Report: Obama Personally Oversees Al-Qaeda ‘Kill List’

[Hissyspit]

Source: AFP

Report: Obama personally oversees Al-Qaeda ‘kill list’

By Agence France-Presse
Tuesday, May 29, 2012 7:20 EDT

US President Barack Obama has personally overseen a top-secret process for determining which Al-Qaeda suspects should be placed on a “kill list,” the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The Times, citing dozens of top officials and former advisers, said the administration had developed what it termed the “kill list” as part of a stepped-up drone war against Al-Qaeda and its affiliates inPakistan and Yemen.

“He is determined that he will make these decisions about how far and wide these operations will go,” it quoted National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon as saying.

“His view is that he’s responsible for the position of the United States in the world… He’s determined to keep the tether pretty short.”

Read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/05/29/report-obama-personally-oversees-al-qaeda-kill-list/

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. I don't know, people.

Things like this make me extremely nervous.

I might take a break sometime later this week to go down to the National Archives and look at the copy of the Magna Carta that David Rubenstein lent to the United States.

Unless it has been removed, on the grounds that it "gives people ideas."

Philanthropy

Rubenstein is among the group of American billionaires who have pledged to donate more than half of their wealth to philanthropic causes or charities as part of The Giving Pledge.

He has made large gifts to Duke University, the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Chicago Law School.

He was elected to the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago on May 31, 2007.

On December 18, 2007, David Rubenstein purchased the last privately owned copy of the Magna Carta at Sotheby's auction house in New York for $21.3 million. He has lent it to the National Archives in Washington D.C. In 2011, Rubenstein gave $13.5 million to the National Archives for a new gallery and visitor's center.

Rubenstein was elected as the next Chairman of the Board of the Kennedy Center, Washington, DC, starting in May 2010. He is Vice Chairman of the Board of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York, and chairman of its fundraising drive. A new atrium was named for him. He is on the board of regents of the Smithsonian Institution.

In 2012, he donated $7.5 million towards the repair of the Washington Monument.

Thanks, David.

[EFerrari]

2. This story is viral today. n/t

[KoKo]

3. This comment from William Daley in the article is very odd...

from the last of the article:

"Obama personally approves the killing of top suspects, such as Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaqi — a US citizen — who was killed by a US drone strike in Yemen last year.

The Times quoted former White House chief of staff William Daley as saying that Obama called the decision to strike Awlaqi “an easy one,” but Daley said some officials had expressed some qualms about the kill list.

“One guy gets knocked off, and the guy’s driver, who’s No. 21, becomes 20?” the Times quoted Daley as saying. “At what point are you just filling the bucket with numbers?”

[frylock]

16. “At what point are you just filling the bucket with numbers?”

nailed it.

[dixiegrrrrl]

20. Well, actually, in a drone attack, the driver, the car,

and anyone around them ( like innocent bystanders) are pretty well chopped up too.
THAT is the problem with bombing, droning, whatever we want to call it these days.
Well, the 2nd problem.
I am still having trouble with the deliberate outright killing of "suspected Americans" with no trial,
and no outline of what proof is used to make the determination.

[may3rd]

49. An war al-Alack

You can say Obama had him goggled.
You should google him too
If you don't know who Anwar al-Awlaqi is or what he said and swore to stand by....

google him;

Anwar al-Awlaqi

[DeSwiss]

23. Also made the list.......

[may3rd]

50. I wonder if Zuckerburg is on the kill list

he did renounce his citizenship also in the pursuits of his beliefs

[boppers]

63. The facebook guy? Mark?

I think you might have your facts confused.

Did you mean Eduardo Saverin?

[NoMittens]

4. Well 'duh'! He IS the Commander in Chief (CIC)!

It would be news if anyone OTHER THAN the CIC oversaw it!

[Enrique]

7. I've been assuming he approves the list

I believe it has been reported before. But some people dispute it, saying the decisions are made further down the chain of command.

[KoKo]

29. It's hard to dismiss this as a RW Attack...this part from the Article:

(Yes...the NYT has been known to exaggerate or even lie (in the case of Judith Miller) but still this article does use quote from identifiable people. If it's lies, then assume the Campaign will promptly offer clarification)

--------------------

"They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”

His first term has seen private warnings from top officials about a “Whac-A-Mole” approach to counterterrorism; the invention of a new category of aerial attack following complaints of careless targeting; and presidential acquiescence in a formula for counting civilian deaths that some officials think is skewed to produce low numbers.

The administration’s failure to forge a clear detention policy has created the impression among some members of Congress of a take-no-prisoners policy. And Mr. Obama’s ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, has complained to colleagues that the C.I.A.’s strikes drive American policy there, saying “he didn’t realize his main job was to kill people,” a colleague said."

[Ohio Joe]

40. "A colleague" is not an identifiable person...

Nor is an anonymous person claiming a specific person said something a way to know that person actually said the thing.

[boppers]

43. "shunned", "metastasizing", "lawyering", "ferocious"....

Yeah, this isn't journalism, it's editorial opinion slinging.

[rug]

52. He's not the Don-in-Chief.

[Occulus]

56. No, the news is that there is a Presidential Kill List at all.

There shouldn't be a PKL. At all.

[bhikkhu]

59. Where there's a war, there's a list

it would be the same with any president. I expect this one to use more care, prudence and restraint than previous ones.

[Neue Regel]

80. America is at war? When did Congress declare war?

The Constitution is very clear about which branch of government can declare of war. Here's a hint: it's not the executive branch.

[boppers]

65. There's always been one, especially during war time.

It's amusing to watch the wool being lifted, the scales falling, (etc.) though.

Of course, it could also just be *shock* and *indignation* for the sake of drama.

[IamK]

5. there was nothing about a kill list on the Nobel Peace Prize nomination form n/t...

[dixiegrrrrl]

19. Well said.

[OnyxCollie]

6. K&R. nt

[Lawlbringer]

8. I don't like that there's a kill list to begin with

but I'm glad it's the head honcho who is really in charge of it.

Unfortunately, we'll have to endure the pelting from the right when it comes to the fact that the list exists (nevermind the fact that it probably existed under Bush) and that the President is sure to use it to target white Ameercuh once he's done, randomly "assassinating" suburbanites who he deems a threat.

Is that what they really think?

[Demoiselle]

34. According to to an NPR newsbroadcast on this earlier today...

Bush didn't sign off on "kills" during his administration, wasn't much interested, he left the decisions to those lower down. But he did express a lot of interest once the kill had been made....
I agree with you, Lawlbringer. I don't like the idea of the kill list, but if we have one, we need to put the responsibility at the very top.

[may3rd]

47. That was mentioned on the radio. The idea of micro managing individuals

as opposed to orders of
"carpet bombing swaths of jungles being dispatched from the oval office simply based on photo interpretations",
means the world has shrunk to a simple face book "friend" page system of checks and balances.
I imagine dispatching
simple camera phones into a war zone is like candy or a mirror to the narcissist wanna be follower trying to get noticed in the right circles.


yes,
we will see how it plays out

[bhikkhu]

9. ...as opposed to turning a blind eye

I would expect him to take all due care and responsibility, and - as they say - keep the program on a very short leash.

[rusty fender]

10. Don't ever trust a politician

to do the right thing. Obama has upped the ante in the droning of "terrorists" and the innocent collateral damage. The next president, likely a Repuke, will undoubtedly have to outdo Obama on this.

[bhikkhu]

11. I always consider the older alternative to drones in war

...which was carpet bombing. Both are pretty bad, and a kill list is pretty bad as well, but the collateral damage in Cambodia back in the 70's (for instance) was a whole different kind of thing.

[Hissyspit]

14. Really? It's one or the other?

http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/the_face_of_collateral_damage

[bhikkhu]

51. No, its not one or the other

but I don't know what I would do better in the last three years if the whole mess was my responsibility. I'd probably say drones are more effective than bombs, and much safer than boots on the ground. But then I'd also have to admit that it looks like the best we can do with them is not nearly good enough to make for a "clean" war (if there is such a thing), and certainly doesn't win any hearts and minds anywhere.

[may3rd]

48. dunno about that

One drone takes the place of a squad of soldiers and the hundreds of support personnel in the supply chain required to keep them in the field.

Some people are alarmed by a governor wanting to have drones loitering above the ground and used in a police work.
It's better to have one drone overhead when police know a suspect is in the woods, armed and dangerous. If there a reason his family should not have him as well protected a a field soldier , I would like to know it.

If the president can do things to keep soldiers out of harms way, I sure would like to know why that's a bad thing.
jmo.

[treestar]

17. If you don't trust any of them, then what do you propose we do?

Why not just drop out of politics or any interest in it then? Since we are hopeless of electing anyone trustworthy.

[whatchamacallit]

18. Congratulations on your dawning enlightenment!

[mollerjay]

27. Should we trust

Romeny then???

No thanks.

[Poll_Blind]

12. You can ALWAYS count on Obama!

PB

[scheming daemons]

13. this is bad how?

.

[Iliyah]

15. AND BREAKING NEWS

the repugs oversees creating wars that actually kill innocent people and puts Amercians in harms waaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy.

[Amonester]

21. At least it's not Rmoney who oversees it...

yet... Imagine that...

(not that I think he will ever come close)

[rayofreason]

25. Silly point of view.

First, don't be to cocky about November. It will be closer than you think and Romney can win if Team Obama screws up.

Second, neither Obama nor any Democratic president will be president for ever. There will be Republican presidents in the future. Either you oppose a given presidential power on principle or you admit that all presidents will, by right, have the same power. You cannot retreat to a sophomoric attitude that only certain presidents who have certain beliefs have the right to exercise all the powers of the POTUS.

I, for one, find this power deeply troubling. Especially since drones are now flying in the US. How long before those drones are armed? How long before U.S. citizens can be targeted here as they can be abroad?

Four years ago who wold have thought that anyone would have reason to ask such questions?

[FiveGoodMen]

35. +1000000

[EFerrari]

55. Yeah because it matters to the dead who ordered them killed without trial. n/t

[Amonester]

70. As many said in this thread, that list is nothing new...

JFK had Fidel Castro on that list.

Nixon had Pol Pot on it too, and not just Pol Pot.

And on, and on.

Obama did not invent it, nor did cheney/bush.

That's the way it is.

Now if the matter is that, such a list should not exist to begin with, then I agree, but in the actual real state of affair, that list did, does, and will exist if no change in policy is to ever happen.

[EFerrari]

73. In your zeal to defend the indefensible, you are overlooking the facts.

There has been no president before Barack Obama that claimed the right publicly to have such a list and to claim that he is not accountable to any court anywhere for it. We would normally call that "impunity".

[The Northerner]

22. Why isn't there anyone challenging the legality of this kill list?

[DeSwiss]

24. Everyone's afraid. n/t

[rayofreason]

26. Could find yourself on the list. n/t

[mollerjay]

28. Sick of the unfair attackeson Obama

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10131399

[morningfog]

31. How is it unfair?

[KoKo]

32. Hopefully Obama or his campaign will respond properly to this NYT article

and refute any lies or misquotes or exaggerations.

[DeSwiss]

33. Got a problem with the ''Due Process'' clause in the Bill of Rights, have you? :-/ n/t

[boppers]

45. Due process, in this case, means:

1. Credible sources have offered evidence of an ongoing, lethal threat.
2. A small group has evaluated said evidence, and deemed it reliable.
3. Existing legal avenues, such as peaceful arrest, extradition, and trial, are not available.
4. A battle officer, in this case, the CiC, signs off on action to shut you down.

That's the process.

In short, when you wave a gun at a cop, you don't get a trial, you don't get a lawyer, you get shot at.

[EFerrari]

54. No it doesn't, that's bs.

We already have the case of a teenager and whoever he was hanging out with that night being blown away because he was his father's son, not because of anything he did.

WHO tries to defend this cr@P, seriously?

[boppers]

62. If you're old enough to fire a weapon, you're old enough to be a target.

He wasn't blown away because of his father, he was blown away because he was part of an escort to a target.

Hm.

I imagine DU during WWII (if it existed) would be in a tizzy that FDR was ordering the killing of Nazis without a warrant and a trial by jury, even the US citizen Nazis.

[U4ikLefty]

64. Comparing this to WWII

really?

[boppers]

66. Lets see:

Congress declared military action.
Thousands have died.
The war fronts span many nations.
The attacks span many nations.


....So, yes.

[Ash_F]

69. You really outdid yourself this time.

In WWII there was a country carrying out aggressive military expansion.


Oh wait.



I see the similarities.

[boppers]

77. Exactly.

How many Al-Queda groups are there, again?

[boppers]

79. Name me the top ten strikes on the US, ranked by fatalities.

(Hint, 9/11 is up there)

[EFerrari]

72. And you think you know that, why?

Because the people that killed him told you so? I see.

[boppers]

78. Well, people told you he was killed, why did you believe that?

[bhikkhu]

57. and keeping in mind, congress did legally authorize military force against Al Qaeda

...in the Senate Joint Resolution 73, September 14, 2001. Not to beat the drum or anything, but much of this stuff makes sense if you remember that there actually is a war, that had a pretty dramatic and deliberate beginning.

[Ash_F]

71. I don't really see it as a war but a law enforcement issue

War is about taking over or protecting the sovereignty of a nation. Whether on the offence or defense, it is about establishing who is in charge of some particular plot of land.

The countries that the hijackers were from(Saudi Arabia, The UAE, Egypt, and Lebanon) all already had leaders who were friendly to the US. The US objective has never been to replace the government of any of these nations as the hijackers carried out their attacks without any broad material or organizational support from any of them. They were criminals, not soldiers.

[bhikkhu]

75. I do remember that argument

and I was on the side of keeping it a law enforcement issue. Its a little late at this point.

[pmorlan1]

68. Unbelievable!

I sure hope you were being sarcastic with your due process definition. Surely you don't believe this?

By the way even in this horrendous definition of due process you left out that once the cop shoots you there is an investigation to see if he was justified. In the case of the star chamber, kill list there is no investigation. It's all secret. There is zero accountability.

[boppers]

76. I grew up with this.

Welcome to the 21st century.

[EFerrari]

37. You've been here four days. n/t

[frylock]

42. now go run tell mommy

[EFerrari]

44. He's dead, Jim. n/t

[morningfog]

30. The only people who have standing are assassinated when they are found.

[msanthrope]

39. Nope--the DOJ admitted that custody would pre-empt any lethal force.....

See pages 17/18 of the decision Judge Bates rendered on Awlaki--the DOJ admitted that if persons were custodial, then lethal force could not be used. The problem was, for Awlaki, is that he refused the custody of Yemen for his murder conviction, and refused our custody.

https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2010cv1469-31

[EFerrari]

36. ACLU filed and abandoned one case last year. Filed another one in February:

ACLU Wants Obama To Release Targeted Killing Records
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/02/aclu-wants-obama-release-targeted-killing-records

[msanthrope]

38. Because those who have standing to do so are terrorists who do not participate in a

body politic.

Anwar Awlaki's father tried to challenge, and the court correctly noted that he did not have standing...but Mr. Awlaki did. In fact, Judge Bates noted, if Mr. Awlaki could post to YouTube (which he did, hundreds of times) then he could probably secure legal representation within the US to challenge his placement on a 'kill list.'

Judge Bates correctly notes that failure to participate in the judicial process means you don't get to benefit from it....

https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2010cv1469-31

[IamK]

41. oppose it and your on it... Barack is like Tony Soprano n/t

[boppers]

46. This is news, how?

Has everybody but me been living under a rock for the last 200 years?

Capture/Kill orders are nothing new. Those who want to submit to the justice system get their day in court, those who want to run, and keep shooting, get shot.

[EFerrari]

53. Wrong.

This is not about capture or kill orders. This is about the same Cheney assassination program that DU excoriated from one end of this forum to the other when Dick Cheney was doing it.

This is about the federal government playing judge, jury and executioner and claiming it has no obligation to supply any court anywhere with evidence or rationale for its killing. Clinton issued capture or kill orders but he never claimed he didn't have to account for them. And of course, I won't compare Obama to Dick Cheney, this is an election year.

Maybe you have been living under a rock because no president before Obama has claimed he can order anyone killed at any time any where without having to account for it in a court of law. Even Bush got lawyers to fake an argument for him.

If you want to support that, do it.

[boppers]

61. I probably shrugged upon hearing about Bush/Cheney doing it, too.

Clinton as well, along with Carter, since it's been a long standing system. When did Clinton "account" for his orders? Carter?

"no president before Obama has claimed he can order anyone killed at any time any where without having to account for it in a court of law" is absolutely absurd, or simply completely ignorant of US history. Sure, various legal cover has been offered over the years, but are you seriously arguing that the US *wan't* trying to kill Fidel Castro, for just one example?

[tabasco]

58. Good!

This is the kind of thing "the company" should not be doing on its own.

[boppers]

67. They've been reined in.

Subcontractors, not so much.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

60. It's not awfully top secret if the French are reporting it

[may3rd]

74. U.S. military trainers trickle back into Pakistan "Overseer in chief has boots on the ground

to help weed out the false plants


U.S. military trainers trickle back into Pakistan


.....\
Fewer than 10 U.S. special operations soldiers have been sent to a training site near the border city of Peshawar, where they will instruct trainers from Pakistan's Frontier Corps in counter-insurgency warfare, a U.S. official said.

The number of American military instructors in Pakistan dropped to zero after U.S. aircraft killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in late November. NATO labeled the border incident an accident but it enraged Pakistanis and sent already tense ties with the United States into a tailspin.

"I wouldn't call this a watershed moment (but) it's not insignificant that this is happening," the U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
.......



At a NATO summit in Chicago this month, President Barack Obama snubbed his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, by refusing to hold a meeting with him because Pakistan had not reopened the supply routes.
......
In the past, there had been some 200 to 300 U.S. military personnel stationed in Pakistan, many of them training Pakistan special forces to confront militants.

But Islamabad sharply reduced the size of the mission after the bin Laden raid.

http://news.yahoo.com/u-military-trainers-trickle-back-pakistan-215610120.html?fb_action_ids=2196528729230%2C2196525609152&fb_action_types=news.reads&fb_ref=type%3Aread%2Cuser%3AxNj2yvQss6cZuFq8jAB9J9R0YWk&fb_source=other_multiline&code=AQAOl7NyLTsoDmEV9eJbVKBYamByIcXspYOCNcppV6mTt7ufV3rZ0JHdzNaQsKyiFcJrHIWEhwFxfehbULd46UN59wI9CcE8PJ8DfuIzp9pwqzfz2Ogv5p3H8SpP8Vn5j1Jxmpcjrt3nrRFd40jF3wNyeM23urGS4UOUt0_1TC-8JIXMLjOjNxBxyG2KW9aC-7kSrwawk2IItC78MMz9HjoL#_=_