just so ya know...and yeah..this happened while we were on the road, so we missed it.. ------------- 5/24/2014 The Obama adminstration refused to disclose the legal reasoning behind the killing. But thanks to Freedom Information Act lawsuits by The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a redacted version of the Department of Justice memo which outlines the Obama administration’s rationale for killing American citizens abroad without trial is now public. Authored by David Barron — former chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, who has since been appointed by Obama to a federal judgeship — the 41-page document seeks to legitimize so-called targeted killings, a practice Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, vigorously condemned Israel for using against Palestinians during the second intifada. Shout out to Israel This makes it all the more ironic that the Obama administration’s kill memo cites an Israeli Supreme Court decision to justify al-Awlaki’s summary execution. On page 40, the kill memo — using an alternative transliteration for al-Awlaki’s name — states: In addition to the nature of the threat posed by al-Aulaqi’s activities, both agencies here have represented that they intend to capture rather than target al-Aulaqi if feasible; yet we also understand that an operation by either agency to capture al-Aulaqi in Yemen would be infeasible at this time. Below that, the memo cites Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) v. Government of Israel, a 2006 Israeli Supreme Court decision that ruled that the targeted assassinations of hundreds of Palestinians since the start of the second intifada were legal and did not violate international law. The memo provides this as the basis for determining the infeasibility of al-Awlaki’s capture, with the following explanation in parentheses: although arrest, investigation and trial “might actually be particularly practical under the conditions of belligerent occupation, in which the army controls the area in which the operation takes place,” such alternatives “are not means which can always be used,” either because they are impossible or because they involve a great risk to the lives of soldiers.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 02:36:04 +0000
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