If it pisses off an ACLU attorney, it has to be good...

[Van]

...and this is nothing short of beautiful.

http://news.yahoo.com/killing-americans ... 35475.html

[mvscal]

More importantly, it is sure to create some wailing and gnashing of teeth among Platelip Odowngrade's base. Nobody else gives a fuck.

Screwy is probably weeping into his jizz mop right about now.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

Your president Obama keeps kicking Al Queda's ass...

Fuck...what is he? Some kind of super-hero?

:x

Damn you, Obama!

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

That's right...go cry in your tampon, mv.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

You too, Van.

Toss your wife a bail of hay and celebrate as you swab her bedsores.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

[mvscal]

Goat raping asswipe gets greased, Martard melts.

Nothing could be more predictable.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

Goat raping asswipe gets greased, Martard melts.

Nothing could be more predictable.

OF COURSE I'M MELTING!

Your Murderer In Chief has to stop killing my freedom loving brothers NOW!

[Carson]

I find it ironic that the Bush Administration had Mullah Omar in the crosshairs but some JAG told them don't do it.

Yet the Bush team should be brought up for war crimes.

Obama is a two-faced fuckhead for this one.

[Van]

88, so when Obama's mouthpieces, as well as W's before him, say that their legal experts went over the issue with a finetooth comb and found it to be entirely legal, to what are they referring?

[Diego in Seattle]

88;
I think the problem here is that we're in uncharted waters here. We've simply never been at war before with an unnamed enemy (which can't be named for obvious reasons). Is this a case where POTUS has to declare a state of war formally before something like this whacking happens?

[mvscal]

I am trying to be objective on this one. On one hand, Anwar al-Awlaki was unquestionably a shit-head and the Earth is a better place now that he is dead. On the other hand, he was a U.S. citizen who was deprived of his life by the U.S. government without due process of law.

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that "No person shall ... be deprived of life ... without due process of law." There does not appear to be much wiggle room in the Constitution that would allow the government to whack asshole U.S. citizens without Due Process. I cannot find anything in the Constittution that would give the President the authority to order the killing of a U.S. citizen, no matter how much of an asshole the President thinks the citizen is. The same is true for Congress.

My gut tells me that this is a bad precedent and something that will eventually find its way into the U.S. civil court system (42 U.S.C. §1983 anyone?). I kind of hope the courts determine that the United States does not have the authority to whack U.S. citizens it finds to be assholes without due process of law. Perhaps Congress could pass a statute that would allow the government to indict a U.S. citizen who is alleged to be an asshole and tried in abstentia, if necessary, and have his conviction appealed before an order from a court permitting the whackage could be carried out. Just a thought.

We don't require court orders to kill enemy combatants. His citizenship is irrelevant.

[Van]

88, the verbiage I've read as their justification is that Congress declared war on Al Queda, and this buttsniff has clearly identified himself as an enemy combatant plotting to kill U.S. citizens.

That one doesn't hold water with you?

[Carson]

I don't think Jsc has been seen in world-wide videos proclaiming death to America.

Obama, on the other hand...

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

First they came for shutyomouth, but I wasn't an obese mental-case...
...so I said nothing.


Then they came for Van, but I wasn't a verbose, shut-in douche...
...so I said nothing.

[MiketheangrydrunkenCUfan]

I think the method they used is going to be the biggest problem. If they had sent in a Navy SEAL team like they did with bin Laden, they could've just claimed that the assholes were "resisting arrest." I'm not unhappy with the outcome, but as 88 very rightly points out, it sets a seriously scary precedent.

[trev]

It is a dangerous precedent, Jsc810. What if the President decides YOU are a terrorist who has aided AQ in crimes against the US? You and your best buddies take that long awaited fishing vacation off the coast of Venezuala and your cabin cruiser gets smoked by a Predator missile

1. C'est la vie.

2. Choose a safer place to fish.

[Truman]

First they came for shutyomouth, but I wasn't an obese mental-case...
...so I said nothing.


Then they came for Van, but I wasn't a verbose, shut-in douche...
...so I said nothing.

Wishful thinking, Tovarisch. We'da already carted off the Reds...

[mvscal]

It is a dangerous precedent,

What nonsense. Switch his nationality to Yemeni and does the President now suddenly have the authority to kill him? Your argument is, quite frankly, pitifully stupid. You're smarter than that.

[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

That clown was undeniably a member of an organization (al Qadea) which was responsible for the 9/11 attack and he was a person killed "in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States." He was actively engaged in levying war against the United States. The notion that we require some sort of due process before killing such people is completely asinine.

He was an enemy combatant and a casualty of war not the victim of some sort of extrajudicial punishment. His nationality is completely and totally irrelevant.

[mvscal]

And I'm glad that the ACLU will challenge it so that it will be properly vetted out, the issue deserves that.

I believe they already did.

U.S. District Judge John Bates refused to intervene in al-Awlaki's case.

"This court recognizes the somewhat unsettling nature of its conclusion — that there are circumstances in which the executive's unilateral decision to kill a U.S. citizen overseas is 'constitutionally committed to the political branches' and judicially unreviewable," Bates wrote. "But this case squarely presents such a circumstance."

Congress has granted the executive the authority to use military force against people like this. It's clearly an act of war.

[BSmack]

The precedent for this action is as old as the Republic. The Whiskey Rebellion out front should have told you that. Never mind the Civil War.