"White Paper" from Ob DOJ justifies assassination - Page 3

We've decided that we will have the right to take your life after a secret and legally unaccountable conclave of vaguely defined experts has decided that you are a member of al-Qaida or a vaguely defined associate group and that you are vaguely senior enough in said organization to be responsible for vaguely defined activities and threats that may be posed at a vaguely defined time, and that attempting to capture and try you is too much of a fucking hassle.

On February 06 2013 15:13 Jisall wrote:


Last i checked Obama was left wing. Nice try however.

On February 06 2013 22:56 vGl-CoW wrote:
This focus on executive branch powers is, to me, certainly the most worrying aspect of the Obama Administration. What's also worrying (though perhaps to be expected) is the relative silence of Democrats on the issue. They made a lot of noise when the Bush Administration basically tried to make torture an acceptable practice, and they're being comparatively quiet now that the Obama Administration is reserving the right to bomb pretty much anyone who they deem to be a threat, pretty much anywhere on Earth.

Here's an interesting opinion piece on the matter (harsh language, but I agree with the message):

We the Targets: Obama's Combat Lawyers and a Fairy Tale of Law

I especially like the author's rewording of the White Paper message from its obfuscated legalese to plain English:



I know that a large part of the public will say "Well, they're terrorists. They have it coming." You can't just say they're terrorists and be done with it, though. Sure, there are deliberations in the White House on who lives and who dies ('Terror Tuesdays', as they are called) and sure, those deliberations are based on appropriate intelligence. It's not like they're throwing darts at a wall full of photographs and going "Okay, that brown guy gets it today." But, there is no oversight.
The concept of three branches of government is both fundamental and essential to American democracy. It was put into place exactly to prevent this type of situation happening. Is it harder and a hell of a lot slower to actually properly collect evidence and testimony and have it pass through a court of law before deciding to rob someone of their life? Of course it is, but it's also the fair thing to do.
As it stands now, you have an executive council with zero oversight or accountability compiling lists of who needs to die. Also, these targets die in explosions which mostly kill innocent bystanders (especially since, much like terrorists, the US has often taken to using a "double tap" strategy with its drones, where you fire one missile and then wait for others to show up to try and rescue their friends from the rubble, at which point you also blow them up). It's hard to notice that drone strikes mostly cause collateral damage, because the Administration manipulates the statistics by considering every male of military age who happens to get caught in the blast an enemy combatant. You're breeding more enemies every day with these practices. Is this really the kind of America you want?

On February 06 2013 23:33 XenOmega wrote:
While this particular way of wagin war (assuming there is war against terrorists) is still uncertain to me (i have not thought it through), what poses me problem is the risk of casualties among innoccent people. I for one would condemn drone EVEN if you had 1 innoccent person in 100 successful strikes. Of course, if you take it from a pure statistic, obviously its pretty good. But I am not willing to sacrifce lives like that ; I don't believe that we can discard innoccent lives like that for the greater good, assuming that is the case

On February 06 2013 23:36 Doodsmack wrote:What if a system of judicial approval of bombing targets renders impossible the task of effectively fighting terrorism? Are more terrorist attacks an acceptable price to pay for oversight of drone strikes?

On February 06 2013 23:39 Doodsmack wrote:


What if there would be more than one innocent civilian death if we didn't do any of those 100 drone strikes, because there would be at least one terrorist attack against civilians?

On February 06 2013 23:36 Doodsmack wrote:


What if a system of judicial approval of bombing targets renders impossible the task of effectively fighting terrorism? Are more terrorist attacks an acceptable price to pay for oversight of drone strikes?

On February 07 2013 00:01 sekritzzz wrote:

Notice how China is not the target of terrorist attacks?

The reason for attacks by al qaeda in the 90's was because of America's interference and control over muslim nations. The more the USA attacks, the more likely people will want to take revenge. It is a natural reaction. The policies of the war on terror are an utter failure. Look at the world today and compare it with 2001. The people who want to attack America today are 10 fold greater than 10 years ago.

On February 07 2013 00:11 SpeaKEaSY wrote:


How do you define terrorism though? I recall some government agency listing a bunch of groups/characteristics potentially linked with terrorism, and it listed stuff like veterans, libertarians, people opposed to the North American Union, people opposed to the federal reserve, anti-abortion activists, people who believe in the Constitution, opponents of the Federal Reserve, etc.

What if the excuse of "it was ok to kill him because he was a terrorist/supported terrorism" was abused to assassinate people with unpopular opinions? When wikileaks released a bunch of damning evidence against the government, there were calls to label it a terrorist group. What if criticizing the government/whistleblowing becomes terrorist activity?

On February 06 2013 08:32 Shiragaku wrote:
Bush would invade the country with boots on the ground and capture the person, then usually end with torture. Obama just kills.

This is in complete violation with our Nuremberg values back in World War II where we put every single despicable Nazi war criminal on trial when the British and Russians just wanted to execute them on the spot. I do not think any nation had just a large scale assassination campaign before.

On February 06 2013 09:09 Solarsail wrote:


Yes. The US citizen angle makes headlines, but honestly America shouldn't be doing this at all. The deaths of many civilians of any nationality do not justify killing a handful of genuine terrorists (and, how many attacks have there been on the US in the last year? Zero? Then that's the assumed number of genuine terrorists.)

On February 07 2013 00:23 emythrel wrote:


You dont think any country has had a large scale assassination campaign before? Read some history. USSR and USA have been assassinating people for most of the last century. Go back before that and the British Empire was assassinating people every damn day, is there a Caliph or Sultan not showing proper respect to the crown? Kill him and replace him. Assassinations on a large scale have been going on for thousands of years, all the way back to the ancient Egyptians.

Not to mention Israel who are the most aggressive currently in this regard, they will hunt down people any where in the world, most recently (at least most recently in the news) a hotel in China.

The justification for these assassinations is that these people are committing, have committed or are planning to commit acts of war/terror against the USA and thus do not get the protection of the usual legal system. I don't personally have an opinion on this explicitly, if they assassinate without doing collateral damage, I guess I'm fine with it.