Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism
February 5, 2013
A leaked internal memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel for the Obama administration entitled, “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associated Force” explains the White House’s justification for conducting targeted killings. The Obama administration claims that this document does not exist, yet the 16-page white paper originating with the Department of Justice (DoJ) has been given to select members of the Senate.
This document outlines in detail the legal reasoning used by the Obama administration for carrying out targeted assassinations of American citizens with suspected ties to al-Qaeda. No proof is necessary for any American to be put on this list; simply the federal government’s suspicions are sufficed.
Broken down into a three-part “test” to justify targeted assassinations, the white paper states:
1. An informed, high-level official of the U.S. government has determined that the targeted American poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States
2. Capture is infeasible
3. The operation is conducted in a manner consistent with the four fundamental principles of the laws of war governing the use of force
There are specific references to the use of drone attack as not in violation of the “due process rights” afforded Americans under the authority of the US Constitution.
The white paper includes redefinitions and expansions of self-defense and imminent attack with the ideology of a “broader concept of imminence” without the necessity of actual intelligence to support those assumptions. If the American is thought to be a threat to the US, they could become eligible of these targeted assassinations.
Language such as “informed, high-level” US government official could independently determine that a US citizen was “recently” involved with al-Qaeda in undetermined “activities” and be found without proof to be a sure threat by committing a possible attack on the US.
This briefing paper was extracted from another document that surfaced in 2011 and states that due process is not applicable in cases where a US citizen is placed on the White House kill list. The document explains that “judicial enforcement of such orders would require the court to supervise inherently predictive judgments by the president and his national security advisers as to when and how to use force against a member of an enemy force against which Congress has authorized the use of force.”
Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, remarked that the paper was “a profoundly disturbing document. “It’s hard to believe that it was produced in a democracy built on a system of checks and balances. It summarizes in cold legal terms a stunning overreach of executive authority — the claimed power to declare Americans a threat and kill them far from a recognized battlefield and without any judicial involvement.”
In May of 2012, Obama gave his chief of counter-terrorism advisor, John Brennan, a promotion. Brennan has been designated as the one person in the Obama administration who is in charge of choosing who will be assassinated.
Brennan, who was a CIA official during the Bush administration, recently remarked that drone killings were moral, ethical and just.
Brennan will work with the State Department and the Pentagon (along with various federal agencies) in creating target lists; deciding who lives and who dies. Brennan’s recommendation will be delivered directly to Obama for final consideration.
How the process will be enacted is a classified matter; however advocacy groups are alarmed and are demanding that the Obama administration make use of the legal process in the US before ordering people killed by drones.
Al-Qaeda being the go-to fake terrorist group was created by the US government in the 1980s.
In February of 2012, in an interview with Greta Van Susteren, Hillary Clinton, former US Secretary of State, admitted that the US trained the MEK in Afghanistan when the US was engaged in using the terrorist faction against the Russians. The MEK became the CIA-controlled faction known as al-Qaeda. Clinton said: “When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan we had this brilliant idea that we were gonna come to Pakistan and create a force of Mujahideen, equip them with stinger missiles, and everything else and go after the Soviets in Afghanistan.”
This is the creation of al-Qaeda.
Clinton goes on to say: “We were successful. We said ‘great’; and we left Afghanistan . . . Leaving these trained people who were fanatical in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Leaving them well armed and creating a mess at the time we didn’t recognize. When you look back today, the people we are fighting today, we were supporting in the fight against the Soviets.”
Here in the US, there is a push to resurrect the idea of “sleeper agents” tied to extremists Islamic militants in the US that could be “awakened”. This assertion has no basis in fact, however the globalist think-tank The RAND Corporation, surmise that between 2009 and 9/11, “the U.S. government reported forty-six incidents of “domestic radicalization and recruitment to jihadist terrorism.” RAND went on to claim that Americans are playing a high level operational role in al-Qaeda and aligned groups.
Globalists point to al-Qaeda as the origination of radicalization as evidenced with Anwar al-Awlaki who was purported to have opportunities to spread violent Islamic ideology in the US. The use of social media sites and evangelical preachers could cause a boon in terrorist groups as explained by counterterrorism experts.
Independent studies find that the incidents of Islamic radicalization have significantly dropped since 9/11 and terrorism has fallen to only 20 cases reported in 2011. Charles Kurzman, author of the report for the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, explained that Muslim Americans are “a miniscule threat to public safety.”
Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Q… by
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