Obama's Real Death Panels by Ted Rall

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sent by Sparrows since 103 days 20 hours 7 minutes, published about 103 days 8 hours 3 minutes
Shortly after 9/11, George W. Bush secretly signed two executive orders. Both violated basic constitutional protections as well as U.S. obligations under international treaties, yet both carried the force of law. They still do. The first order grants the president (and other officials, including the secretary of defense, the secretary of homeland security and presumably certain postal clerks) the right to declare anyone--including an American citizen--an "unlawful enemy combatant." A person so declared has no redress, no way to appeal, no ability to challenge that designation. Once a person has been named an enemy combatant, according to the Bush Administration--and now to the Obama Administration--he has no rights. He can be held without charges forever, tortured, you name it--well, actually, the president or the secretary of defense names it. In the second covert executive order, Bush authorized the CIA to target and assassinate said "enemy combatants"--again, including American citizens.
tags: no habeas corpus, terrorists, murders
6 commentscategory: Abuse of Power/Corruption karma: 144

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  1. #1    These two documents first came into play on November 3, 2002, when a CIA-operated Predator drone plane violating Yemeni airspace fired a Hellfire missile at a car containing Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, supposedly Al Qaeda's #1 man in Yemen at the time.

    U.S. officials didn't know that an American citizen, Kamal Derwish, was riding along. (You know what they say about hitchhiking.) "The Bush administration said the killing of an American in this fashion was legal...this is legal because the president and his lawyers say so--it's not much more complicated than that,"
    written by Sparrows since 103 days 20 hours 7 minutesSparrows
  2. #2    I agree in principle with Mr. Rall - but these EOs are just a matter of the writing down of unwritten rules. Ask Jennifer Harbury! (http://www.democracynow.org/2005/7/27/wife_of_guatemalan_rebel_killed_by)
    written by zelator since 103 days 7 hours 29 minuteszelator
  3. #3    "Star Chamber"
    written by mercman since 103 days 6 hours 47 minutesmercman
  4. #4    we Americans now live in a not-so quasi dictatorship.

    Which is really nothing new: President John Adams passed the Alien & Sedition Laws, which President Woodrow Wilson brought back during WWI. President Washington marched with 30,000 troops to CRUSH the Whiskey Rebellion, tax, foreclosure, and bankruptcy revolt. (The only reason we Americans don't have this military supremacy engraved in our consciousness more deeply, is because America had so much western frontier for tax-rebels and moonshiners to migrate to over the next 200 years.)
    And of course there were the wartime dictator powers of the Civil War.
    While Southern Confederate sympathizers like to shout and swear an...

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    written by veracity since 103 days 5 hours 34 minutesveracity
  5. #5    I don't recall hearing before that the CIA had been authorized to assassinate. Obama should (if he hasn't already) nullify that particular EO and he should never authorize action against any American person without traditional Judicial and 4th Amendment procedures.
    written by MarkH since 103 days 2 hours 53 minutesMarkH
  6. #6    "Should" -- yes. But what he's done is expanded on CheneyBush, authorizing as many killings in his first 9 months as Bush did in his last 3 years. "Change," y'know?
    written by nasrudin since 103 days 1 time 44 minutesnasrudin
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