All the time.
 
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Again, Mr. Invisible, that is horse manure. As noted, such as SWAT teams can but a bullet through a perp's head if they deem, in the due process between their ears, that the perp poses an imminent threat to causing the death of an innocent.

We do allow non-judicial "due process". All the time.

Actually it is not, but if you want to have more of your rights and liberties stripped away by the government, be my guest.
 
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