Read what WND reporter Chelsea Shilling wrote about this:
Obama’s U.S. citizen ‘hit list’
In 2010, Obama ordered the assassination of a radical American-born Muslim cleric who became an avowed member of al-Qaida’s affiliate in Yemen. Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in September 2011, along with naturalized U.S. citizen and al-Qaida propagandist Samir Khan. Awlaki’s 16-year-old American-born son, Abdulrahman, was killed in a similar strike two weeks earlier.
While there is little argument that Awlaki was involved in terrorist activity, the Obama administration failed to provide due process to the U.S. citizens targeted for the use of deadly force. Awlaki had reportedly communicated by email with Maj. Nadal Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist who murdered 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. He had also been tied to the so-called “underwear bomber” who attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound plane with plastic explosives sewn into his undergarments on Dec. 25, 2009. The FBI suspected Awlaki had purchased airplane tickets for three of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers before the terrorist attacks.
Anwar al-Awlaki
However, Awlaki was born in New Mexico, and his son was born in Denver, Colo. There has been no reported evidence that Awlaki ever renounced his U.S. citizenship. In fact, Rep. Charles Dent, R-Penn., introduced a 2010 resolution in the U.S. House to strip Awlaki of his citizenship, but the legislation never made it out of the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law.
Awlaki spent years in the U.S. as an imam and a Muslim chaplain at George Washington University before moving to Yemen. He had been in U.S. custody twice and released before he was killed by the drone strike. Awlaki was detained in 2002 at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City for passport fraud. A Judicial Watch investigation revealed that he had been released by the FBI. He was also held for at least eight months in 2006 and 2007 and subsequently released.
In 2002, Awlaki reportedly led Muslim prayers on Capitol Hill.
Anwar al-Alwlaki's son, 16
He also reportedly dined at the Pentagon as part of the U.S. military’s outreach to the Muslim community just months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
In 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights sued the U.S. government on behalf of Awlaki’s father, challenging the federal government’s authority to conduct “targeted killings” of U.S. citizens who are not in an armed conflict zone. A federal district court dismissed the case in 2011.
In January this year, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan ruled that the Obama administration is not required to provide legal justification for its targeting killings to the public.
So how does the Obama administration determine who’s a terrorist for the purpose of compiling its hit list?
Samir Kahn
A confidential Justice Department “white paper,” which is not an official legal memo, was released just last week to NBC News. It states that the U.S. government can order targeted killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force.”
In response to the memo, a bipartisan letter from 11 top-ranking senators to President Obama stated, “It’s vitally important for Congress and the American public to have a full understanding of how the executive interprets the limits and boundaries of this particular authority.” The senators asked Obama for “any and all legal opinions” that clarify the basis of his perceived power to “deliberately kill American citizens.”
Judge Andrew Napolitano warned, “This 16-page white paper was written so vaguely that the logic from it could actually be extrapolated to permit the president to kill Americans here in the United States.”
Napolitano noted that Obama also violated another federal statute: “When the president ramps up the war on terror or decides to move into another area or use the CIA to engage people, whether to arrest them or to kill them, he’s required to tell the Senate and House intelligence committees ahead of time and get their consent. He apparently didn’t do that, and so [Congress is] burned by this.”
What the experts say …
“Some people argue, ‘Well, he’s only killing terrorists,’” Fein told WND. “Oh really? How do you know? There’s no accountability. Was Mr. al-Alwaki’s son, a 16-year-old teenager having dinner, a terrorist? So whenever the president says someone’s a terrorist, are they convicted? If the president says conservatives are terrorists, is he going to kill them?
Fein argued that the killings were “tantamount to murder.”
“We know at a minimum there have been three, but perhaps many more. We’re just guessing. You can’t have democracy and the rule of law if you never get to know what the facts are and you just have to accept what the government says they are. If you don’t have a trial, that’s the definition of tyranny.”
Because there was so much evidence against Alwaki, critics argue a conviction could have been easily obtained by the Obama administration.
“It isn’t like they didn’t have evidence,” Fein said. “They had confession, admission against interest. Any of them might plead guilty. Only an uncivilized, savage people convict people without trial and sentence them to the gulag. That’s what we read about in the Soviet Union under Stalin and Khrushchev and Brezhnev. That’s what we read about in China under Mao. Is that what we want to be?”
Fein also blasted the fact that the Obama administration’s justification for the killing remained confidential until now.
“There’s a huge, strong legal case here, absolutely,” he said. “I worked in the Office of Legal Counsel. I worked on impeachment of Nixon. The idea that I would write a secret memo on something that’s an impeachable offense would be insane. A legal rationale now becomes classified because it would tell the enemy what constitutional theory you’re using justify this killing? You’ve got to be kidding!”
Fisher agreed with Fein: “There are no possible grounds for ever keeping legal reasoning secret. If a legal memo has sources and methods, just strike it out and the reasoning must be made public. If you’re not willing to give your reasoning, I’d ask, what’s going on? It’s probably that your reasons are not very good.”
Titus told WND, “It’s quite remarkable that Congress has basically abandoned this issue to the president, primarily by not addressing the issue in the National Defense Authorization Act not only in 2012 but also in 2013, where it basically gives the president carte blanche to detain any person that he suspects to be guilty of aiding people involved in terrorism. The fact that Congress won’t take a stand on that indicates that it wouldn’t intervene in the president’s use of drones to assassinate people he suspects are actively engaged in acts of terrorism even inside the United States.
“Basically, Obama is claiming the right to be the prosecutor on the grounds that the whole world is a war zone. I think it’s an impeachable offense because he’s neither using the civilian courts nor is he bringing them before our military courts. What the president has done is simply defined the whole world as a battleground.”
Upon reviewing the recently released “white paper,” Titus and attorney William J. Olson wrote, “Now, we can see why the Department of Justice has been so reluctant to share the basis for its legal analysis. It is deeply flawed – based on a perverse view of the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause.
“Additionally, the white paper completely ignores the procedural protections expressly provided in the Constitution’s Third Article that were specifically designed to prohibit the president from taking the law into his own hands, serving as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner.”
READ MORE OF THIS EXCELLENT ARTICLE FOR MORE REASONS FOR IMPEACHMENT HERE!
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