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EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans

Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

MMC said:
So says Holder and Obama[/B][/COLOR]. What do you think about arguments that carry no statute or court decisions that justifies it conclusions? Myself, I don't think winging it and arguing that the President doesn't have to explain himself while not addressing the issue of ANY Official that can make the call. Explains anything but to show the deflection Holder comes with.
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If you had read the document then you would know that at least two Supreme Court decisions were cited. The criteria layed out by the Justice Department are the following:

1. "Where an informed, high-level official of the US government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States."

2. "Where a capture operation would be infeasible - and where those conducting the operation continue to monitor whether capture becomes feasible."

3. "Where such an operation would be conducted consistent with applicable law of war principles."

In short, if they can't be captured; kill them. I don't see the problem and this principle is exercised every day in routine police action.
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

Napoleon said:
If you had read the document then you would know that at least two Supreme Court decisions were cited. The criteria layed out by the Justice Department are the following:

1. "Where an informed, high-level official of the US government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States."

2. "Where a capture operation would be infeasible - and where those conducting the operation continue to monitor whether capture becomes feasible."

3. "Where such an operation would be conducted consistent with applicable law of war principles."

In short, if they can't be captured; kill them. I don't see the problem and this principle is exercised every day in routine police action.
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Thus a decision maker determining whether an al-Qa'ida operational leader presents an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States must take into account that....[they] are continually plotting attacks..., that al-Qa'ida would engage in such attacks regularly...; that the U.S government may not be aware of all...plots...and thus cannot be confident that none will occur...

With this understanding, a high-level official could conclude...that an individual poses an "imminent threat"...[based upon] that member's current involvement....."

In essence, by nature of being named a member of al-Qa'ida or "associated group" (which is left undefined), you can automatically be assumed to pose an "imminent threat", and no intelligence of a specific threat is necessary......snip~
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ



This would be relevant with the use of Drones!
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

MMC said:
Thus a decision maker determining whether an al-Qa'ida operational leader presents an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States must take into account that....[they] are continually plotting attacks..., that al-Qa'ida would engage in such attacks regularly...; that the U.S government may not be aware of all...plots...and thus cannot be confident that none will occur...

With this understanding, a high-level official could conclude...that an individual poses an "imminent threat"...[based upon] that member's current involvement....."

In essence, by nature of being named a member of al-Qa'ida or "associated group" (which is left undefined), you can automatically be assumed to pose an "imminent threat", and no intelligence of a specific threat is necessary......snip~
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Nice hatchet job but lets cut to the core of the issue. If you're a moron like Anwar al-Awlaki and post videos, web pages, and send emails on the Internet declaring your own involvement with Al Qaeda and plotting attacks against the United States and you cannot be captured then you will be killed. There is also a strong case to be made that such actions constitute latae sententiae revocation of citizenship under the law.
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

Napoleon said:
Nice hatchet job but lets cut to the core of the issue. If you're a moron like Anwar al-Awlaki and post videos, web pages, and send emails on the Internet declaring your own involvement with Al Qaeda and plotting attacks against the United States and you cannot be captured then you will be killed. There is also a strong case to be made that such actions constitute latae sententiae revocation of citizenship under the law.
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Nah.....I am not a moron. But you can call me what you like you. Just don't call me late for supper. Otherwise it's your azz!
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The completeness of the administration’s public accounts of its legal arguments was also sharply criticized last month by U.S. Judge Colleen McMahon in response to a lawsuit brought by the New York Times and the ACLU seeking access to the Justice Department memos on drone strikes targeting Americans under the Freedom of Information Act. McMahon, describing herself as being caught in a “veritable Catch-22,” said she was unable to order the release of the documents given “the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for the conclusion a secret.”

In her ruling, McMahon noted that administration officials “had engaged in public discussion of the legality of targeted killing, even of citizens.” But, she wrote, they have done so “in cryptic and imprecise ways, generally without citing … any statute or court decision that justifies its conclusions.”

In one passage in Holder’s speech at Northwestern in March, he alluded – without spelling out—that there might be circumstances where the president might order attacks against American citizens without specific knowledge of when or where an attack against the U.S. might take place.

“The Constitution does not require the president to delay action until some theoretical end-stage of planning, when the precise time, place and manner of an attack become clear,” he said.

The white paper also includes a more extensive discussion of why targeted strikes against Americans does not violate constitutional protections afforded American citizens as well as a U.S. law that criminalizes the killing of U.S. nationals overseas.

It also discusses why such targeted killings would not be a war crime or violate a U.S. executive order banning assassinations.....snip~

Only fools rush in! :shock:
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

MMC said:
Nah.....I am not a moron. But you can call me what you like you. Just don't call me late for supper. Otherwise it's your azz!
shades.gif
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I'll try to remember that. ;)

MMC said:
The completeness of the administration’s public accounts of its legal arguments was also sharply criticized last month by U.S. Judge Colleen McMahon in response to a lawsuit brought by the New York Times and the ACLU seeking access to the Justice Department memos on drone strikes targeting Americans under the Freedom of Information Act. McMahon, describing herself as being caught in a “veritable Catch-22,” said she was unable to order the release of the documents given “the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for the conclusion a secret.”
In her ruling, McMahon noted that administration officials “had engaged in public discussion of the legality of targeted killing, even of citizens.” But, she wrote, they have done so “in cryptic and imprecise ways, generally without citing … any statute or court decision that justifies its conclusions.”
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I don't know what document McMahon was reading but the White Paper cites Mullaney v. Wilbur, People v. Frye, United States v. White, Tennessee v. Garner, Scott v. Harris, Mathews v. Eldridge, etc. etc.
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

Napoleon said:
I'll try to remember that. ;)



I don't know what document McMahon was reading but the White Paper cites Mullaney v. Wilbur, People v. Frye, United States v. White, Tennessee v. Garner, Scott v. Harris, Mathews v. Eldridge, etc. etc.
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I think it was the case she was holding.....as she stated Team Obama presented no statutes or no justified case to argue with. Moreover it is the Democrats that are going after this. Maybe they don't want Drones to be watching what they are doing all based on some alleged threat.
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

Let's call the Obama Administration what it is.

Fascist.
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

MMC said:
I think it was the case she was holding.....as she stated Team Obama presented no statutes or no justified case to argue with.
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She was presiding over a FOIA case in which the NYT and ACLU were suing to get their hands on the documents. She never saw them either so she wouldn't know what the Obama Administration's internal legal arguments for the practice were/are. The purpose of the lawsuit was not to decide the legality of such actions anyway; merely to collect information.


MMC said:
Maybe they don't want Drones to be watching what they are doing all based on some alleged threat.
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I don't live in a paranoid Orwellian fantasyland. I'm a Democrat, and I don't care if some pencil pusher in the CIA knows what I ate for lunch today. If taking video footage of me eating chicken nuggets makes someone feel safer then so be it.
 
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Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

Napoleon said:
She was presiding over a FOIA case in which the NYT and ACLU were suing to get their hands on the documents. She never saw them either so she wouldn't know what the Obama Administration's internal legal arguments for the practice were/are. The purpose of the lawsuit was not to decide the legality of such actions anyway; merely to collect information.

I don't live in a paranoid Orwellian fantasyland. I'm a Democrat, and I don't care if some pencil pusher in the CIA knows what I ate for lunch today. If taking video footage of me eating chicken nuggets makes someone feel safer then so be it.
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"Ah".....yeah I have family that are Democrats, moreos on the Irish side. Course the Sicilian side tends to lean more to the Right. But hey, we can be very social. :lol:

They did have to file the Petition.....which would be citing statutes and case within their arguments. Yet they know now from the memo. Hence her response and the Demos jumping over it.

Well why you may not care.....there are many others that do. As some can see other issues that are correlated to this one. Such as NDAA.
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

Dittohead not! said:
I don't see how anyone, regardless of their "lean" could possibly support giving the presidency a license to kill.

(Don't we have at least two other threads on this same subject now?)
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Well it's not necessarily a "license to kill", that is the problem. Governors have the power of life and death in their hands, and the President is authorized to full executive powers within the confines of the Constitution. It's the unchecked power without oversight or balance that is the problem. Our system was designed to set faction upon faction to check each other. Here (like in so many other areas), the President apparently believes that system to be too confining for all the "fundamental change" he wants to make to America.
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

Napoleon said:
I don't live in a paranoid Orwellian fantasyland. I'm a Democrat, and I don't care if some pencil pusher in the CIA knows what I ate for lunch today. If taking video footage of me eating chicken nuggets makes someone feel safer then so be it.
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Heck Yeah - Fourth Amendment Smourth Amendment, am I right!?!
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

justabubba said:
if someone is involved with the enemy of my nation - regardless of their place of birth - they have become an enemy target
whether by drone or other military weapon

surprised so many of the reich wing are opposed to our military's eradicating enemy forces
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The part that bothers me on this is that the government said it needs no intelligence to back it up. If you are an American citizen and your government has targeted you for your actions, you still have your rights to defend you. If you are guilty then you deserve the punishment you get.

The government is forbidden to be judge, jury and executioner without any proof to back up their claim...... and that is OK with you to happen without due process?

In this specific case the government gives itself permission to violate those peoples Constitutional rights? Just on their say so? Without evidence to back it up? Really?
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

sawyerloggingon said:
I have never understood obamas duplicitous policies on terrorist. If we catch one they get a trial and are afforded all the rights of a criminal that held up a liquor store but if we find where a suspected terrorist is hiding we kill him and everyone around him, makes no sense to me.
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What makes even less sense is that the Obama administration wants known terrorists to stand trial here in the US (with full US rights) but wants to justify killing Americans abroad who are just suspected of working with the terrorists without any proof to justify the assassination.
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

Krhazy said:
I don't think it says anything like that. The memo says they need to have evidence that the person is a senior-level official engaged in continuing planning of attacks (it specifically says that evidence they were once involved in a one-time attack is not sufficient). And the memo only covers the situation of an American in a foreign country.
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It says nothing of the sort, in fact it says that intelligence is not needed;

A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” -- even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.
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Such is the case with Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki, a 16 year old born in Denver whose father was killed by drone strike on Sept 30, 2011....Abdulrahman who had no known ties to any organization was killed in a drone strike on Oct 14, 2011 while eating at an outside cafe.

There was no evidence he was associated with any group but was the target of a drone strike. The Obama administration tried to push blame of this onto the boys father (who was killed in Yemen by a drone strike stating - "I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well-being of their children," former White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs said to a gaggle of reporters in October. "I don't think becoming an al-Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business."
So because the boys father was associated with a known group, it is automatically assumed the boy is too?

Republican Rep. Ron Paul criticized the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, saying: “Al-Awlaki was born here, he is an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes. No one knows if he killed anybody. ... But if the American people accept this blindly and casually that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I think it's sad.”
 
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Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

Dr. Chuckles said:
What I find the most interesting part of this debate is how deeply it's shaped by politics. I can almost guarantee if we had a republican in the white house, the majority (not everyone)of posters here would be giving the exact opposite argument on such a drone program

It's sad how partisan we have become
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If we had a Republican in the White House, he might respect the constitution and might not do this. Might....
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

cpwill said:
Well it's not necessarily a "license to kill", that is the problem. Governors have the power of life and death in their hands, and the President is authorized to full executive powers within the confines of the Constitution. It's the unchecked power without oversight or balance that is the problem. Our system was designed to set faction upon faction to check each other. Here (like in so many other areas), the President apparently believes that system to be too confining for all the "fundamental change" he wants to make to America.
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You hit the Nail on the head Cpwill and Obama has had no problem thinking he can proceed on everything thinking he can go unchecked.

Do you think that NDAA with this issue should be a concern for all American Citizens?
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

justabubba said:
all of it squandered


war crimes - especially torture - that many of us who were not from the reich wing, wanted brought to international justice. that free pass by Obama was his first major disappointing decision (of many to follow)

yep, invading the wrong country. fabricating a basis to invade. insisting the VP's former firm (which was still paying him) was the only candidate to perform as a contractor - and then given a no-bid, sole source contract used to defraud the government


all it was was: torture. which was against international law and treaties we signed


an American who is also on the side of our nation's enemy is our nation's military enemy. someone we can take out like any other enemy soldier. that's all the memo was about
you want to make it into something more because it is something Obama appropriated; therefor, to you and your cohort, you must be opposed to it. the same folks who were totally in dicknbush's corner when it came to torture. save your sanctimonious bull ****


if they survived the battlefield they were either POWs or enemy conspirators entitled to trial. i take it you would have preferred them as POWs ... to be held until the 'war on terror' was officially ended. tell us when that will be


only once they are captured and off the battle field. then they get the rights of anyone who goes to court. but you would prefer to wipe your ass with the Constitution


please point out the hypocrisy, as you and your ilk know it first hand
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It got him bin Laden.
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

cpwill said:
Heck Yeah - Fourth Amendment Smourth Amendment, am I right!?!
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The conservative response in the Bush era was "If you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to worry about".
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

TheNextEra said:
The conservative response in the Bush era was "If you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to worry about".
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And my response to that was "If I am doing nothing wrong, then what I do is none of the government's f'n business".
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

American said:
EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans - Open Channel



How far can the government go? What happens if they find that this situation within the continental US? Where could this go?
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The MEMO is talking about American citizens no longer living in the states who have joined up with al-Quaida or similar and are considered a "senior operational leaders".

1. It's a MEMO making the case for a policy.

2. If you leave the U.S. and join up with al-Quaida and become a "senior operational leader", then you are an enemy of the United States.

3. I have a hard time believing any Congressman or Senator who support rendition, enhanced interrogation, or any number of Patriot Act policies would have a problem with killing an terrorist enemy of the United States before they can plan an attack.

If you're in war and you suddenly change sides and begin working with the enemy, do you have the right to scream "but I'm an American" as your former squad guns you down?

Your comments seem like the typical anti-Obama nonsense that has become too common in the last 4 years. You don't even respect the right of your country to protect you from an enemy (that happens to hold a U.S. Passport).

Re: your continental U.S. hypothetical. Think about it, if a senior operational leader of al-Quaida is in the U.S., he better be here standing trial or giving up intel. If you've completely given yourself over to religious extremism and the U.S. is your sworn enemy, then your 'citizenship' is a moot point.
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

danarhea said:
And my response to that was "If I am doing nothing wrong, then what I do is none of the government's f'n business".
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And you would be correct in saying that. I just find it odd that those that agreed with Bush doing things like this are all of a sudden outraged when a Dem is doing similiar things. Also, I am equally suprised at those that criticized this with Bush, giving a free pass to Obama.

Wrong is wrong, regardless of political affiliation.
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

TheNextEra said:
The conservative response in the Bush era was "If you don't have anything to hide, you have nothing to worry about".
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And the liberal response to the Obama era is "we should be able to do everything that we said was wrong for Bush to do... plus a little extra."
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

Jack Fabulous said:
And the liberal response to the Obama era is "we should be able to do everything that we said was wrong for Bush to do... plus a little extra."
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See my post above. My point is the hypcrisy on both sides is disgusting.
 
Re: EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americ

Why is it that drone strikes are only allowed against Islamic trouble makers? Shouldn't we be allowed to take out birthers and anti-abortion nuts as well?
 
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