Holder: Drone strike against Americans in the U.S. possible

[Thanas]

And while the definition of terrorist may be an issue, what about using drones to fight a revolt? You have not addressed this point.

Because whenever large revolts happen the National Guard responds by firing hellfire missiles into crowded areas. Oh, I mean you were talking about the oh so likely event of mass armed gangs starting to fight each other with military-grade weaponry.

Also, please provide sources for the claim that donating money to a mosque is considered terrorism

No, I said the definition of terrrorism or providing material support to terrorists is so broad that any event that negatively impacts the administration in any way can potentially be construed that way because it is not defined. Notice the USA already killed a guy for writing propaganda for Al-quaida outside the USA when such acts would most likely have been protected by the 1st amendment inside the USA.

and for the part about the courts not ruling.

You been living under a rock or something?

[weemadando]

Fine. 1st Amendment. Gather a large group of people and protest the shit out of it.

I hope you're in a designated free speech zone and not using any amplifiying equipment or recording it in any way, otherwise we may have to discuss your use of your free speech rights citizen.

[Sea Skimmer]

What anyone thinks is a terrorist does not matter one bit to this Thanas, and the word was not used in Holders statement. The insurrection act certainly does not use the term nor does it need to do so given its language. Have you ever read this act? Did you even read what Holder said in the first place? Or is this all ignorant knee jerk?

[Thanas]

Yeah, he talks about an extraordinary circumstance without going into much detail, except for saying that Pearl Harbor and 9/11 would qualify. The latter is a terrorist act.

[Sea Skimmer]

So what? It is his job to give legal opinions. Laws are supposed to be absolute rules you know. Times clearly can exist in which a drone attack might be launched against a US citizen on US soil. It does not fucking matter how random or rare it might be. Either the legal possibility exists, or it does not. Holder answered correctly that it does. The details could be discussed at length, but actually that'd all be pointless in this context because an absurd number of permutations could be thought up in which it would be possible, and if the weapon used is a hypersonic drone or a bayonet means jack shit to all of it. Its only who the guy using the weapon works for that a matters.

[Thanas]

Well, the problem is that Holder is being kinda evasive.

The question that I and many others have asked is not whether the Administration has or intends to carry out drone strikes inside the United States, but whether it believes it has the authority to do so. This is an important distinction that should not be ignored.

Holder's answer does not state that he does not believe the President to not have that authority except in case of emergency, he says that the President does not intend to use force and that he will only discuss the authority question in case of circumstance. That is not an answer on the authority question.

Brennan's response is good, where he said the CIA doesn't have the authority to operate inside the USA. That is a good answer.

So I think Holder should say that the USA does not have the power to target its citizens domestically except when they are engaged in battle with the state.

[Sea Skimmer]

Holder's answer does not state that he does not believe the President to not have that authority except in case of emergency, he says that the President does not intend to use force and that he will only discuss the authority question in case of circumstance. That is not an answer on the authority question.

Actually he says that under the applicable laws it could happen. That's very simple. This is a yes/no question.

Why exactly do you think ‘emergency’ means anything functionally different then ‘extraordinary’ anyway? Neither appears in the relevant legislature. Just because you think a term sounds good doesn't mean it has the legal basis you want it too.

So I think Holder should say that the USA does not have the power to target its citizens domestically except when they are engaged in battle with the state.

Such a statement would be false and just really poorly worded for several different reasons, and even if it were true, it would in fact make the presidents domestic drone assassination power much broader then it actually is. I’m not going to waste time telling you why when you obviously don’t care about the law, just what your gut ignorance wants someone to say.

[Thanas]

Actually, I would be interested in hearing what you think his drone assassination policy is.

[Sea Skimmer]

Its nothing but an extension of the insurrection act to modern weapons, which is fine because the act is from 1807, says nothing about specific weapons, and was used to fire incendiary shells at an American city before with no problems. Lincoln also used it to have civilian journalists sentenced to death by the army, but that part got shot down by the courts postwar. Those court cases however also said that proximity to combat increases presidential powers. The journalists were hundreds of miles from the front.

Anyway the act allows the president to US the military force in a US state to uphold the law and protect citizen’s rights only if the state itself is already incapable or refused to do so following an act of insurrection or conspiracy, or a few other things. It also requires that a warning first be issued. Under separate law state governors can also request assistance.

If we adapted your standard of ‘engaged in battle’ then this would bypass the whole state issue and let the president declare a random shoot out with drug smugglers as combat requiring an air strike. This would be an incredibly broad power. Instead its entirely possible for a major insurrection to occur in the US, and as long as the relevant state could handle it, the president has to keep out. But because of the numerous criteria, and the possible requests for state aid involved in all this, you cannot boil it down to 'then and only then' or any remotely useful narrow statement without changing the law, which is not the job of the department of justice or the president.

The random shootout air strike power is the domain of the states, who have the formal and rather unlimited policing power in the US system. Federal powers for domestic affairs are limited, while the states have no foreign affairs powers. Since US states operate national guard combat aircraft its actually very possible for them to find legal ways to use air power for random law enforcement if they felt like it. They’d just have to limit collateral damage when they did so, least they break some civil rights laws or such throwing C4 out of a aircraft onto a house with kids inside (see 1985 Philadelphia MOVE BOMBING, though that used a police helicopter).

[Thanas]

Ok, that makes sense. Understood.

[Simon_Jester]

Side note:

A good answer covering the subject Holder was talking about would be "yes, under the Insurrection Act of 1807 in conjunction with the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 and as amended in 1981" or something like that. Much less weaselly than "I suppose it could happen under extraordinary circumstances."

[Sea Skimmer]

He could have said that yes, as Rand Paul asked about those laws at one point. However he also repeatedly made it clear that he would only accept his own answer, no, and was demanding a pledge from the presidency to this effect, which is generally not a way to make people give a damn about you. His other questions on overseas drone use had much more merit but he did not focus on them, probably because he's aware that US sovereign power is unlimited overseas thanks to supreme court rulings.

But as far as this goes, Paul would have been satisfied by nothing less then the presidency renouncing the Insurrection Act entirely, as well as the National Emergencies Act and several of enabling laws under said act. If he intended this, I am not completely sure, but its what his demands required. Given his political views and family history concerning constitutional law, I would tend to heavily assume he intended it that way.

[Elfdart]

What anyone thinks is a terrorist does not matter one bit to this Thanas, and the word was not used in Holders statement. The insurrection act certainly does not use the term nor does it need to do so given its language. Have you ever read this act? Did you even read what Holder said in the first place? Or is this all ignorant knee jerk?

As amended in 2006, it does:

(1) IN GENERAL- Section 333 of title 10, United States Code, is amended to read as follows:
`Sec. 333. Major public emergencies; interference with State and Federal law

`(a) Use of Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies- (1) The President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to–

`(A) restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States, the President determines that–

`(i) domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order; and

`(ii) such violence results in a condition described in paragraph (2); or

`(B) suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy if such insurrection, violation, combination, or conspiracy results in a condition described in paragraph (2).

`(2) A condition described in this paragraph is a condition that–

`(A) so hinders the execution of the laws of a State or possession, as applicable, and of the United States within that State or possession, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State or possession are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or

`(B) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.

But this is all a red herring because there's almost no evidence that the vast majority of the people targeted and killed in these drone-lynchings has done (or could do, for that matter) any of the things described in the act in its original or amended form. In fact, there's no evidence that the overwhelming majority of the victims of these extrajudicial killings are guilty of so much as a parking ticket, and especially not in Obama's "double tap" lynchings.

It's pretty damning that in a police state like the one we live under, where prosecutors can indict anyone for anything, that Anwar Awlaki (the chief bogeyman targeted) was never indicted, nor was he ever on the FBI's most wanted list. The best case Obama's Willing Assassins could make is that (a) Awlaki wrote nasty things on Teh Interwebz and (b) nutjobs inspired by his lunatic ravings carried out attacks against Americans. By this standard Fred Phelps, Pat Robertson and multitudes of gun nuts would be eligible for extrajudicial killing, too.

[SirNitram]

Unsurprising. I beleive, under the last EO/law about assassinations, it is best summed up as 'No assassinations; If the President authorizes it, we won't call it assassination.' Reagan's EO 12333 lets this Administration.. And the ones before it who have used it.. Assassinate. I would like this to change, myself, but that's the score right now.

[Simon_Jester]

Which brings us back to, yes, the observation that assassinating US citizens overseas on the president's say-so is deeply troubling and unconstitutional.

I wonder which would be less harmful:
1) The Obama policy of assassinating citizens overseas if they get on the administration's hit list of Very Bad People (TM), or...
2) setting a precedent for trials in absentia of citizens who flee overseas and can't be brought home?

Either is unconstitutional, I'm just wondering which would be less bad constitutionally. Leaning toward (2), though anyone can see obvious problems with it if it's abused.

[Sea Skimmer]

As amended in 2006, it does:

If you actually looked into that, which passed in 2007 and not 2006 when it was proposed, you would be aware that the act was amended back to its original text in the 2008 defense budget.

But this is all a red herring because there's almost no evidence that the vast majority of the people targeted and killed in these drone-lynchings has done (or could do, for that matter) any of the things described in the act in its original or amended form.

Well actually its a red herring to your point because the act has nothing at all to do with military action outside of US territory in the first place. The legal questions are different, no matter what the actual answer is. This is why Paul asked a whole slew of different questions, and this thread concerned only one of them.

[Elfdart]

If you actually looked into that, which passed in 2007 and not 2006 when it was proposed, you would be aware that the act was amended back to its original text in the 2008 defense budget.

Which makes my point just that much more because even under those much broader standards, there's nothing in the law that allows for the kinds of assassinations Bush and Obama carried out, only within US borders. Under the current version, there's less than nothing.

Well actually its a red herring to your point because the act has nothing at all to do with military action outside of US territory in the first place. The legal questions are different, no matter what the actual answer is. This is why Paul asked a whole slew of different questions, and this thread concerned only one of them.

The Bush regime claimed in the Padilla case that the entire planet was a war zone, and therefore citizens could be rounded up and tortured on US soil -and they were. Obama claims the right to assassinate American citizens anywhere he sees fit. That's why Holder couldn't give a straight answer to Paul's simple question. Even the "clarification" Holder issued today gives the Assassin-In-Chief the same free hand to rub out American citizens on US soil that he had to kill them in Yemen: The very loose definition of what they mean by "engaged in combat".

Anwar Al-Awlaki was targeted for writing nasty things online (saying Muslims were justified in attacking the US and gloating over the attacks that succeeded). He did not wield or build weapons (as far as anyone can prove), nor did he give orders for others to do so. He was not even a bystander in a legitimate attack against enemy materiel, and his teenage son didn't do that much. Yet according to Obama and his flacks, writing assholish things or being related to someone who does = "engaged in combat".

[TheHammer]

Anwar Al-Awlaki was targeted for writing nasty things online (saying Muslims were justified in attacking the US and gloating over the attacks that succeeded). He did not wield or build weapons (as far as anyone can prove), nor did he give orders for others to do so. He was not even a bystander in a legitimate attack against enemy materiel, and his teenage son didn't do that much. Yet according to Obama and his flacks, writing assholish things or being related to someone who does = "engaged in combat".

Bullshit

We certainly don't need yet another Al-Awlaki thread, but I'm going to call you out on a couple key things: He most certainly DID give others orders to attack and kill Americans, going so far as to say it was there "duty" to do so. I could give a shit with how specific he was in that regard, whether he knew how to shoot a gun or make a bomb. The people he preached too and encouraged to take up these attacks WERE his guns and bombs. The underwear bomber, the fort hood shooter... and while their success wasn't on par with Bin Laden's desciples, it wasn't for lack of effort on his part. He was more than a propogandist. He was a key recruiter for an enemy force. A legitimate military target.

Besides, In the end, Obama simply granted the man his wish. Since, after all, he wanted Americans killed whenever and wherever they could be found.

[Flagg]

Politics USA

It turns out Rand Paul’s filibuster was big scam. Sen. Paul has wasted little time implementing the second part of his planned filibuster. He is now trying to cash in with a fundraising letter.

The true story behind Rand Paul’s filibuster is starting to come out. According to the National Journal, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans knew the filibuster was coming, “But the day wasn’t entirely unplanned. Paul, often accused of being a lone wolf on Capitol Hill, had laid some of the groundwork to win over the GOP establishment. McConnell and Co. knew the filibuster was coming, even if they did not know when precisely or what exactly it would look like.”

This fact contradicts the myth that Paul floated that he decided to come to the Senate floor and start speaking. Sen. Paul has been suggesting that everybody just showed up, “We probably had 15 congressmen come over to the Senate floor,” he said this morning in a radio interview with Glenn Beck. Paul pointed out that House members are allowed to come to the Senate floor but are barred from speaking or coming forward, so they were presumably there just to lend support with their presence. “I’ve never seen that happen before. And they came spontaneously. Nobody called them. They just showed up.”

Sen. Paul’s claims of spontaneity are dubious at best. Now we have come to learn that Paul is trying to cash in on his planned stunt.

Paul sent out this fundraising letter,

Dear Patriot,

My 13-hour filibuster yesterday is being called one of the longest in U.S. history.

I had been trying for more than a week to get a straight answer on whether or not the Obama administration believed it had the authority to use drones to target and kill American citizens on American soil – without due process.

And after receiving a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder claiming they DO have that authority, I could no longer sit silently at my desk in the U.S. Senate.

So I stood for thirteen-straight hours to send a message to the Obama administration, I will do everything in my power to fight their attempts to ignore the Constitution!

Millions of Americans chose to stand with me and put President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and Congress in the spotlight…

And the good news is, it worked!

Just hours ago, I received a letter from Attorney General Holder declaring the President DOES NOT have the authority to use drones to kill Americans on U.S. soil.

Patriot, this shows what we can do when stand together and fight.

So won’t you help me continue the fight to protect our Constitutional liberties today?

Paul’s fundraising letter is flat out false and wrong.

Sen. Paul invents a response from Attorney General Holder that bears no resemblance to what he actually said. Paul didn’t force a change in policy. Holder’s second letter was a two sentence smack down that repeated the original point that the AG made to the Kentucky senator in his first letter.

After making a complete fool out of himself by filibustering against something that won’t ever happen, Rand Paul threw his arms up in the air and declared victory. Now, Rand Paul wants money for his raging fail.

After successfully duping his marks, it’s time to get paid. Getting paid and raising his profile for 2016 is what this filibuster was all about. Since his father retired Rand Paul is now in charge of the family business, which he apparently intends to use to separate fools from their money.

Sen. Paul pulled of a giant con, and got the country to buy into his first filibuster for cash stunt. Despite these facts conservatives everywhere will be emptying their pockets, and readying themselves for Rand’s next big con.

So basically a con man shitheel like his daddy.

[Gandalf]

Isn't that blatantly obvious? That filibuster was the start of Paul 2016.

He doesn't seem to have his father's people skills, so he has to do stunts like this.

[Straha]

We certainly don't need yet another Al-Awlaki thread, but I'm going to call you out on a couple key things: He most certainly DID give others orders to attack and kill Americans, going so far as to say it was there "duty" to do so. I could give a shit with how specific he was in that regard, whether he knew how to shoot a gun or make a bomb. The people he preached too and encouraged to take up these attacks WERE his guns and bombs. The underwear bomber, the fort hood shooter... and while their success wasn't on par with Bin Laden's desciples, it wasn't for lack of effort on his part. He was more than a propogandist. He was a key recruiter for an enemy force. A legitimate military target.

Besides, In the end, Obama simply granted the man his wish. Since, after all, he wanted Americans killed whenever and wherever they could be found.

So, a couple questions that are key to both this and to the thread in general:

A. If talking about the duty to resist and oppose the United States is what it takes to be labelled a legitimate target, are the Black Panthers legitimate targets for drone strikes inside the US? Is Frank Wilderson, a professor at UC Irvine who says that Civil Society must be completely undone in order to have something akin to justice, a recruiter and a legitimate target? How about radical feminist/queer activists who oppose the US military as an overarching patriarchal institution that atomizes and internalizes oppression? I associate with people who say we have a moral obligation to violently oppose animal agriculture whenever we have the chance, does this make me a legitimate target for aerial boom-boom?

B. Would a marketer for Dell or Apple be a legitimate target for Ugandan or the Congolese military strikes for encouraging people to buy products with minerals (e.g. coltan) inside their borders that directly support and subsidize terrorist and revolutionary groups (e.g. the Lord's Resistance Army, the FNI, etc.)?

[Simon_Jester]

Insurrection Act:

"n all cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws, either of the United States, or of any individual state or territory, where it is lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia for the purpose of suppressing such insurrection, or of causing the laws to be duly executed, it shall be lawful for him to employ, for the same purposes, such part of the land or naval force of the United States, as shall be judged necessary, having first observed all the pre-requisites of the law in that respect."

Posse Comitatus Act:

"Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."



That's pretty much all the rules there are, as far as I can remember. If it's lawful for Obama to call up the state militia to suppress an insurrection or enforce the law, it's lawful for him to use a drone strike in that case, because it's just another weapon of the Air Force.

If it is NOT lawful for him to do that, it is NOT lawful for him to use a drone strike.

[Channel72]

Few Americans really care about Obama's ominously expanding power to order assassinations, because for the most part it's simply a relatively low-cost, practical adaptation to a disorganized, non-uniformed enemy that attempts to blend in with a foreign populace. The justification for using drone attacks rests mostly on the logistical reality that sending troops to a foreign country to apprehend a suspected terrorist is expensive, dangerous, and often politically awkward. But if the suspected terrorist is actually IN the United States... well, we do have the FBI and the police available to apprehend dangerous criminals here. Can you imagine if the Cold War was still going on, and Obama used drone strikes on suspected KGB operatives living in Cincinnati?

On the other hand, to be honest - I'm not losing much sleep over this. If Obama started to abuse this power in ways that actually pissed off the electorate, or if a widely publicized innocent face was associated with a particularly grievous drone strike in the US, it's pretty certain the Democrats wouldn't last long, especially if people started to complain about collateral property damage.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Let's for a second assume that any potential targets of these strikes are legitimate. I don't necessarily believe this is the case, but let's for a moment just assume that they are all al-Qaeda operatives preparing to set off a dirty bomb and that there is absolutely no chance of a wrongful identification or anything like that. Obviously not realistic, but the issue of target identification and such is not what I want to get into at the moment.

While drone strikes are simply another weapon in the country's arsenal, and legal to use in that respect, does that mean they should be used domestically? If unmanned drones did not exist, how would people feel about the US using other weapons in that arsenal to attack legitimate domestic threats? Naval artillery? Cruise missiles? Smart missiles? You could argue that these methods all have a higher chance of collateral damage, and you may be right. But even if there weren't any innocents harmed, how would people feel about the Air Force blowing up a building outside Detroit because three terrorists were using it as a safe house?

(Also, before people knee-jerk respond to this, please take a deep breath and notice the question marks. This is meant as a question to get people thinking about the issue from this perspective, not as an ironclad argument. I just feel the need to say this, because I feel like every time there is a thread on this subject people go tend to go fucking crazy over nothing and just start shitting over everything)

[TheHammer]

We certainly don't need yet another Al-Awlaki thread, but I'm going to call you out on a couple key things: He most certainly DID give others orders to attack and kill Americans, going so far as to say it was there "duty" to do so. I could give a shit with how specific he was in that regard, whether he knew how to shoot a gun or make a bomb. The people he preached too and encouraged to take up these attacks WERE his guns and bombs. The underwear bomber, the fort hood shooter... and while their success wasn't on par with Bin Laden's desciples, it wasn't for lack of effort on his part. He was more than a propogandist. He was a key recruiter for an enemy force. A legitimate military target.

Besides, In the end, Obama simply granted the man his wish. Since, after all, he wanted Americans killed whenever and wherever they could be found.

So, a couple questions that are key to both this and to the thread in general:

A. If talking about the duty to resist and oppose the United States is what it takes to be labelled a legitimate target, are the Black Panthers legitimate targets for drone strikes inside the US? Is Frank Wilderson, a professor at UC Irvine who says that Civil Society must be completely undone in order to have something akin to justice, a recruiter and a legitimate target? How about radical feminist/queer activists who oppose the US military as an overarching patriarchal institution that atomizes and internalizes oppression? I associate with people who say we have a moral obligation to violently oppose animal agriculture whenever we have the chance, does this make me a legitimate target for aerial boom-boom?

There are methods for violent and non-violent "resistance". Unless you are going to cite specific examples, I can't give you a specific answer to any of this. Awlaki not only made generalized statments advocating for the outright killing of Americans, but also (as previously mentioned) directly recruited individuals who then carried out attacks of that nature. Further, he was operating from foreign soil as a member of an organization that Congress has specifically authorized military action against. So go back over the list you just put together and ask yourself if any of those come close to fitting that same criteria.

B. Would a marketer for Dell or Apple be a legitimate target for Ugandan or the Congolese military strikes for encouraging people to buy products with minerals (e.g. coltan) inside their borders that directly support and subsidize terrorist and revolutionary groups (e.g. the Lord's Resistance Army, the FNI, etc.)?

Feel free to continue down your slippery slope to crazy town, but I'm not coming along for the ride. If Dell or Apple were in direct contact and encouraging attacks for terrorist or revolutionary groups you'd have a point. They are not, so you do not.