Tweet
David Axelrod. Photo by Pete Souza / Wikimedia Commons.
From the Obama-administration sanctioned New York Times piece on Obama’s terrorist “kill list”, a hint at what the OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) opinion authorizing so-called ‘targeted assassinations’ contains:
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel prepared a lengthy memo justifying that extraordinary step, asserting that while the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process applied, it could be satisfied by internal deliberations in the executive branch.
And then let us ask what these “internal deliberations” regarding who to ‘nominate’ for assassination look like.
This secret “nominations” process is an invention of the Obama administration, a grim debating society that vets the PowerPoint slides bearing the names, aliases and life stories of suspected members of Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen or its allies in Somalia’s Shabab militia.
The video conferences are run by the Pentagon, which oversees strikes in those countries, and participants do not hesitate to call out a challenge, pressing for the evidence behind accusations of ties to Al Qaeda.
“What’s a Qaeda facilitator?” asked one participant, illustrating the spirit of the exchanges. “If I open a gate and you drive through it, am I a facilitator?” Given the contentious discussions, it can take five or six sessions for a name to be approved, and names go off the list if a suspect no longer appears to pose an imminent threat, the official said.
Difficult questions. And if you are in the geographical vicinity of someone who opened a gate for a suspected facilitator, are you a facilitator?
And who oversees these august proceedings, making life-and-death decisions on which people standing around, opening gates, should be killed?
David Axelrod, the president’s closest political adviser, began showing up at the “Terror Tuesday” meetings, his unspeaking presence a visible reminder of what everyone understood: a successful attack would overwhelm the president’s other aspirations and achievements.
Yes, who is the ominous, awe-inspiring presence that everyone at these meetings must keep in mind as they make these decisions?
Not a statue of blind-folded Justice with her balance weighing rights and duties.
No. Ladies and Gentleman. … David Axelrod.
Your Constitutional Right to Due Process of Law in action.
86 Comments
Thanks for this excellent posting.
In spite of the fact that the Obama administration, Eric Holder in particular, insists that the fifth amendment does not guarantee “judicial due process,” the exact wording of the amendment reads: “No person shall be [...] deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law [...]“. Kangaroo courts and Obama-style death panels are exactly what the founders sought to prevent, and several Supreme Court rulings have supported that interpretation.
Thanks Wigwam.
What the due process clause does is ensure that ” adjudication processes under valid laws are fair and impartial”. That usually involves “the right to sufficient notice, the right to an impartial arbiter, the right to give testimony and admit relevant evidence at hearings”. What Holder is saying is that these things are unnecessary when you have … David Axelrod.
In short, that is what David Axelrod is there to ensure; that the proceedings are fair and impartial.
He is not there to ensure that the President gets favorable headlines and avoids nasty Youtube videos of dead Yemeni children in bits and pieces.
Not.
Gives you a nice, warm feeling inside, doesn’t it? Oh, wait, that’s just my gorge rising . . . Recommended, and thank you, Obey.
Yes there’s that. One upside to reading that NYT piece is that I got to taste my lunch a second time.
Tasted better the first time.
Rec’d. I still haven’t made my way through the entire article yet, for that very reason.
Thanks, Obey. The cavalier treatment of all this by this administration, the Times, and most of the American public (especially the Librul Left) cause one’s head to spin in outrage and utterly crazed confusion that this is OUR country encouraging this.
Chris Floyd had this heart-and-gut wrenching piece up last night, and it was hard to look away from. Daley’s quotes are bad, but this that Chris wrote broke it down the the essence, I think:
“Obama’s deep concern for “moral responsibility” is also reflected in his decision to kill according to “signature strikes” — that is, to kill people you don’t know, who haven’t even popped up on your PowerPoint slides, if you think they might possibly look or act like alleged potential “terrorists.” (Or if you receive some “human intelligence” from an agent or an informer or someone with a grudge or someone seeking payment that a group of people doing something somewhere might be terrorists.) This “moral responsibility” is also seen in Obama’s decision to count “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants … unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
Guilty until proven posthumously innocent! How’s that for “moral responsibility”? Here Obama has surpassed Augustine and Aquinas — yea, even great Aristotle himself — in this bold extension of the parameters of moral responsibility. “
Declared Posthumously Innocent. Is there a desriptor past Orwellian we can put into use now that this administration is taking us into uncharted waters?
Rec’d.
Bugger; got so upset I forgot the Empire Burlesque link.
Sure, those innocent people killed by drone attacks may still be dead. But it is no small consolation that Obama at least has absolved them of guilt by physical proximity.
It can otherwise be hard in the after-life with that kind of stain on your reputation.
thx Carol. Scary stuff…
Geez, David Axelrod the single point of failure in the defense of due process? Poor soul.
Star chamber proceedings.
Sorry Ludwig. You must be about eight years old and just learning to read. So let me help you out here.
Sometimes in a short piece you pick out the salient element in the story that highlights “wow, they go so far beyond the pale as to have even political advisors influencing pseudo-judicial proceedings supposedly consistent with 5th amendment rights.”
And that is quite different from pieces where one says, “golly, if only they didn’t have that one guy involved, these proceedings would be just peachy”.
Part of learning to read is learning to distinguish these approaches. I know it looks hard now. But someday, like when you’re ten, it will look much simpler. Good luck and stick with it!
;0)
Bingo.
My thought exactly, mikey.
For those unfamiliar: http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Documents/the_court_of_star_chamber.htm
And this film:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086356/
Just got a panhandling email from MoveOn asking for $5 so they can re-elect Obama, among other dubious goals. (I haven’t unsubscribed from them because I like to see what the libruls are up to.) I honestly can’t fathom how they stay so successfully in denial when there are articles like this one that are even sanctioned by President Powerpoint his ownself. I guess IOKIYAD now, right?
(Pssst! DNFTEC. Nore-ig-ay the oll-tray and it oes-gay away.
Took me a few posts to realize it wasn’t worth engaging the EC.)
Killings by Drones are the easy way out for Obama.
No invasions, no US troop casualties, not very expensive (compared to invasions and occupations), political protecting for being weak (negotiating or using the courts – where proof has to be make) and has the perception of “doing something”.
It is a coward’s solution. It avoids confronting the root causes of the anger in Islam, fueled by the aggressive apartheid state.
Does anyone remember that this is the same ‘legal’ rationality used by the Bush Admin regarding torture? AND that there were many amongst us ‘tearing our hair out’ to get the message across that once precedent of privilege has been given to a President, his successor will NOT give up such privilege?
This all goes back to the idea of an ‘imperial presidency’ and that’s what MUST be taken down.
Hi Ubetcha. I don’t really remember the torture memos. I think there were several legal rationales – (1) that the president is not bound by the Laws of War when he is …um … at war, (2) that enemy combatants not wearing uniforms are not protected by the Laws of War, and (3) that waterboarding and the rest of it don’t meet the standard of ‘torture’ because the pain isn’t tantamount to organ failure – i.e. isn’t tantamount to death.
And Obama’s Justice department seems to agree with one or another of these since they dropped the charges against CIA interrogators accused of torture using these methods. But it is hard to know which, since the results/reasoning of the Durham investigation are secret.
Anyway, this one is a bit different. It says that the right to due process can be met by secret proceedings conducted by the president and his political advisors. Not sure how broad that exemption to judicial review is, but probably something akin to ‘suspected of being in imminent danger of committing a [serious] crime and/or in proximity of someone who is so suspected’.
comforting.
And it apparently only really works in regions where there are no camera phones and no internet access to upload youtube videos. Which, granted, is kind of a sick consideration. But it does mean that its going to get harder and harder to implement as is.
LOL. live and learn…
After listening to Mike Malloy last night and my own anecdotal experience, it seems many Americans specifically those who support bo are ok with hit list, NDAA, and all the other illegal activities coming out of this administration. Even though many of them say they would have supported it under bush, I know they are fulla shit.
I guess for many, ethiccal principles depend on whose team you support.
Impeachment anyone?
Oh I’m sure after the election, if BO loses, democrats will discover how much they hate drone wars and republicans will discover how much they love stimulus and loose monetary policy.
… which isn’t the worst possible outcome…
yeah good luck with convincing the GOP to get on board with an impeachment campaign based on excessive use of force against muslims.
I’m sure Democrats’ response to the Axelrod revelation would be just s muted had Karl Rove been attending Bush’s War Cabinet proceedings. Come to think of it, Rove probably did attend, but the Bushies were smart enough to realize the revulsion that would attend that revelation.
Right?! That article isn’t just amazing for the set of facts involved, it’s the whole tone. As if it were a sign of Obama’s *strength* that he’s got his political advisor charged with getting him reelected overseeing an assassination campaign. Pretty nuts.
It just overscores that for Obama … every strike and every military decision is, at it’s heart, a political act.
The thing that strikes me is how plainly obvious the administration made it that they fully embraced this article. For a leak-based/on-background administration, a surprising number of on-the-record names appeared.
Not sure exactly what they expected, but it is kind of heartening to see it go a bit sideways on ‘em. The faux war-president badass thing really is done to death. Perhaps America is about swaggered out.
And just think … the dumbass who decided this article was a good idea is ultimately the same guy that decides who’s worthy of getting offed without trial.
Exactly!
The Obama White House is bragging. This article would not have existed in this form had the White House not encouraged it.
Saddam Hussein was so paranoid that he had convinced himself that he “knew who was going to betray him even before that person did,” and he then had them executed.
Josef Stalin personally ordered the execution of 44,000 people and personally signed the individual death warrants of several thousand of them.
Barack Obama huddles in the Situation Room with his advisors in terror of the possibility that some underwear bomber will slip past the TSA and wreck his chances of re-election. Better safe than sorry.
And it is a sad day that when Congressional operations like the NDAA go through and become measures legalizing Tyranny, and then only Rand Paul, out of everyone in Congress, stands before the chamber and expresses his outrage at our loss of liberty.
What has this nation become?
Petition the White House to create a “Do-Not-Kill” list and to then put your name on it here.
“the dumbass who decided this article was a good idea is ultimately the same guy that decides who’s worthy of getting offed without trial.”
LOL. the irony…
But the more I think about it, it looks more and more like a subversive hit piece. The picture the paint is pretty much how Wigwam describes it below @29. The administration, Obama himself, comes out looking terrible, with a manic focus on political optics. But they couldn’t see it.
I looked up the writers, and one – Shane – is a pretty standard-fare national security reporter. The other, Becker, is coming to this from covering … the Sandusky child rape story. I’m thinking Becker wrote the ‘color’ bits, including the hilarious depiction of Axelrod as a God and/or Gestapo agent giving everyone in the room the willies.
LOL. Best idea I’ve heard!
Ouch!
Don’t worry, be happy clappy!
But just in case, you’d better sign this White House petition to put yourself on an official “Do Not Kill” list… Yes, it’s come to this.
From GG: “Some unknown citizens decided to use the White House petition system today to start a petition asking for the creation of a “Do-Not-Kill” list, in which American citizens can sign up to avoid being put on the president’s ‘kill list’ and therefore avoid being executed without indictment, judge, jury, trial or due process of law.”
The petition is a great idea, but maybe not a great idea to draw attention to onself anymore.
This is all just a silly misunderstanding, clearly the framers of the Constitution just made a scripto and left out a d. It’s “dude” process.
We’re all entitled to some dude saying we’re a terrorist or not. And if you don’t believe that, fuck off you’re just a peon who needs to keep his head down and his mouth shut. Now go and vote for Obama because the other guy might not be so nice.
What a charming figure you cut, Mr. Presididn’t.
What a mess. Thanks for the post Obey. Rec’d
Glen Ford says it’s about cleaning up OBomba’s Dark Side:
“From the perspective of Obama’s handlers, the piece reconciles the old, imagined Obama with Dick Cheney’s “dark side,” thus forming a composite leadership template of the president as an “all-American” statesman. Obama is just as capable of carrying out instant executions as Cheney ever was – the decision to take out American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was “an easy one” – but he keeps a “priest” nearby to be sure he’s on the side of the angels. Cheney with a halo – singing Al Green.”
Fuck.Him. And fuck the 60-odd % of Libruls who think drones are a grand idea: no muss, no fuss, no Amurrican deaths.
So Cheney’s policies but with … a cooler, hipper, more up-to-date packaging.
What’s not to love?
But, remember his jump shot. Vote for the jump shot!
I should have looked at Greenwald before posting this. He notes the same elements in the piece. Of course more long-form…
How many libruls screamed W was a ‘war criminal’? Well, by the same token, so’s Obama.
(Jill? Rocky? Anybody up to addressing this, aside from unborn historians?)
Talk about death panels!
And Axe, playing Sgt. Schultz.
Furthermore, we know from the unsuccessful efforts of Anwar al Awlaki’s father, that no one, not even a U.S. citizen, has any legal recourse to find out if they have been placed on the list or to challenge a decision placing them on the list.
This is a giant leap backwards into the past embracing the absolute power of the so-called divine right of the king to decide in secret whether one lives or dies, without so much as the courtesy of strongly worded letter advising one of the decision.
The Due Process Clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments prohibit this extremely abhorrent and long-rejected star chamber proceeding. If this exception is allowed to stand, it will swallow the entire Bill of Rights.
Recommended
Yeah, wish we could get the US Marines to defend us.
IMO, by the same token, OBomba is an even more evil war criminal, if that distinction is in any way meaningful, sfmikey.
My initial reaction was much like Ford’s. (combined with a similar take yours @47).
Well, if that’s what happened, just proves the old adage that ya can’t con an honest man. (or at least it proves the obvious corollary – a dishonest man is easily conned)
But I really don’t think so. I think it was basically the piece that Team Obama wanted (although, you’re probably right about the contributions of the “color” guy). There is such a disconnect between the elite and their apparatchiks with the rest of society that they really don’t have any grasp on reality. It’s kind of like how you explained that Democrats genuinely can’t (IMO, won’t) see how far off-base their whole “center-right” nation frame is (and all the attendant questionable tropes that “obviously” follow) … but like dialed up x1000.
Brilliant comment, as ever, dear.
Sadly, yesterday I heard Jimmie Carter say to the Egyptians that what we have in civilian control of the military ought to be imitated as they craft their Constitution. Not quite.
This is a watershed article, in my opinion, whether it is supposed to be in favor of Obama or against him. It assures his place in history as a war criminal. I once was disturbed by his description of watching a chicken with its head cut off as a kid in Indonesia. Not disturbed enough not to vote for him I am sorry to say. But it was drones that changed my mind immediately after the inauguration and I have not called him president since. He does not deserve the title.
Impeachment would be too mild a procedure.
Recommend, with a heavy heart.
> How many libruls screamed W was a ‘war criminal’?
> Well, by the same token, so’s Obama.
I did; and they both are. The facts are in and the proof is definitive.
juliania, OT, but I must ask you not to yield your space to the nasty creatures who co-occupy this site and can’t stand to hear any opinions that don’t align with their own. They are clearly threatened by thinking people, but I say, fuck ‘em if they can’t take it. They don’t belong on a political website if their egos are that brittle. Their thoughts never seem to rise above the puerile and/or self-interested, anyway. Courage, ma cher.
Yup. And it’s funny how they’re trying to run to the right of Romney on the GWOT – basically saying Romney wouldn’t have the BALLS to take out Muslims like Obama has. To grand applause among democrats. Tho now it looks like the GOP is floating the idea of using drones in Mexio – in the drug war. wow, who could have foreseen it. Basically a choice between the big bad Bomber, and Bomberer.
Yes, I think it is a watershed article. At least I – who have become pretty inured to this shit – was quite shocked by it. Of course it may become the new bland status quo. But I hope not.
Bless you, rc! The only space I will yield is that which is narrowly crafted. I continue to believe this is an amazing place in general to hopefully have a say and learn stuff. And on subject, there is an article at counterpunch.org entitled “The NYt’s love letter to death” – May 29th, so scroll to that – by Chris Floyd. I’m not linking as I want to just quote a paragraph. I said ‘watershed’ and I meant it – do read the article, please folk.
“…It is, I confess, beyond all my imagining that a national leader so deeply immersed in murdering people would trumpet his atrocity so openly, so gleefully — and so deliberately, sending his top aides out to collude in a major story in the nation’s leading newspaper, to ensure maximum exposure of his killing spree. Although many leaders have wielded such powers, they almost always seek to hide or obscure the reality of the operation. Even the Nazis took enormous pains to hide the true nature of their murder programs from the public. And one can scarcely conceive of Stalin inviting reporters from Pravda into the Politburo meetings where he and Molotov and Beria debated the lists of counterrevolutionary “terrorists” given to them by the KGB and ticked off those who would live and those who would die. Of course, those lists too were based on “intelligence reports,” often gathered through “strenuous interrogation techniques” or the reports of informers. No doubt these reports were every bit as credible as the PowerPoint presentations reviewed each week by Obama and his team…”
The man clearly has lost all sense of human decency. If he wants us to be afraid, I am very afraid. And very ashamed to have believed in him. I really did.
Well, as the article explicitly says, they have replaced the capture-and-torture policy by a kill-anyone-you-suspect-and-anyone-in-the-vicinity policy. And they’ve done so apparently because it’s simply more convenient: no issues of ‘where to put them all’.
They’ve taken Bush-level government malfeasance shackled by whistleblowers and eliminated the whistleblower problem. They’ve taken the too-big-to-fail banks and made them bigger.
They’ve taken Bush’s zero growth in median household income while the rich got richer, and turned it into 10% fall in median household income while the rich got 93% of the gains from economic growth.
They’ve taken the law Bush passed to give 50 billion to underwater homeowners, and just … not spent it on such ‘undeserving’ borrowers.
They’ve taken bush-era 2-3% inflation and tightened monetary policy down to 1-2% inflation to, you know, keep the plebs from getting jobs and bidding up their wages.
wouldn’t want that.
Worse? So hard to say…
We are living under a dictator. I refuse to be quiet about it. A special place in hell for those who choose to play the Good German role. It’s a basic moral issue, so naturally it escapes those who don’t think morality matters for much.
In fact, this Obama policy rescinds the Magna Carta.
Juliania; may I second rc’s comment; when I saw you were retiring from several venues on the front page, I’d wish in my heart once again that I were able to pen a poetic plea to you not to forsake us, and please come to our wee ghetto here and participate in the wise and glorious verbiage you are wont to contribute. And please, do come here so I can make sure to not lose touch with you, dear one.
There is universal jurisdiction and no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity. Eichmann, for example, had been living in Buenos Aires for fifteen years, when he was kidnapped, tried, and executed by a country that did not even exist at the time of his crimes.
American war criminals have cause for concern.
Not that hard, eh wot? Thanks for the stats; I’d like to think you had to search them out. If they’re in your head, I confess I don’t know what to say about that, dear. ;o) My brains are made of gingerbread; luckily, I do like ginger and nutmeg, so…
Get some sleep, Pug; it’s purdy late in your time zone. ;o)
*sigh*
There is a quote from an AP article over at Marcy’s place stating:
So the people on the “list” also have a kill by date. If they make it past 30 days are they considered formidable enough adversaries they deserve to live? Terrorists can be rehabilitated in 30 days? I’m sure many in our prison system would love such considerations. This sounds to me like hunting humans for sport.
The constitution still exists? Coulda fooled me.
They keep the original in the Oval Office now for their weekly darts tournament.
It’s Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now all rolled into one
Bet the president feels safe because of Godwin’s Law.
Anyone remember George McGovern? He was the Democratic presidential candidate in 1972. He compared the Nixon administration to Nazi Germany, and he did it out loud.
A couple of night ago, you stuck up for me. Just wanted to say thanks. By way of explanation, I logged off on first insulting comment since I have no desire for fisticuffs.
When tyrants, despots, dictators, and other sorts of authoritarians (formally emperors, kings and queens) who pretend to be our leaders assume, take, or steal the lives, liberties, and rights of the people, then there are only few and drastic remedies available to us… Do the powers that be really want to slide down that familiar and tragic slippery slope to the guillotines? Study well the lessons of history, dear patriots: No justice? No peace. (Did you ever get the feeling they are egging us on for a fight?) Maybe so, since sociopaths believe they are invincible.
I want to see this documentary which is running in Ottawa courtesy of some uppity @NobelWomen and the @CCIJ-CCJI (Canadian correlate of @theCCR) as I thought it would drop some great tips:
[Video Trailer] Granito: How To Nail A Dictator
;o)
Thank you so much for that link.
Incredibly good writing, and the comments were superb.
These death sentences include all the friends and neighbors within the bomb range. For everyone killed how many have to die with them?
I’m on it and will forward to friends and family. I see in the First Amendment that “Congress shall make no law abridging…the right of the people….to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” I miss Robert Byrd.
Is fear trolling going to prevent gathering a measly 24,000 signatures on this petition? 11-year-olds may not remember pre-911, but almost all voting-age folks should have a clue. “They hate our way of life,” indeed. Perhaps we hate and fear our own way of life.
No, not even the Bush admin claimed that. The Bush admin simply redefined torture to be not torture. The similarity is in the perversion of the plain meaning of the words of the law, i.e. the Obama admin is redefining the meaning of “due process of law” to mean that “due process is what the president says it is.”
This reminds me of one of the early Supreme Court cases interpreting the meaning of the word “jury.” I studied it in law school but don’t recall the name now. The analysis kept harping on the lack of references in the historical record to the number “twelve,” on its way to ruling that a jury did not have to be twelve people any longer. (Now we have many variations, some not even requiring unanimity.
) I remember my Civil Procedure professor waxing apoplectic over this case: “Nobody says “twelve, because everybody understood, until this case, that of course “jury” means “twelve.” The point being, until now, everybody understood that “due process” involved the participation of a judge. Where will this twisted path lead, I wonder? No place good, I am quite certain. Maybe we can just “privatize” due process.
The power to fuck around with the meaning of words is the power to shape the future.
Obama is redefining Due Process to mean since he killed someone, that itself is proof of their guilt. It’s even more messianic than Exodus, which at least in Exodus those who might get snuffed out could protect themselves with paint.
Tyranny anyone?
No, thanks, I’m full up.
I voted for Obama.
I will not do so again.
This is as serious as a heart attack.
Hitler’s lawyers and judges ruled his murders were legal also.
Some were executed or imprisoned after Nuremburg trials.
I am deeply disturbed and frightened by this extra judicial murder.
No public trial = 1939 Poland
These fine legal points are well worth harping on about. Thank you for telling us about your law classes and what they mean(t.)
A recent Rolling Stone article on the drones and the wars we fight using them showed that at first folks in the Air Force were against being drone pilots. But then they got younger initiates involved – and they think it is kinda groovy as the drone war fare operations resemble video games.
And we all know how much most teenagers would likw to grow up and operate video games for a living.