Holder spells out why drones target US citizens

[woo me with science]

http://www.kqed.org/news/story/2012/03/05/86841/holder_spells_out_why_drones_target_us_citizens?source=npr&category=u.s

Holder Spells Out Why Drones Target U.S. Citizens

by Carrie Johnson | March 5, 2012 — 9:03 PM

It's one of the most serious actions the U.S. government could ever take: targeting one of its own citizens with lethal force.

Since last year, U.S. drones have killed three Americans overseas. But Attorney General Eric Holder says the ongoing fight against al-Qaida means those kinds of deadly strikes are now a way of life. And judging from the reaction to his national security speech at Northwestern University Law School on Monday, so is the hot debate over the legality of the U.S. drone program.

Since President Obama took office, he's deployed drones against terrorism suspects in an unprecedented way. But the program is covert, so although foreign governments and reporters have chronicled those strikes, no U.S. official is supposed to mention them directly. Instead, as Holder acknowledged, they use euphemisms like targeted killing or use of force.

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"They are claiming the authority to kill any American citizen whom the president deems to be an enemy of the state," Jaffer says, "and that authority is not reviewable before the fact by any court and it's not reviewed after the fact by any court."

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They'll remain hidden from view, Waxman says, because that's the nature of the modern fight against terrorism, which clashes with Obama's promise of transparency.

Source: NPR