Among others, Kossacks MinistryOfTruth and Jesselyn Radack covered THIS 7,500+ word lead story in Tuesday’s NY Times, an expose on how President Obama had “placed himself at the helm of a top secret ‘nominations’ process to designate terrorists for kill or capture,” thus maintaining final thumbs-up/thumbs-down authorization on all US military drone attacks against confirmed and/or suspected Al Qaeda terrorists (and others), both outside of Pakistan and for a significant portion of drone attacks within that country, too.
(SEE: “WOW! to avoid counting civilian deaths, Obama WH reclassified ‘Militants’ to include civilians,” by Jesse LaGreca, a/k/a MinistryofTruth, 5/29/12; and, “UPDATED: Kill List Criteria & The 100-Person ‘Death Panel’ That Enforces Them,” by Jesselyn Radack, 5/30/12)
This (Thursday) morning, the editors of the New York Times published their paper’s opinion on the matter, and they’ve titled it: “Too Much Power for a President.”
Here’s a link and an excerpt from Tuesday’s NYT exposé, which is also the third installment in its “A Measure of Change” series on President Obama’s record in office…
Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will
By JO BECKER and SCOTT SHANE
New York Times
May 29, 2012
WASHINGTON — This was the enemy, served up in the latest chart from the intelligence agencies: 15 Qaeda suspects in Yemen with Western ties. The mug shots and brief biographies resembled a high school yearbook layout. Several were Americans. Two were teenagers, including a girl who looked even younger than her 17 years.
President Obama, overseeing the regular Tuesday counterterrorism meeting of two dozen security officials in the White House Situation Room, took a moment to study the faces. It was Jan. 19, 2010, the end of a first year in office punctuated by terrorist plots and culminating in a brush with catastrophe over Detroit on Christmas Day, a reminder that a successful attack could derail his presidency. Yet he faced adversaries without uniforms, often indistinguishable from the civilians around them.
“How old are these people?” he asked, according to two officials present. “If they are starting to use children,” he said of Al Qaeda, “we are moving into a whole different phase.”
It was not a theoretical question: Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be…
And, here’s the link and an excerpt from today’s editorial, with which I wholeheartedly concur (and I want to add that, living in the metro NYC area, like countless others including some whom I’m sure are reading this, I had a neighbor--a 30-ish mother of two young children—just three houses down from us, as well as many friends of friends, business associates and their relatives who were killed on 9/11, along with a multiple of that number who barely escaped harm; and, countless others who are still being treated for chronic depression which was triggered by the events of that day; and, I travelled past the WTC every day on the way to my office, until 9/11, as well; and, despite being vehemently/actively against the invasion of Iraq [before it even occurred] it, nonetheless, took me years to arrive at this rational viewpoint concerning all of this):
Too Much Power for a President
Editorial
New York Times
May 31, 2012
It has been clear for years that the Obama administration believes the shadow war on terrorism gives it the power to choose targets for assassination, including Americans, without any oversight. On Tuesday, The New York Times revealed who was actually making the final decision on the biggest killings and drone strikes: President Obama himself. And that is very troubling.
Mr. Obama has demonstrated that he can be thoughtful and farsighted, but, like all occupants of the Oval Office, he is a politician, subject to the pressures of re-election. No one in that position should be able to unilaterally order the killing of American citizens or foreigners located far from a battlefield — depriving Americans of their due-process rights — without the consent of someone outside his political inner circle.
How can the world know whether the targets chosen by this president or his successors are truly dangerous terrorists and not just people with the wrong associations? (It is clear, for instance, that many of those rounded up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks weren’t terrorists.) How can the world know whether this president or a successor truly pursued all methods short of assassination, or instead — to avoid a political charge of weakness — built up a tough-sounding list of kills?
It is too easy to say that this is a natural power of a commander in chief. The United States cannot be in a perpetual war on terror that allows lethal force against anyone, anywhere, for any perceived threat. That power is too great, and too easily abused, as those who lived through the George W. Bush administration will remember…
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