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ASSASSINATION PROGRAM |
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Counter Intelligence, Part V |
Unmanned: America's Drone Wars |
We Have to Talk About the Boy in the Ambulance... |
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Shining a Light on Black Operations Part 5: Drone Nation
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"Unmanned" investigates the impact of U.S. drone strikes at home and abroad, observing their effect on the War on Terror, the lives of individuals, and U.S. foreign policy.
I CONFRONTED A DRONE PILOT |
I wasn't going to, but then I saw the CNN anchor pretend to cry... Truthstream Can Be Found Here:
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Heartbreaking Video Footage from Syria End Times News Report
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Killing For Peace? More Civilian Deaths Now Than Under Obama RonPaulLibertyReport Streamed live 5 hours ago Changing rules of engagement, increased bombing runs, and granting field officers more authority to call in drone strikes has resulted in far more civilian casualties in the ongoing US wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Will this acceleration lead to quicker victory? Or is it planting the seeds for yet more expansion of the war? |
President Trump To Unleash The CIA Drones According to recent media reports, President Trump is planning to lift the restrictions on the CIA's use of drones worldwide. Will this new "counterterrorism" strategy create more terrorists than it kills? https://airwars.org/ |
The US Gov’t Killed More Civilians This Month Than All Terrorist Attacks in Europe Over the Last 12 Years
In the last 12 years, terrorist attacks in Europe have killed 459 civilians. The U.S. killed at least 472 civilians in Syria, just in the last month.
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/us-killed-more-civilians-europe-terrorist-attacks/
LINKS:
KILLING CIVILIANS WITH DRONES | DRONES | Assassination Program
Yes Your Government Can Use Armed Drones Against You
LINK:
DAMN IT PEOPLE, DON'T YOU GET IT?!!
LINKS:
Posse Comitatus Act | Posse Comitatus2 | Posse Comitatus Legislation
Document: Army Preparing to Use Lethal Force Against “Unarmed Civilians” During “Full Scale Riots” in U.S.
Training manual outlines "sniper response"
during crowd control operations
by Paul Joseph Watson | August 18, 2014
A document released by the U.S. Army details preparations for “full scale riots” within the United States during which troops may be forced to engage in a “lethal response” to deal with unruly crowds of demonstrators.
The appearance of the document amidst growing unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, with the National Guard now being called in to deal with the disorder, is an ominous coincidence.
The 132-page document, titled U.S. Army Techniques Publication 3-39.33: Civil Disturbances (PDF), was written in April 2014 and recently obtained by Public Intelligence.
The document makes it clear that the techniques detailed therein are to be applied both outside and inside the “continental United States (CONUS)” in the event of “unruly and violent crowds” where it is “necessary to quell riots and restore public order.”
HD :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrVLHRgm1tc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6swh3MvV8yA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDk6NuguoSE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCNHsvS4QkA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb4He1gEP6U
The training manual outlines scenarios under which, “Civil unrest may range from simple, nonviolent protests that address specific issues, to events that turn into full-scale riots.”
The most shocking aspect of the document is the fact that it describes the deployment of a “lethal response” directed against “unarmed civilians,” including “sniper response” and “small arms direct fire.”
Under the heading “sniper response,” the document states, “Ensure that target leaders or troublemakers are targeted,” in addition to a passage which states, “Exploit the psychological effect of an attack.”
Under the heading “small arms direct fire,” the manual states, “Escalate gradually, starting with a small caliber, single round and work up to a large caliber, automatic.”
Another graphic which depicts “escalation of trauma” directs soldiers how to use “riot batons” in order to cause the necessary level of injury or death to the subject. “Deadly force final target areas” include the back of the neck, the solar plexus, the neck, the spine and the head.
In light of events in Ferguson, where a predominantly black community has faced off with militarized police, it’s interesting to note that the manual makes reference to civil unrest that can arise out of “ethnic hatred” and, “Community unrest (that) results in urban conflicts that arise from highly emotional social and economic issues.” The document also mentions how rioters target “retail stores,” as happened during the looting in Ferguson.
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“Significant ethnic differences in a community can create an atmosphere of distrust, even hatred…… (and) can cause an eruption of civil disorder that can lead to full riots,” states the document.
Although the document makes reference to the Constitutional rights of American citizens it goes on to stress that such protections are null and void under a state of emergency, asserting that Posse Comitatus, which is supposed to limit the power of the federal government to use military personnel domestically, “does not apply” under declared “emergency authority” or “When the need for the protection of federal property or federal functions exists.”
It is important to stress that this training manual applies to U.S. Army operations in foreign countries as well as domestically on U.S. soil. Indeed, section 2-18 of the document goes into detail about domestic protests such as the 1999 anti-WTO demonstration in Seattle.
The emergence of the document as National Guard troops prepare to descend on Ferguson, Missouri to deal with looting and civil unrest follows a report we published just a few weeks before the outbreak of the Ferguson riots which documented how National Guard troops were training to detain unruly African-American citizens in prison camps before handing them over to police.
In a special video report, Alex Jones documented how the story was part of wider preparations by the government for domestic disorder that have been ongoing for years.
We have reported previously on similar documents that outline how the U.S. Army would be forced to resort to lethal measures in order to deal with unruly Americans during times of emergency within the United States.
In 2012 we covered FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations, a U.S. Army manual that describes how political activists in prison camps will be indoctrinated by specially assigned psychological operations officers. The document makes numerous references to how government agencies like the DHS, ICE and FEMA will be involved in the domestic internment of U.S. citizens during “civil support operations.”
A second US Army Military Police manual that was leaked months later also outlined how military assets would be used domestically to quell riots, confiscate firearms and even kill Americans on U.S. soil during mass civil unrest.
U.S. troops and National Guard also worked with local police to incarcerate Americans in detention camps during drills Alex Jones covered in 1999 in Oakland, California.
A report produced in 2008 by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute warned that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it termed “strategic shock.”
“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” stated the report, authored by [Ret.] Lt. Col. Nathan Freir, adding that the military may be needed to quell “purposeful domestic resistance”.
Rex 84, short for Readiness Exercise 1984, was established under the pretext of a “mass exodus” of illegal aliens crossing the Mexican/US border.
During the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987, however, it was revealed that the program was a secretive “scenario and drill” developed by the federal government to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, assign military commanders to take over state and local governments, and detain large numbers of American citizens determined by the government to be “national security threats.”
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DHS Has Now Acquired Enough Bullets
To Wage 30 Year War!!
LINK:
Documentarian Warns Colbert he may be on government drone strike kill list
Documentary filmmaker spills the beans
on Obama’s
secretive drone program
Infowars.com
July 16, 2013
Documentarian, author and journalist Jeremy Scahill appeared on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report Monday night attempting to communicate a few of the lesser-known details surrounding the Obama administration’s secretive drone warfare campaign, at one point even shocking the boisterous cable host into sober seriousness.
The seasoned satirist got off to a cynical start, introducing Scahill to the audience by saying, “It’s an honor to be the last man to see him alive.”
Scahill, a national security correspondent for The Nation magazine and producer of the 2013 documentary Dirty Wars, has been on the ground and experienced first hand the devastation wrought by U.S. drones upon innocent civilians in places like Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen where he says the Obama administration is killing people indiscriminately in covert, undeclared wars.
“We’re doing night raids, drone strikes, cruise missile attacks. We’re killing a tremendous number of innocent civilians and we’re killing people whose identities we don’t even know,” Scahill told Colbert talking about a secret war being conducted in Afghanistan being concealed by a larger, more public war.
“What do you mean, we’re killing a bunch of innocent [people]?,” Colbert asked, befuddled. “I haven’t heard much about that.”
“Well, I was on the ground in Yemen, Afghanistan, Somalia,” Scahill states, adding, “I went to villages where for instance one of the first strikes President Obama authorized in Yemen killed 46 people. 14 of them were women, 21 were children. Who was the target in that action? The White House has not provided any information.”
One of the biggest problems with the unmanned drone program is that the number of strikes and people killed are kept strictly confidential. In fact, not until earlier this year was there an actual confirmation by the government that such a program even existed. So much for the “most transparent administration in history.”
Scahill elaborated, “We are doing pre-crime, like Minority Report, where we say if you’re a military-age male in a certain region of these countries we’re gonna kill you and then later say that you were a terrorist without ever providing any information that you actually were involved in a terror plot.”
Scahill is alluding to the Obama administration’s redefinition of the word “militant,” whose definition has been transformed to mean “all military-age males in a strike zone.”
Former Salon and current Guardian writer Glenn Greenwald had this to say about the brazenly propagandized term: “By ‘militant,’ the Obama administration literally means nothing more than: any military-age male whom we kill, even when we know nothing else about them. They have no idea whether the person killed is really a militant: if they’re male and of a certain age they just call them one in order to whitewash their behavior and propagandize the citizenry (unless conclusive evidence somehow later emerges proving their innocence).”
The faux-conservative liberal next assumed a trademark liberal stance, claiming that if Scahill didn’t support unmanned drones, he didn’t support the troops.
“In fact,” Scahill fired back, “you know they tried to make a medal for drone pilots and then it was rescinded by the Defense Secretary because of outrage from the actual troops. So, the troops actually disagree with your position that a drone is a troop.”
“So what’s your answer?” Colbert asked, seemingly interested.
“Well, I think first of all we can indict them and demand their extradition,” Scahill stated, referring to the rule of law due process requirement that typically governs war scenarios.
Scahill then engaged in a debate about reported terrorist recruiter and motivator, not to mention confirmed Pentagon dinner guest, Anwar al-Awlaki who was born in New Mexico. “What [Obama] did was he fast-forwarded to the death penalty without even indicting him.”
As Colbert proceeded to play devil’s advocate, Scahill – by this time genuinely disturbed – asked, “It doesn’t trouble you that the President of the United States is asserting the right to kill American citizens without presenting any actual evidence or indicting them at all?”
“Well, I’m not on the list,” Colbert flippantly stated.
Scahill remarked, “Well, how do you know?” eliciting a huge gasp from the audience.
“How do you get on the list?” asked Colbert cautiously, albeit comically.
“I mean I watch this show; you could be on the list,” Scahill warned, emphasizing the fact that details surrounding the drone program are kept confidential, just as former Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs admitted earlier this year.
“So you get on the list and then, can you get off the list?” Colbert worriedly queried.
Ominously, Scahill replied, “Only from a drone strike it seems.”
Without missing a beat, Colbert ended the segment and thanked Scahill: “Thank you so much for joining me, I’ve got to catch a cab.”
This article was posted: Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 5:54 pm
Aaron Dykes Confronted A Drone
Pilot
Who flies the drones America uses to take out
military targets in foreign locales all over the globe? Aaron Dykes had the chance to talk to an Air Force drone
pilot operating out of Whiteman Air Force Base, and astonishingly, he admitted to me that he took part in strikes
on wedding parties in Middle East & Asian countries said to harbor terrorists.
Aaron Dykes confronted him with some of the troubling news that has emerged about the secret White House kill list
and the apparent readiness to destroy the lives of innocent bystanders in pursuit of a target -- women, children
and elderly villagers who are all considered nothing more than "collateral damage."
Did he, too, find these people dispensable? Did he share the cold rationale of our leaders that it is "worth it" to
kill these civilians to target an enemy? Aaron Dykes tried to find out when Dykes saw him during a wedding he
attended, all while Dykes was deeply aware of the unsettling irony that the celebration we were attending was seen
differently than the weddings, funerals and other gatherings that U.S. airstrikes have unofficially declared to be
venues of war.
Allowance for the use of short news clips used reasonably falls under the "fair use" doctrine. Under Copyright
Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as
criticism, comment, news reporting, and research.
Rand Paul: Drones Could Be Targeted At Americans Eating Dinner At Home
Privacy group petitioning government
on drone capability to identify
armed individuals, intercept cell phones
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
March 6, 2013
Senator Rand Paul lashed out at the Obama administration last night following suggestions by Attorney General Eric Holder that the president is within his rights to assassinate Americans on American soil using drone strikes, without oversight.
“The thing about the drone strike program is, we’re not talking about someone’s actively attacking America, we’re not talking about planes flying into the World Trade Center.” Paul said in a Fox News interview.
“What we’re talking about is you’re eating dinner in your house. you’re eating at a cafe or you’re walking down the road. That’s when these drone strikes can occur.” Paul added, calling the development “particularly disturbing”.
“If you’re an American and you’re accused of a crime, one of the basic principles, one of the protections we’ve always had is, you get a trial… You don’t get convicted without a trial.” the Senator added.
“Listen to what his [Obama's] response is.” Paul urged. “His response is, we haven’t killed any Americans yet. We don’t intend to, but we might. And that’s pretty disturbing.”
Paul was speaking in reaction to Eric Holder’s response to his own letter asking if Americans could be targeted with drones.
Holder wrote that it was “possible,” for President Obama to “authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States,” citing the 9/11 terror attacks as an example.
In a further statement today, Holder told Congress that the federal government has “no intention” of using drones to strike at targets within the U.S., saying it’s easier to capture people here so that tool is not as important.
“The use of drones is from my perspective something that is entirely, entirely hypothetical,” he said.
Senator Paul has called for a pledge from the White House that drone strikes will not be used in America regardless of the circumstances.
“We’re talking about someone eating at a cafe in Boston, or New York, and a Hellfire missile comes raining in on them,” Paul said during a previous appearance on Fox News. “There should be an easy answer from the administration on this. They should say, ‘Absolutely no, we will not kill Americans in America without an accusation, a trial and a jury.’”
“The U.S. Attorney General’s refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening – it is an affront the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans,” Paul wrote in a further statement on his website.
Meanwhile, where domestic drone use for surveillance is concerned, advocacy group the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC) issued a statement on its website announcing that it is officially petitioning U.S. Customs and Border Protection over revelations that unmanned Predator drones under the agency’s operation can listen in on electronic communications.
EPIC noted that documents it recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the agency’s drones will be equipped with technology for signals interception and human identification.
The 2010 DHS “performance specification” document EPIC has uncovered states that “communication relay and interception” are preferable operations to use drones for, rather than relying on “sensors mounted in airships, aerostats, towers, and manned aircraft”. The document states that the capability has not yet been tested in the field.
According to the document, the drones are to have a “signals interception receiver,” that would be capable of intercepting cell phone and radio communications transmissions.
The Homeland Security design requirements also specify that the Predator B drones “shall be capable of identifying a standing human being at night as likely armed or not”.
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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.
Attorney General Holder: Prez Can
Assassinate Americans
On U.S. Soil
Washington’s
Blog
March 6, 2013
Attorney general Eric Holder wrote the following to Senator Rand Paul yesterday:
On February 20, 2013, you wrote to John Brennan requesting additional information concerning the Administration’s views about whether “the President has the power to authorize lethal force, such as drone strike, against a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, and without trial.”
As members of this administration have previously indicated, the US government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and has no intention of doing so. As a policy matter moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat. We have a long history of using the criminal justice system to incapacitate individuals located in our country who pose a threat to the United States and its interests abroad. Hundreds of individuals have been arrested and convicted of terrorism-related offenses in our federal courts.
The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront. It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States. For example, the president could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances like a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.
Were such an emergency to arise, I would examine the particular facts and circumstances before advising the President on the scope of his authority.
There’s more to the following statement than appears at first blush:
As a policy matter moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat.
Specifically, Holder did not say “we are legally constrained by the Constitution from depriving people of life, liberty or property without due process of law, and from using military force on U.S. soil”. Instead, he said that the Obama administration was so far abstaining from using a power it already has as acurrent “policy” decision.
John Glaser notes:
The concluding legal opinion represents a radical betrayal of constitutional limits imposed on the state for depriving citizens of life, liberty and property. Officially now, Obama’s kingly authority to play Judge, Jury, and Executioner and deprive Americans of their life without due process of law applies not only to Americans abroad but to citizens that are inside the United States.
“The US Attorney General’s refusal to rule out the possibility of drone strikes on American citizens and on American soil is more than frightening – it is an affront the Constitutional due process rights of all Americans,” Sen. Paul said in a statement.
Holder, along with the Obama administration, is making it seem as if the President’s use of lethal force, as in the drone war, would only be used in circumstances like another impending 9/11 attack or something. Only when an attack is imminent.
But that categorical limitation on the President’s authority to kill depends upon their definition of “imminence,” which we learned from a leaked Justice Department white paper last month, is extremely broad.
The memo refers to what it calls a “broader concept of imminence” than what has traditionally been required, like actual intelligence of an ongoing plot against the US.
“The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” the memo states, contradicting conventional international law.
Instead, so long as an “informed, high-level” US official claims the targeted American has been “recently” involved in “activities” that pose a threat and “there is no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or abandoned such activities,” then the President can order his assassination. The memo does not define “recently” or “activities.”
Holder also insists that in the case of such “extraordinary circumstances,” like another impending 9/11, he ”would examine the particular facts and circumstances before advising the president of the scope of his authority.”
Boy, do I feel comforted.
This is not entirely surprising. As we noted in December 2011, a top constitutional expert confirmed that Obama was claiming the authority to assassinate Americans on U.S. soil. We reported that month:
For more than a year and a half, the Obama administration has said it could target American citizens for assassination without any trial or due process.
But now, as shown by the debates surrounding indefinite detention, the government is saying that America itself is a battlefield.
AP notes today:
U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida, top national security lawyers in the Obama administration said Thursday.
***
The government lawyers, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson … said U.S. citizens do not have immunity when they are at war with the United States.
Johnson said only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.
The courts in habeas cases, such as those involving whether a detainee should be released from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, make the determination of who can be considered an enemy combatant.
We pointed out a year ago, the director of the FBI said he’d have to “check” to see if the president had the authority to assassinate Americans on U.S. soil. We reported last October that form Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo – the guy who wrote the memo justifying torture, even of children, which was used to justify torture of innocent people, including children – said that the president has the power to assassinate Americans on U.S. soil in times of war.
And Mother Jones notes:
In a Google+ Hangout last month, President Obama refused to say directly if he had the authority to use lethal force against US citizens. As Mother Jones reported at the time, the reason the president was being so coy is that the answer was likely yes. Now we know that’s exactly what was happening.
It is not very reassuring that the same unaccountable agency which decides who should be killed by drones also spies on all Americans.
You might assume – in a vacuum – that this might be okay (even though it trashes the Constitution, the separation of military and police actions, and the division between internal and external affairs).
But it is dangerous in a climate where you can be labeled as or suspected of being a terrorist simply for questioning war, protesting anything, asking questions about pollution or about Wall Street shenanigans, supporting Ron Paul, being a libertarian, holding gold, or stocking up on more than 7 days of food. And see this.
And it is problematic in a period in which FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials “were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power”, and even former Secretary of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge – admitst hat he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection.
And it is counter-productive in an age when the government – instead of doing the things which could actually make us safer – are doing things which increase the risk of terrorism.
And it is insane in a time of perpetual war. See this, this, this and this.
And when the “War on Terror” in the Middle East and North Africa which is being used to justify the attack on Americans was planned long before 9/11.
And when Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser told the Senate in 2007 that the war on terror is “a mythical historical narrative”. And 9/11 was entirely foreseeable, but wasn’t stopped. Indeed, no one in Washington even wants to hear how 9/11 happened, even though that is necessary to stop future terrorist attacks. And the military has bombed a bunch of oil-rich countries when it could have instead taken out Bin Ladenyears ago.
As I noted in [an analogous context]:
The government’s indefinite detention policy – stripped of it’s spin – is literally insane, and based on circular reasoning. Stripped of p.r., this is the actual policy:
- If you are an enemy combatant or a threat to national security, we will detain you indefinitely until the war is over
- It is a perpetual war, which will never be over
- Neither you or your lawyers have a right to see the evidence against you, nor to face your accusers
- But trust us, we know you are an enemy combatant and a threat to national security
- We may torture you (and try to cover up the fact that you were tortured), because you are an enemy combatant, and so basic rights of a prisoner guaranteed by the Geneva Convention don’t apply to you
- Since you admitted that you’re a bad guy (while trying to tell us whatever you think we want to hear to make the torture stop), it proves that we should hold you in indefinite detention
See how that works?
And – given that U.S. soldiers admit that if they accidentally kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then “drop” automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they were militants – it is unlikely that the government would ever admit that an American citizen it assassinated was an innocent civilian who has nothing at all to do with terrorism.
Read this if you have any doubt as to how much liberty Americans have lost.
Senator Paul told MSNBC:
The response by Holder could lead to a situation where “an Arab-American in Dearborn (Mich.) is walking down the street emailing with a friend in the Mideast and all of a sudden we drop a drone” on him. He said it was “really shocking” that President Barack Obama, a former constitutional law professor, would leave the door open to such a possibility.
True … but you don’t have to be Arab-American to get in trouble.
This article was posted: Wednesday, March 6, 2013 at 5:59 am
Tags: domestic news, government corruption, police state
Stand With Rand : Rand Paul, Barak Obama, Drones, and Presidential Kill Lists
For almost 13 hours on Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) led a filibuster on the Senate
floor that called attention to the Obama administration's refusal to share its case for why the president can
target and kill U.S. citizens without oversight. Joined by about a dozen different colleagues throughout the event,
Paul hammered home questions surrounding positions advanced by President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric
Holder, and Obama's nominee to head the CIA, John Brennan. The entire filibuster is viewable at C-SPAN's
website.
Here's a condensed version of the issues under debate, featuring Sen. Paul, President Obama, and actual drone
surveillance footage.
Legal Loophole: White House Reserves Right to Homeland Drone Strikes, Indefinite Detention
Infowars.com
March 12, 2013
In this March 11, 2013 edition of the Infowars Nightly News, host Aaron Dykes explains how letters and memos from the Department of Justice make clear that as long as the U.S. remains committed to the farcical War on Terror, the NDAA gives the White House the excuse to kill Americans on U.S. soil via drone strikes, etc. and indefinitely detain anyone it claims is engaged in hostilities, all outside of law.
Legal Loophole: White House Reserves Right
to Homeland Drone Strikes, Indefinite Detention
In this March 11, 2013 edition of the Infowars Nightly News, host Aaron Dykes explains how
letters and memos from the Department of Justice make clear that as long as the U.S. remains committed to the
farcical War on Terror, the NDAA gives the White House the excuse to kill Americans on U.S. soil via drone strikes,
etc. and indefinitely detain anyone
it claims is engaged in hostilities, all outside of law.
The Department of Justice Did NOT Disclaim Murder of Americans by Drone
Washington’s Blog
March 11, 2013
As we noted Friday, Attorney General Holder’s statement that the president will not assassinate non-combatant Americans on U.S. soil with a drone left a huge loophole, and raised more questions than it answered.
Later that day, top constitutional and military law expert Jonathan Turley agreed:
We previously discussed how Attorney General Eric Holder wrote a letter confirming that the President would have authority to kill citizens on U.S. soil without a charge or conviction. His answer triggered a principled filibuster by Sen. Rand Paul and another embarrassment to Democratic Senators who, again, chose personality over principle in staying silent. Now, Holder has issued a new statement. No, President Obama still claims the right to kill U.S. citizens on his sole authority. However, Holder now says that, if the citizen is “not engaged in combat on American soil,” the President cannot vaporize him.The answer leaves the constitutional claim of Obama even more confused and conflicted. Does this mean we have a third category now under the policy: citizen, citizen terrorist, and citizen non-combatant terrorist?
In his prior letter, Holder answered a question about whether the President was claiming the right to kill citizens on U.S. soil. This follows the release of a memo showing that Holder’s description of the policy at Northwestern University Law School was narrower than the actual policy described within the Administration. A memo leaked to the press shows that the Administration has adopted a virtual limitless definition of imminence: “The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.”
Last week, Holder said “It is possible I suppose to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States.”
***
It is not clear what Holder means by “engaged in combat” since the Administration memo shows that the Administration is using an absurdly broad definition of “imminent” threat under the kill list policy. Since the Administration has continued to assert that terrorists are engaged in a war against the U.S., the terse reply of Holder seems designed to preserve later flexibility.
Moreover, there is nothing in the constitutional claim of the Administration that reflects such a limitation. Deciding on where to kill a citizen would be an discretionary policy under the sweeping presidential authority described by the Administration. As noted in earlier columns (here and here and here), it is astonishing how citizens, including so many liberals and civil libertarians, Obama is saying that his appointment of a non-binding committee satisfied due process and relieves any need for judicial review. Moreover, if the President has the inherent authority to kill a citizen in Canada, it is not clear why such inherent authority would not exist a few hundred yards away in Detroit. The Administration has said that it can use the unilateral power when it considers a capture to pose undue risk to its personnel.
What is particularly striking is that we have a president who is asserting the right to kill any citizen but the Administration has classified memos on that authority and the Attorney General will only give a Senator a terse two line conclusory statement on scope. The Administration appears to believe that there is little need to explain the details on killing citizens, such as how it defines “combat.” Obviously, if there is a war occurring in the United States, a president has the right to put down insurrection or attacks on the federal government. These strikes concern targeting terrorists. One can easily foresee this or a future president insisting that an alleged terrorism conspiracy is a form of combat.
It would seem an obvious thing to explain how they define combat and whether an alleged terrorist would fall into it. Does this mean that there will be a category of non-combatant terrorists for domestic strikes? How is that defined? It seems like a hole big enough to fly a drone through.Since police can already use lethal force to stop an attack in progress, the answer leaves more questions than it answers in my view. For a citizen it would mean that he or she can be killed abroad on the basis of the Administration’s wildly broad definition of “imminent” but domestically would fall under a different “combat” definition. Where is the line between an “imminent” threat and “combat” drawn? Does Holder mean there is a different meaning to imminence when someone steps over the border? We already have the definition of “imminent” and the Administration’s new definition of “imminent.” Is this yet a third option?
Today, former constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald weighs in:
As Law Professor Ryan Goodman wrote yesterday in the New York Times, “the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, has acted with an overly broad definition of what it means to be engaged in combat.” That phrase – “engaged in combat” – does not only include people who are engaged in violence at the time you detain or kill them. It includes a huge array of people who we would not normally think of, using common language, as being “engaged in combat”.
Indeed, the whole point of the Paul filibuster was to ask whether the Obama administration believes that it has the power to target a US citizen for assassination on US soil the way it did to Anwar Awlaki in Yemen. The Awlaki assassination was justified on the ground that Awlaki was a “combatant”, that he was “engaged in combat”, even though he was killed not while making bombs or shooting at anyone but after he had left a cafe where he had breakfast. If the Obama administration believes that Awlaki was “engaged in combat” at the time he was killed – and it clearly does – then Holder’s letter is meaningless at best, and menacing at worst, because that standard is so broad as to vest the president with exactly the power his supporters now insist he disclaimed.
The phrase “engaged in combat” has come to mean little more than: anyone the President accuses, in secrecy and with no due process, of supporting a Terrorist group. Indeed, radically broad definitions of “enemy combatant” have been at the heart of every War on Terror policy, from Guantanamo to CIA black sites to torture. As Professor Goodman wrote:
“By declining to specify what it means to be ‘engaged in combat’ the letter does not foreclose the possible scenario – however hypothetical – of a military drone strike, against a United States citizen, on American soil. It also raises anew questions about the standards the administration has used in deciding to use drone strikes to kill Americans suspected of terrorist involvement overseas . . .
“The Obama administration’s continued refusal to do so should alarm any American concerned about the constitutional right of our citizens – no matter what evil they may or may not be engaged in – to due process under the law. For those Americans, Mr. Holder’s seemingly simple but maddeningly vague letter offers no reassurance.”
Indeed, as both Law Professor Kevin Jon Heller and Marcy Wheeler noted, Holder, by deleting the word “actively” from Paul’s question (can you kill someone not “actively engaged in combat”?), raised more questions than he answered. As Professor Heller wrote:
“‘Engaged in combat’ seems like a much broader standard than ‘senior operational leader’. which the recently disclosed White Paper described as a necessary condition of killing an American citizen overseas. Does that mean the President can kill an American citizen inside the US who is a lower-ranking member of al-Qaeda or an associated force? . . . .
“What does ‘engaged in combat’ mean? That is a particularly important question, given that Holder did not restrict killing an American inside the US to senior operational leaders and deleted ‘actively’ from Paul’s question. Does ‘engaging’ require participation in planning or executing a terrorist attack? Does any kind of direct participation in hostilities qualify? Do acts short of direct participation in hostilities – such as financing terrorism or propagandizing – qualify? Is mere membership, however loosely defined by the US, enough?”
Particularly since the Obama administration continues to conceal the legal memos defining its claimed powers – memos we would need to read to understand what it means by “engaged in combat” – the Holder letter should exacerbate concerns, not resolve them. As Digby, comparing Bush and Obama legal language on these issues,wrote yesterday about Holder’s letter: “It’s fair to say that these odd phrasings and very particular choices of words are not an accident and anyone with common sense can tell instantly that by being so precise, they are hiding something.”
At best, Holder’s letter begs the question: what do you mean when you accuse someone of being “engaged in combat”? And what are the exact limits of your power to target US citizens for execution without due process? That these questions even need to be asked underscores how urgently needed Paul’s filibuster was, and how much more serious pushback is still merited. But the primary obstacle to this effort has been, and remains, that the Democrats who spent all that time parading around as champions of these political values are now at the head of the line leading the war against them.
Note: In addition to drones, the highly-militarized American police are another major threat to our life, liberty, and property.
This article was posted: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 10:42 am
Tags: drones, government corruption, police state
Robert Gibbs Lied to America
about The Drone Program!
Drone Denial by Lame Stream Media
Robert Gibbs Lied to America about The Drone Prgm.
The lies are getting too ridiculous.
Obama Declares War on American People
http://www.infowars.com/inside-the-ri...
Despite President Obama going to great lengths to assuage the American people's concerns with the increased
militarization of federal agencies, a recently disclosed military directive suggests those fears could be
legitimate.
http://www.infowars.com/dod-directive...
http://www.infowars.com/obama-conside...
LINKS:
Executive Orders | DRONES | Yes Your Government Can Use Armed Drones Against You |
Posse Comitatus Act | Posse Comitatus2
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Police State 4 (Full Movie)
FBI Refusing To Handover Document About Sniper
Assassination Plot To Kill OCCUPY Protest Leaders
LINK: F.B.I.
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THE CIA An independent agency of the United States government responsible for collecting and coordinating intelligence and counterintelligence activities abroad in the national interest; headed by the Director of Central Intelligence under the supervision of the President and National Security Council...There has been considerable criticism of the CIA relating to security and counterintelligence failures, failures in intelligence analysis, human rights concerns, external investigations and document releases, influencing public opinion and law enforcement, drug trafficking, and lying to Congress. In 1987, the former CIA Station Chief in Angola in 1976, John Stockwell, said the CIA is responsible for tens of thousands of covert actions and destablization programs since it was created by Congress with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947. At the time, Stockwell estimated that over 6 million people had died in CIA covert actions.
LINK: C.I.A.
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THE FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a governmental agency belonging to the United StatesDepartment of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency (counterintelligence). Also, it is the government agency responsible for investigating crimes on Indian reservations in the United States under the Major Crimes Act. The branch has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime. The agency was established in 1908 as the Bureau of Investigation (BOI). Its name was changed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1935. The agency headquarters is the J. Edgar Hoover Building, located in Washington, D.C. The agency has fifty-six field offices located in major cities throughout the United States, and more than 400 resident agencies in lesser cities and areas across the nation. More than 50 international offices called "legal attachés" exist in U.S. embassies and consulates general worldwide. 'Federal Bureau of Investigation organizes almost all terror plots in the US' ...The report reveals that the FBI regularly infiltrates communities where they suspect terrorist-minded individuals to be engaging with others. Regardless of their intentions, agents are sent in to converse within the community, find suspects that could potentially carry out “lone wolf” attacks and then, more or less, encourage them to do so. By providing weaponry, funds and a plan, FBI-directed agents will encourage otherwise-unwilling participants to plot out terrorist attacks, only to bust them before any events fully materialize.
LINK: F.B.I.
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Obama DHS Planned to Kill Peaceful
Protesters in
Sniper Attacks
Feds, contractors and police prepared to carry out death squad operations
Alex Jones and Julie Wilson
Infowars.com
July 25, 2013
This document was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. Click on image to see enlargement.
In June, Infowars.com cited a report by WhoWhatWhy.com revealing that the “FBI was aware of an organization, possibly a local police department or private security company, that had plans to assassinate peaceful protesters during the Occupy Movement.”
The classified document released by the FBI read:
An identified [DELETED] as of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protestors (sic) in Houston, Texas if deemed necessary. An identified [DELETED] had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin,Texas. [DELETED] planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles.
“According to journalist David Lindorff, the FBI planned to assassinate the leaders of the now moribund Occupy movement ‘via suppressed sniper rifles,” a follow up report by Kurt Nimmo confirmed.
The following is a transcript of Alex Jones spoken analysis:
It is essential to understand that information is being declassified on purpose, to create a chilling effect against constitutionally protected activities like demonstrations and protests. But it’s also there to mainline the idea that assassination/death squads are operating within America.
When you have the president signing the NDAA publicly saying we can kill, disappear Americans, we can torture, we can do whatever we want, that can then be given to special forces, contractors and others who have already been carrying out these types of seek-and-destroy operations in foreign countries.
So they believe it’s legal and lawful. In essence, this is the public roll-out, or testing of the waters. A trial balloon for death squads to operate openly in America.
All of this in the name of “terrorism,” when the government itself has become the ultimate terrorists.
This is psychological warfare against police, the military and the general public. It is the mainlining, the normalizing of the most barbarous, over-the-top, illegal activities that governments can engage in.
The open, premeditated plan to murder peaceful demonstrators on a scale that dwarfs Kent State protests.
This is a test to contractors, police, military and the feds–standby for your orders to kill.
This is how they’re creating an army of killers. The police need to know that this is a psyop aimed at them, to see if they’ll carry out over-the-top evil.
We’re talking about a truly hijacked rogue government that’s done this clandestinely in the third world for over sixty years.
What goes around, comes around.
America sat idly by while criminal elements used our government to carry out death squad operations, now it’s coming home.
Cops that don’t follow orders, get beat or sentenced to tax collecting, also known as meeting ticket quotas.
We focused in on the micro–how they’re manipulating the individual security services, let’s expand on the macro. Once it becomes well known that there’s death squads operating it will create a chilling effect.
But it will also cause reprisals.
When somebody’s car blows up like Hastings’ in the future, people will know it was done by the system.
They won’t know who to target, but there will be reprisals.
Military veterans will target every major city with IEDs in the near future and are the number terror threat according the DHS occupation forces.
The off the chart nature of this is what’s so genius. Tyrants that go over the top, tend to succeed more often than tyrants that just move incrementally.
We’ve known for 5 years that DHS was shifting from Al-Qaeda to veterans and gun owners being the number one terror threat. And now it’s just been normalized.
Now we’re being acclimated to the idea of sniper teams taking people out for exercising the first amendment. If it worked for the Nazis and the Soviets, why not here?
Two days ago the House joined the NSA by endorsing illegal spying, which indicates the bottom has completely fallen out of our republic.
The blackest stench of tyranny now spills fourth from the mah of hell. Every form of evil is being released from its eon-old sleep to crawl openly upon the ground and devour our security, our wealth and our future.
They’re getting ready to push us into a civil war.
They’re getting ready to push the security services into confrontations with the American people, to start the conflict that they’ve scripted.
Just like in Iraq they’ve pushed the Shiites off against the Sunnis. It’s pure divide and conquer, it’s scientifically diabolical.
If observers ever want to know how the U.S. could be brought down, it would be from within, with this 21st century type high-tech subterfuge.
This is it.
How can foreign banks steal tens of trillions of dollars of Americans’ money? Simple. Just say protesting banks is an act of terrorism and kill everybody that dares to speak out.
The other so called Americans will just run in fear and endorse the oppression, thanks to mass Stockholm syndrome engineered into them from birth.
The powerful fiction film The Purge, is a near future window into the choices we have to make.
See below.
The Purge
See other awesome videos at infowars.com/paul
Related Articles
LINKS:
How could there be a War on Terror and actually say that we're having a war against terrorism, and leave the borders wide open? If you were the President of the United States, or I were the President of the United States, and 9/11 really happened the way they want us to believe it happened, the first thing you would do is shut down the borders, so people couldn't get in the country to harm you. But they left the borders wide open. Because the bankers want the borders open, because they want a one-world government. They want a North American Union. They don't want borders here. 9/11 was only a manifestation. It was done to create a fear in the American public, so that we will obey what they want us to do.
LINKS:
THE FAKE WAR ON
TERROR | INFAMOUS 9/11 | False Flag Event | ISIS/ALQAEDA | America Armed ISIS!! |
Naked Body
Scanners | American Border
Debacle | Feds Radiating
Americans | Illegal Checkpoints In
America |
Mobile Van Radiating the
Public | Police Trained That
Informed Americans Are Terrorists | The NSA (National Security
Agency) |
The Federal
Reserve | Fusion Centers | TSA |
N.W.O.
It’s no longer Al-Qaeda,
it’s now supposedly your friends and neighbors. This is the
prevailing meme of every
tyrannical fascist regime in history.
Attorney General Holder: American People Are Terrorists
THE WAR ON TERROR IS AN ABSOLUTE FRAUD
[OBAMA RELEASES MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZERS OF THE TALIBAN]
Could Obama Face Impeachment For Bergdahl release
What happened in the last few weeks to change the Bergdahal situation? Was he a CIA operative, or was this a failed attempt to take the heat off the VA scandal?
Impeachment now very valid argument
http://www.infowars.com/judge-napolit...
Jay Carney 2013: we won't transfer detainess without consulting congress
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/j...
Obama clearly broke the law
http://www.infowars.com/pro-obama-har...
Is this a ramp up to "White al Qaeda"
http://www.infowars.com/holder-to-cre...
LINK: THE FAKE WAR ON TERROR!
Alex Jones breaks down the bigger picture behind
the move to turn the war on terror against American citizens
EVERYONE IS A
TERRORIST
White House Tells Parents: Children Could Be Terrorists!
I have told you this was coming. Under the new homeland we are all the enemy in the eyes of the occupiers.
LINKS: You Are Being Targeted | Assassination Program | [ AL-QAEDA EXPOSED!! ] | Terrorism Big Dirty Secret | AGENDA 21 Cliven Bundy Case Example | Police Trained That Informed Americans Are Terrorists | Troops Ordered To Kill All Americans Who Do Not Turn In Guns | Posse Comitatus Act | Posse Comitatus2 | Police State 1 | Police State 2 | Police State 3 | Police State 4 | The Fake War On Terror
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THE GLOBALISTS MOVE FROM THEIR ALQAEDA CREATION, TO FABRICATING HOMEGROWN DOMESTIC TERROR
Several years ago, after his popular video “Mad As Hell” was released and Aaron Russo began his campaign to become Governor of Nevada, Russo was noticed by Nicholas Rockefeller and introduced to him by a female attorney. Seeing Russo’s passion and ability to affect change, Rockefeller set about on a subtle mission to recruit Russo into the elite’s CFR. Watch the full interview here: Reflections and Warnings.
Aaron Russo talks about the CFR...And The Fake War On Terror!
Aaron Russo talks about the CFR...And The Fake War On Terrorism!
LINKS: Reflections And Warnings movie | Road to World Government | CASHLESS TRACKABLE SOCIETY | Educational System Dismantlement | The Fake War On Terror | 911 The Road to Tyranny | INFAMOUS 9/11 | N.W.O. | C.F.R.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born in Russia, DECEMBER 11, 1918. He was arrested for writing a letter criticizing Stalin and spent 11 years in labor camps. He began writing and eventually received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
REACH OUT TO OTHERS
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MORE:
NDAA | Assassination Program | Yes Your Government Can Use Armed Drones Against You |
Police Trained That Informed Americans Are Terrorists | Troops Ordered To Kill All Americans Who Do Not Turn In Guns |
Law Enforcement Requested Shooting Targets of Pregnant Women | Indefinite Detention and Torture |
Doomsday Preppers Will Be Treated As Terrorists | The Govt is Raping You | False Flag Event |
War On Terror | Subverting The Public | Total Despotism in America | DRONES
