Extra-Judicial Murder of American by America in Yemen - Anwar al-Awlaki

[Ed Jewett]

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[TD]Wayne Madsen (Washington)
Cass Sunstein's cognitive infiltrators are out in force as suck puppets. It appears that humans or programs are posting the same comments on a number of left of center web sites on the Awlaki killing. Some examples:


It is the job of the government in general and of the executive branch in particular, to identify militant threats against the people of the United States and to exercise, on our behalf, our right of self defense.

I don't think the government has made a mistake in identifying Osama and Al-Awlaki as enemies of our nation that require defensive, lethal action.

As far as your concern that those accused of seditious activities be told of the accusations against them and have a chance to answer them, I would say it is naive and unrealistic under the circumstances we are discussing - a militant located in a foreign country actively engaged in operations against our nation.

We, as a people have the right to self defense; our government is the agency of that defense; and we must be realistic and effective in defending ourselves.

The protection of our nation and our people from imminent danger is paramount, and I believe in extreme circumstances, that singular function and effort trumps all others.


The USA has the right to defend America from anyone that declares war on the USA and its citizens.

Al-Awlaki was a rabid animal that was a threat to Americans, whether they pristine innocent or corrupt. He was sent to his place in hell today. Good riddance to him and the jackal that was killed beside him.


http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20110930_1




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[Peter Lemkin]

This all flies in opposition to the body of Constitutional, Statutory, and International Law. We have forgotten and lost our sense of Justice, Legal process, innocent until proven guilty, right to trial, due process and more. If it could happen to al Awalki, it could happen to me - without any warning and any legal process. All that 'needs to happen' is a secret finding that I'm a threat to TPTB and on the 'eliminate' list. Sickening and that there is no general outrage is even more sickening. Lemmings, at best is what most American are - frightened lemmings.

[Peter Lemkin]

CCR Condemns Targeted Assassination of U.S. Citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki

CCR Cites a Lack of Adherence to Constitutional and International Laws that Afford Due Process

press@ccrjustice.org

September 30, 2011, New YorkToday, in response to the news that a missile attack by an American drone aircraft had killed U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki in Yemen, the Center for Constitutional Rights, which had previously brought a challenge in federal court to the legality of the authorization to target Al-Awlaki in Yemen, released the following statement:
"The assassination of Anwar Al-Awlaki by American drone attacks is the latest of many affronts to domestic and international law," said Vince Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "The targeted assassination program that started under President Bush and expanded under the Obama Administration essentially grants the executive the power to kill any U.S. citizen deemed a threat, without any judicial oversight, or any of the rights afforded by our Constitution. If we allow such gross overreaches of power to continue, we are setting the stage for increasing erosions of civil liberties and the rule of law."

Pardiss Kebriaei, a CCR senior staff attorney, added: "In dismissing our complaint, the district court noted that there were nonetheless "disturbing questions" raised by the authority being asserted by the United States. There certainly are disturbing questions that need to be asked again, and answered by the U.S. government about the circumstances of the killing and the legal standard that governed it."

Further information on CCR's challenge to targeted killings is online at http://ccrjustice.org/targetedkillings

[Ed Jewett]

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[TD]you are here: home » general archives september 2011 » september 30-october 2, 2011 -- update 1x. u.s. drones kill u.s. citizen anwar al awlaki in yemen

September 30-October 2, 2011 -- UPDATE 1X. U.S. drones kill U.S. citizen Anwar al Awlaki in Yemen

publication date: Sep 30, 2011


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September 30-October 2, 2011 -- U.S. drones kill U.S. citizen Anwar al Awlaki in Yemen

Unnamed Pentagon sources are confirming that it was an attack by U.S. drone aircraft that killed the alleged head of "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" Anwar al Awlaki in Marib province in the eastern part of north Yemen. Al Awlaki was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico in 1971, attended Colorado State University where he graduated in 1994 with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. Al Awlaki also served as a imam at a Denver mosque and as president of the Denver Islamic Society.

Never having been cited by the U.S. government as much more than being an "inspiration" for those who carried out terrorist attacks at Fort Hood, Texas; the 2005 London transit bombings; a failed "underwear" bombing of a passenger plane en route from Amsterdam to Detroit; a dubious case involving Muslims who were said to be planning a terrorist attack at Fort Dix, New Jersey; and a failed bomb set to detonate in Time Square in New York, al Awlaki was named a "specially designated global terrorist" and his assassination was personally ordered by President Barack Obama in early 2010. In October 2010, Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) called on YouTube to remove hundreds of al Awlaki's videos from its website, charging that they inspired terrorists. Weiner later resigned in disgrace after lewd photos that he sent to several women surfaced on the Internet.

Like Obama, who claimed Indonesian citizenship to receive a foreign scholarship at Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1979, al Awlaki claimed Yemeni citizenship when he obtained a foreign student scholarship to attend Colorado State in 1991. During his summer breaks at college, al Awlaki trained with CIA- and Saudi-backed mujaheddin guerrillas in Afghanistan. Al Awlaki later earned a Master's degree from San Diego State University and he was enrolled in a doctorate program at George Washington University in Washington, DC from January to December 2001. Al Awlaki also served as the Muslim chaplain at George Washington University.

A few months after the 9/11 attacks, Al Awlaki was invited to a luncheon at the Office of General Counsel in the Secretary of Army's office at the Pentagon. The invitation was part of a Pentagon initiative to reach out to moderate Muslims. At the luncheon, where some attendees were hostile to al Awlaki, he condemned "Al Qaeda" and the 9/11 attacks. Al Awlaki also wrote on the website IslamOnline.net six days after the 9/11 attacks that he believed they were carried out by Israeli intelligence agents, a view shared by a number of U.S. and foreign intelligence and military experts, a number of whom are non-Muslim and some of whom worked at the Pentagon at the same time of al-Awlaki's luncheon meeting. In 2002, al Awlaki was the first Muslim cleric to conduct a prayer service at the U.S. Capitol. Citing a climate of fear among American Muslims, al Awlaki left the U.S. for Britain at the end of 2002.

In 2004, al Awlaki returned to Yemen. His father, Dr. Nasser al Awlaki, received a Master's degree at New Mexico State University on a Fulbright Scholarship and a doctorate at the University of Nebraska. Dr. al Awlaki later served as Agriculture Minister under Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and, subsequently, as president of Sana'a University. The Awlakis are related to Yemeni Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Mujawar, who, along with Saleh, was seriously injured in a rebel bombing attack on June 3.

Obama's decision to order the assassination of al Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, has met with opposition from constitutional rights groups and experts. However, there is another aspect of the al Awlaki assassination that should serve as a stark warning to American journalists. In May, while attending the Arab Media Forum in Dubai, this editor was afforded an opportunity by a Yemeni television news producer to travel to Yemen and meet with al Awlaki. Following a flight to Sana'a from Dubai, the meeting with al Awlaki would have been arranged by his father and would have taken place in a secret location in the Yemeni mountains east of Sana'a and after a thorough vetting process by al Awlaki's followers, including a vigorous pat down for geo-location devices. With al Awlaki designated as Public Enemy Number 1 by the Obama White House, the CIA, and just about every other U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agency, I declined the invitation. However, given the fact that reporters for CNN and ABC News met in secret locations in Afghanistan with Osama Bin Laden in 1997 and 1998, respectively, there was a precedent for journalists meeting with those designated as "most wanted" by the United States government. Al Awlaki, a U.S. citizen ordered murdered by the President of the United States, was a much different case than Bin Laden and just as, if not more, newsworthy than Bin Laden for an American readership.

Had I taken the Yemeni producer up on his offer and met with al Awlaki at the same time that U.S. drones launched their attack, Obama would have been reponsible for the murder of more than one American citizen. Obama's decision to assassinate American citizens without due process and according to the Constitution he swore to uphold becomes much more problematic when "collateral damage" to other Americans enters into the picture.

Now that Obama has taken the step to assassinate an American citizen, where does this "slippery slope" end?

There is also the information that al Awlaki has taken to the grave -- information that may have been gleaned from a personal interview had I opted for one. What information did al Awlaki have about Israel's involvement in 9/11? Who were his interlocutors at the Pentagon? Who were his CIA contacts while fighting with the mujaheddin in Afghanistan? As to the first question, Obama's friends in Jerusalem perhaps have much more to celebrate today than they did last week when Obama sold out Palestinian independence for some big political donations from Wall Street and Hollywood.

UPDATE 1X: After the report of al Awlaki's assassination by American drone strikes in Yemen, it is being reported that a second American citizen, Samir Khan, a Riyadh-born Pakistani-American from Charlotte, North Carolina, was killed in the same drone attack. Khan was said to be the publisher of the English-language "Inspire," an "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" magazine that recently criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for suggesting that the 9/11 attacks were an "inside job" by the U.S. government. "Inspire's" stance on 9/11 as the work of "Al Qaeda" matches up completely with those of the Obama administration and Israel and its global lobby.

"Inspire" has come under suspicion that it was a propaganda tool of the CIA and/or Mossad used to keep "Al Qaeda" relevant as the Arab Spring movement rejects Al Qaeda's jihadist doctrine. "Inspire" debuted in July 2010. "Inspire" was first brought to the media's attention by the Washington-based Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE), believed to be a tool of Israel's Mossad.

President Obama, in an address at the White House, referred to al Awlaki as the "External Operations Chief" for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a designation that had never been used for al Awlaki in the past.






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http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20110930

[Peter Lemkin]

[URL="http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/30/awlaki_6/"]The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality
By Glenn Greenwald
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FILE - In this Nov. 8, 2010 file image taken from video and released by SITE Intelligence Group on Monday, Anwar al-Awlaki speaks in a video message posted on radical websites. A senior U.S. counterterrorism official says U.S. intelligence indicates that U.S.-born al-Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki has been killed in Yemen.

(updated below)

It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki. No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was "considering" indicting him). Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even had any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt. When Awlaki's father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were "state secrets" and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts. He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner. When Awlaki's inclusion on President Obama's hit list was confirmed, The New York Times noted that "it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing."

After several unsuccessful efforts to assassinate its own citizen, the U.S. succeeded today (and it was the U.S.). It almost certainly was able to find and kill Awlaki with the help of its long-time close friend President Saleh, who took a little time off from murdering his own citizens to help the U.S. murder its. The U.S. thus transformed someone who was, at best, a marginal figure into a martyr, and again showed its true face to the world. The government and media search for The Next bin Laden has undoubtedly already commenced.

What's most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law"), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What's most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government's new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government. Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President's ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry's execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists: criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed.

From an authoritarian perspective, that's the genius of America's political culture. It not only finds ways to obliterate the most basic individual liberties designed to safeguard citizens from consummate abuses of power (such as extinguishing the lives of citizens without due process). It actually gets its citizens to stand up and clap and even celebrate the destruction of those safeguards.
* * * * *

In the column I wrote on Wednesday regarding Wall Street protests, I mistakenly linked to a post discussing a New York Times article by Colin Moynihan as an example of a "condescending" media report about the protest. There was nothing condescending or otherwise worthy of criticism in Moynihan's article; I meant to reference this NYT article by Ginia Bellafante. My apologies to Moynihan, who rightly objected by email, for the mistake.

UPDATE: What amazes me most whenever I write about this topic is recalling how terribly upset so many Democrats pretended to be when Bush claimed the power merely to detain or even just eavesdrop on American citizens without due process. Remember all that? Yet now, here's Obama claiming the power not to detain or eavesdrop on citizens without due process, but to kill them; marvel at how the hardest-core White House loyalists now celebrate this and uncritically accept the same justifying rationale used by Bush/Cheney (this is war! the President says he was a Terrorist!) without even a moment of acknowledgment of the profound inconsistency or the deeply troubling implications of having a President even Barack Obama vested with the power to target U.S. citizens for murder with no due process.

Also, during the Bush years, civil libertarians who tried to convince conservatives to oppose that administration's radical excesses would often ask things like this: would you be comfortable having Hillary Clinton wield the power to spy on your calls or imprison you with no judicial reivew or oversight? So for you good progressives out there justifying this, I would ask this: how would the power to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process look to you in the hands of, say, Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann?

[Ed Jewett]

The Secret Memo That Explains Why Obama Can Kill Americans

October 3rd, 2011Via: The Atlantic:
Outside the U.S. government, President Obama's order to kill American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without due process has proved controversial, with experts in law and war reaching different conclusions. Inside the Obama Administration, however, disagreement was apparently absent, or so say anonymous sources quoted by the Washington Post. "The Justice Department wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting of Anwar al-Aulaqi, the American-born radical cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone strike Friday, according to administration officials," the newspaper reported. "The document was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a U.S. citizen and involved senior lawyers from across the administration. There was no dissent about the legality of killing Aulaqi, the officials said."
Isn't that interesting? Months ago, the Obama Administration revealed that it would target al-Awlaki. It even managed to wriggle out of a lawsuit filed by his father to prevent the assassination. But the actual legal reasoning the Department of Justice used to authorize the strike? It's secret. Classified. Information that the public isn't permitted to read, mull over, or challenge.
Why? What justification can there be for President Obama and his lawyers to keep secret what they're asserting is a matter of sound law? This isn't a military secret. It isn't an instance of protecting CIA field assets, or shielding a domestic vulnerability to terrorism from public view. This is an analysis of the power that the Constitution and Congress' post September 11 authorization of military force gives the executive branch. This is a president exploiting official secrecy so that he can claim legal justification for his actions without having to expose his specific reasoning to scrutiny. As the Post put it, "The administration officials refused to disclose the exact legal analysis used to authorize targeting Aulaqi, or how they considered any Fifth Amendment right to due process."
Obama hasn't just set a new precedent about killing Americans without due process. He has done so in a way that deliberately shields from public view the precise nature of the important precedent he has set.
Posted in Assassination, Covert Operations, Dictatorship

[Ed Jewett]

Ah, yes, nothing better than having your own back-room think tank to create the mythological premises and interpretations to underlie the actions you are about to take...

[Peter Lemkin]

It turns out there were TWO Americans killed in the one drone strike in Yemen.

25-year-old American is killed with mentor Anwar al-Aulaqi in drone strike [Washinton Post Crap]

The man killed alongside Anwar al-Aulaqi once ran radical Web sites from his parents' North Carolina basement and broke his father's heart when he fled to Yemen to seek jihad as a "proud traitor" to his American homeland.

Samir Khan, 25, who perished with his mentor in the U.S. drone strike over northern Yemen on Friday, according to American and Yemeni officials, was a driving force behind the efforts of al-Qaeda's Yemen affiliate to promote itself among English speakers.

Khan helped edit and write its English-language magazine, Inspire, a mixture of ideology, first-person accounts of operations and do-it-yourself jihad advice. Copies have been found in the possession of several would-be attackers in the United States and Britain.

"I am proud to be a traitor to America," Khan wrote in an article in the second issue of the online magazine, published last fall. He described his life as working in the "jihadi media sector" in North Carolina before his beliefs turned him into a "rebel of Washington's imperialism."

Born in Saudi Arabia to Pakistani parents, Khan grew up mostly in New York. Along with his devout father, mother and younger brother, he attended the Islamic Organization of North America religious center in the city, where the imam, Steve al-Turk, a family friend, remembers a "very kind, very sweet, very generous" young man growing up in the 1990s.

"He was struggling in his school from peer pressure in his teenage years, so he found coming to the mosque and being with Muslims something that was good for him," Turk said. He said neither Khan nor his family held views that were violent or extreme.

After the family moved to North Carolina in 2004, Khan became increasingly radical and ran jihad-focused blogs and online message boards from his parents' home. His father was distressed by this and had him return to New York to visit Turk's center in hopes of countering this new direction.

"I met him in 2005 or 2006 to try to dissuade him, but by that time, he had made up his mind," said Turk, who added that he had spoken with Khan's father Friday morning to offer condolences on the death of his son. "I felt very bad for the parents. He wasted his life."

When Khan decided to travel to Yemen in October 2009, his father was devastated, Turk said.

Khan traveled with little difficulty, which surprised him: "I mean, I was quiet [sic] open about my beliefs online and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out I was al-Qaeda to the core," he wrote in Inspire's fall 2010 issue.

From Sanaa, he traveled to what he called a mujaheddin base in rural Yemen, where he trained and studied. He wrote, "It only brought me gleeful tears and great joy to hear that America labels me as a terrorist."

He wrote that he was being monitored by FBI officials in Yemen and the United States. Administration officials declined to confirm whether Khan was on the list of approved targets compiled by the CIA's National Counterterrorism Center. But, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, officials said that CIA operatives did not know that Khan was with Aulaqi when conducting the drone strike.

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) said authorities had tried to stop Khan while he lived in North Carolina. "We tried to shut him down through the FBI, but we couldn't because he was not inciting violence, he was simply putting out information, and because he kept changing his server," she said.

Myrick described Khan as a loner whose departure for Yemen presented a "very clear red flag."

"He was one of the key people in recruiting and radicalizing Americans, and that is of great concern to me. But he was a misguided young person, and really no one celebrates this death," Myrick said.

Khan is thought to have edited seven issues of Inspire magazine while in Yemen, which devoted much space to the thoughts of Aulaqi.

Jarret Brachman, a counterterrorism expert and government consultant who analyzed Khan's writings, described Khan as a "partner in crime" to Aulaqi who was clearly "soaking in as much knowledge as possible" from the older man.

Working together, the two had become effective as propagandists and recruiters, with Khan's articles complementing Aulaqi's Internet sermons and essays. For al-Qaeda, the loss of both men at once is a serious blow, he said.

"If it's true that both were killed, then al-Qaeda's English-language outreach program is dead," Brachman said.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Samir Khan, killed together with al-Awlaki in Yemen, is the man behind the infamous "Inspire" magazine.
See https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/sho...#post45465

and here: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09...ki-strike/

Mr. Khan, 25, was an enthusiast of jihad who lived with his parents in North Carolina as recently as four years ago, before leaving the United States for Yemen in 2009, where he is thought to have started Inspire magazine.The magazine recently attracted attention for its issue commemorating and celebrating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In the issue, the group criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran for repeating conspiracy theories that diminished Al Qaeda's role in the attacks.

[Ed Jewett]

Ron Paul: US Could Target Journalists For Killing

By The Associated Press

October 05, 2011 "AP" -- Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul is warning that the United States could kill journalists in the same manner it targets terrorists.

The Texas congressman said Wednesday that it's not a far leap from the United States killing suspected terrorists in Yemen to targeting reporters at home.

Paul says President Barack Obama was wrong to approve the killing of two American citizens who had become central figures in al-Qaida. He warns that the United States could go further as it ignores civil rights and due process.

Paul says that the U.S. cannot let the deaths of Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Kahn go without protest, otherwise the country will start adding reporters to its list of threats that must be taken out.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info...e29315.htm