The Government Assassination of a kid from Denver.

reply to post by Indigo5

He also coached Major Nidal Hassan who murdered 13 Americans and injured 30, he also devised/plotted/planned the bomb inside a printer being shipped...blow up the plane over a major US City.

According to the Obama Administration, Hassan was not a terrorist. He was a disgruntled worker.
I have made some workers disgruntled in the course of my workday today. If I go on a Caribbean vacation this month, should I be targeted by a drone?

Here is a link to a Slatestory where Obama is reported to have commented on his killing ability:

According to the new book "Double Down," in which journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann chronicle the 2012 presidential election, President Barack Obama told his aides that he’s "really good at killing people" while discussing drone strikes. Peter Hamby of the Washington Post reported the moment in his review of the book.

butcherguy
reply to post by Indigo5

 

He also coached Major Nidal Hassan who murdered 13 Americans and injured 30, he also devised/plotted/planned the bomb inside a printer being shipped...blow up the plane over a major US City.

According to the Obama Administration, Hassan was not a terrorist. He was a disgruntled worker.
I have made some workers disgruntled in the course of my workday today. If I go on a Caribbean vacation this month, should I be targeted by a drone?

He was tried under military law on US soil for crimes committed on US Soil? You seem confused.

Indigo5

butcherguy
reply to post by Indigo5

 

He also coached Major Nidal Hassan who murdered 13 Americans and injured 30, he also devised/plotted/planned the bomb inside a printer being shipped...blow up the plane over a major US City.

According to the Obama Administration, Hassan was not a terrorist. He was a disgruntled worker.
I have made some workers disgruntled in the course of my workday today. If I go on a Caribbean vacation this month, should I be targeted by a drone?

He was tried under military law on US soil for crimes committed on US Soil? You seem confused.

You used Hassan as an example of a terrorist.
He is not a terrorist according to the Obama Administration.
My question regarding disgruntled workers was to the point that YOU thought Hassan was a terrorist.

I did note that you ignore the part regarding Obama bragging about killing people.

butcherguy

Indigo5

butcherguy
reply to post by Indigo5

 

He also coached Major Nidal Hassan who murdered 13 Americans and injured 30, he also devised/plotted/planned the bomb inside a printer being shipped...blow up the plane over a major US City.

According to the Obama Administration, Hassan was not a terrorist. He was a disgruntled worker.
I have made some workers disgruntled in the course of my workday today. If I go on a Caribbean vacation this month, should I be targeted by a drone?

He was tried under military law on US soil for crimes committed on US Soil? You seem confused.

You used Hassan as an example of a terrorist.
He is not a terrorist according to the Obama Administration.
My question regarding disgruntled workers was to the point that YOU thought Hassan was a terrorist.

Nidal Hassan was a terrorist, a US Major in the Army, A mass murderer and a US citizen.

He was convicted and sentenced to death. Charging him with "terrorism" under Military law would have been extra-ordinary and unnecessarily raised the burden of proof in the trial and risked having him go free or have the Pentagon/CIA expose ongoing intelligence operations. The murder charges sufficed.

You seem to be straying off-topic.

butcherguy
I did note that you ignore the part regarding Obama bragging about killing people.

edit on 4-11-2013 by butcherguy because: (no reason given)

Ditto here....later butch.

Indigo5
1. Yes...There have been 3 American Citizens that have been specifically targeted and killed on foreign soil. The question is, should American Citizenship exclude them from being targeted? If on US Soil where they are legitimately within reach of our Law enforcement and judicial system...YES. On foreign soil where foreign governments do not recognize the US Legal System and where US Law Enforcement has no authority? Where local governments are either unwilling or incapable of apprehension? So Anwar-alWlaki counched the Christmas day bomber, worked with him on his suicide message. tested the explosives, planned the attack. He also coached Major Nidal Hassan who murdered 13 Americans and injured 30, he also devised/plotted/planned the bomb inside a printer being shipped...blow up the plane over a major US City. The US gov. managed to foil 2 of 3 of those plots. Major Nidal Hassan succeeded in his attack. How long do we allow it to continue without taking action? If a terrorist is proudly plotting to kill Americans and hiding in remote regions on foreign soil, shall we grant him immunity due to his technical American citizenship?

I say no.

You make many statements regarding al-Awlaki as though they are fact but that simply isn't the case. there certainly are things about him that tie him to many questionable individuals but there has never been any actual evidence produced of this aside from conjecture and supposition by the current administration and their alphabet puppets. This is why we hold a trial in a court of law not the court of public opinion, so that the facts can be assessed appropriately. You try to make the case that in Yemen, these guys were beyond our ability to apprehend but that also is untrue. We have troops in Yemen that could have made a play for the father. we've seen recent similar actions in the horn of Africa and Libya in which spec op troops went in on capture raids. while one mission did not succeed it still makes the claim of out of sight out of reach implausible. Sure, killing al-Awliki may have stopped a future attack but it also would have stopped future attacks had we not trained the mujahedeen so well in the mid to late 80's We need to own up to our role in creating the monster we now fight and understand that with every action will be an equal and opposite RE-action. in essence, we need to reap what we sow every now and again. You disagree that an American who is in another country is still under the protection of the US Constitution, that's fine. I hope you never travel overseas and get into trouble because you shouldn't be calling the Embassy for assistance then correct?

Thank you. I see a big picture evolution in our military policy.

WW2 - We indiscriminately bombed civilian populations in Japan with Nuclear Weapons.
Iraq wars 1 & 2, we exhaustively bombed and invaded and occupied.
Afghanistan, slightly less bombing, but still invasion and occupation.

Then we ask the question...If terrorists have no allegiance to any country or geography...how many countries will we invade and occupy...how many bombs? How many innocent civilians will we kill?

or maybe instead of trying to count casualties we try to find out why exactly the world has such an irrational hate for America. Could it be that we've been destabilizing emerging nations for the past century in order to further the financial and regional interests of both business and government entities in the US like we did to Iran when we helped depose the first democratically elected leader in Middle East history? Nah... we're the good guys and our poo smells like roses.

Drones and special forces limits civilian deaths and collateral damage more than any other tactic/strategy that any nation has ever employed.

We can choose to eliminate any action what-so-ever...but I believe that will make a second 9-11 more likely.

When we change our very way of life out of fear, then the terrorist have already won. Israel deals with far more serious levels of terror on a regular basis than America ever will see. the limited terror we see in the states is nothing compared to places like South America or even Russia. I don't want to see another 9/11 either but you make it sound like we've had so many terror attacks here that 9/11 was the final straw. I'd much prefer keeping my soul than damning Americans to death without due process. Apparently only non Muslim American lives are valuable since you so highly approve of drone strikes and spec ops running through the night. In the links I posted, you will find that in Pakistan alone, of the nearly 900 civilians we killed we only got 21 al-Qaeda linked people. those odds are so foul Vegas wouldn't take them.

[The counter argument is that drone strikes make a 2nd 9-11 more likely by inspiring hatred toward America.

What is that equation? I believe if done with as much precision and accuracy as possible, with targets limited (and errors in targeting limited) that if we take out folks we know to be planning attacks, it works out in our favor.

IF...we choose to afford technical American citizens immunity from targeting wherever they hide on the globe...do you not think that Al-Qaida will exploit this? There are certainly others beyond Anwar alAlwiki that have American citizenship through technicality.

they aren't "technical" Americans. you're either an American citizen or you aren't. did any of them renounce their citizenship? did the state dept. revoke it? nope, this technicality thing is mere semantics. you are or you aren't. there's not a grey area. Again, limited precision strikes is a media misnomer. Nearly 900 civilians killed in Pakistan in 9 years. 21 Al-Qaeda those numbers aren't working in your favor. that's a 2% return on your investment of blood.

[I remember scud missiles flying through Baghdad...it seems horrible primitive now.

I wish no action was necessary, but as long as action is necessary, the drone program and spec ops is far, far, far more conservative than the last administration's policy of bombing and invasions.

And I remember hosing the blood out of Humvees in the early and mid 90's. does the fact that Im not forced to do that anymore make it far more conservative? I disagree with your notion of conservative, conservative on paper maybe but not in reality. you are comparing a limited drone strike against a nation we are not at war with against the actions of an Invasion force in WW2, Iraq and Afghanistan. it's ludicrous. And no matter how you try to spin it the son of Al-Awlaki should NEVER have been in the cross hairs. I said this earlier and I stand by the following quote still-

[If we(the US) are going to be trotting the globe on a mission to export American exceptionalism and democracy it is then imperative that we lead by example. we can't just talk about being a nation of laws and of justice, a bastion of freedom where everyone gets a jury trial when we don't extend the inalienable rights given under the constitution to our own citizens out of convenience because they're overseas and don't have to deal with the media fallout because we can somehow link them to Muslim extremism.

reply to post by Indigo5

He also coached Major Nidal Hassan who murdered 13 Americans and injured 30

As i said in the OP this thread is not about Awlaki but his son but as this debate seems to have came up I feel compelled to wade in.

Essentially you are falling for the government line on this, I am just going to take Nidal as a example, you state that he "coached him" which is totally wrong, it would be more accurate to say Nidal was stalking awlaki and following him online. They met once very briefly as it just so happened that Nidal''s perents went to Awlaki's mosque when they felt that Nidal was turning his back on his faith. years later Nidal was very troubled by American actions in their wars so he reached out for help and spiritual guidance feeling that as a Muslim he was in part responsible for the killing of his brothers and sought guidance on what he should do. He found this guidance in numerous works of the man who provided him with spiritual advice years before who had turned into a jihad preacher who had in effect set up a English speaking cyber mosque.

Nidal sent out dozens of emails to Awlaki but only got a couple of responses none of which endorsed violence. Nidal did also happen to be a follower of his on line lectures and essays along with thousands of other English speaking Muslims. After Awlaki being kept in solitary confident in a yemeni jail for 17 months at the behest of the Americans he become very radical in his preaching. He was justifying suicide bombing for example and began embracing the Takfiri and Jahiliyyahschool of thought. Awlaki essentially started explaining the Al-Qa'ida ideology in a way that English speaking people could understand and Nidal picked up on that and then went out and shot a bunch of people.

But it was not because Awlaki told him to in a e-mail it was just that he happened to have listened to his lectures, as have i, and not yet killed a bunch of people (nor do i plan on it). Anwar had little to do with Nidal's actions, it just so happened that Nidal followed his teachings but Anwar had not criminal responsibility for what he done.

However the American government try to portray Anwar as some kind of terrorist mastermind because he was dangerous. He was dangerous however, not because he was a AQAP leader (he was never a leader) but because he preached in English. To Al-Qa'ida Anwar was not really a big deal, but to the west we see him with a much inflated role in the organization only because we can understand him as he speaks English.

The Americans killed him to shut him up because his preaching was dangerous as he was playing a big role in the radicalization of young western Muslims. but the idea that he was coaching them to to commit these acts is wrong, he did not order Nidal to do what he done rather he only provided the theological justification for his acts, what Nidal chose to do with that twisted theological perspective was entirely up to him.

The real question then is are you comfortable with America assassinating one of its own citizens when that citizen says something that the administration disagree with. Years before actually, Anwar had been preaching against the crimes of Yugoslavia and Russia yet when he started saying the same thing against America, his mother country chose to kill him.

Essentially he was killed for practicing his first amendment rights.

I personally think it was the right thing to do, but only because he was becoming very dangerous in radicalizing lots of young western Muslims, not because he was some kind of terrorist mastermind leading AQAP (as Obama would like you to think). They had to create the myth of Anwar the terrorist mastermind and leader in the end because it was much easier to sell that to the American public as a justification for his assassination then it was to basically admit that they didn't like the way he was using his first amendment rights.

OtherSideOfTheCoin
Essentially he was killed for practicing his first amendment rights.

I have limited bandwidth this week, so apologies for only responding to small parts of your articulate post...

The Christmas day bomber..

Abdulmutallab told the FBI that al-Awlaki was one of his al-Qaeda trainers in remote camps in Yemen. And there were confirming "informed reports" that Abdulmutallab met with al-Awlaki during his final weeks of training and indoctrination prior to the attack.[175][176] The Los Angeles Times reported that according to a U.S. intelligence official, intercepts and other information point to connections between the two:


Some of the information … comes from Abdulmutallab, who … said that he met with al-Awlaki and senior al-Qaeda members during an extended trip to Yemen this year, and that the cleric was involved in some elements of planning or preparing the attack and in providing religious justification for it. Other intelligence linking the two became apparent after the attempted bombing, including communications intercepted by the National Security Agency indicating that the cleric was meeting with "a Nigerian" in preparation for some kind of operation.[25]

Yemen's Deputy Prime Minister for Defense and Security Affairs, Rashad Mohammed al-Alimi, said Yemeni investigators believe that in October 2009 the suspect traveled to Shabwa. There, he met with al-Qaeda members in a house built by al-Awlaki and used by al-Awlaki to hold theological sessions, and Abdulmutallab was trained there and equipped there with his explosives.[177] A top Yemen government official said the two met with each other.[178]

In January 2010, al-Awlaki acknowledged that he met and spoke with Abdulmutallab in Yemen in the fall of 2009. In an interview, al-Awlaki said: "Umar Farouk is one of my students; I had communications with him. And I support what he did."
He also said: "I did not tell him to do this operation, but I support it," adding that he was proud of Abdulmutallab. Separately, al-Awlaki asked Yemen's conservative religious scholars to call for the killing of U.S. military and intelligence officials who assist Yemen's counter-terrorism program.[179] Fox News reported in early February 2010 that Abdulmutallab told federal investigators that al-Awlaki directed him to carry out the bombing.[180]

In his March 2010 tape, al-Awlaki also said:

To the American people … nine years after 9/11, nine years of spending, and nine years of beefing up security you are still unsafe even in the holiest and most sacred of days to you, Christmas Day…. Our brother Umar Farouk has succeeded in breaking through the security systems that have cost the U.S. government alone over 40 billion dollars since 9/11.[154]

In June 2010 Michael Leiter, the Director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), said al-Awlaki had a "direct operational role" in the plot.[181]

en.wikipedia.org...

nevermind

OtherSideOfTheCoin


As i said in the OP this thread is not about Awlaki but his son but as this debate seems to have came up I feel compelled to wade in.

I don't believe his son was intentionally targeted, but rather targeted by error. That is what the President was told and the President and his Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, Brennan, both demanded an investigation. The outcome is classified.

I don't know where else to go with that? I don't think that the killing of the son was intentional? I could be wrong, but neither you nor I can prove one way or another until more is publicly known.

SH*T HAPPENS

reply to post by wmv7766


"May have saved lives.."

Really? How can you possibly know that? So is the US to be a country that executes minors for something they might do in the future? It's comments like this that freeze my soul. You are trying to justify something that cannot be justified....it was murder, plain and simple. It would be bad enough if this were the only one....but so far4 Americans have been executed without the protections guaranteed by the Constitution. Out of the 4 that have been murdered, 3 of them were "accidents" or simply put....they were killed because most of the time the time (98%), the CIA has NO IDEA who they just turned into dust.

So given that the Government has screwed up on these drone strikes on Americans 75% of the time....against the law I mught add....do you feel even reasonably confident that the Government should have the power to execute you without trial if you leave the country? As you ponder that question...bear in mind that you can be declared a "terrorist" and put on the "no-fly" list at any time without recourse....they don't have to prove anything....just the accusation is good enough these days.

CaptainNemo
SH*T HAPPENS

Yeah. Your birth is proof of that.

Since when did children become collateral damage? Seems more like a message to all that there is nothing that will protect them even at the cost of killing a child.

I think the great one needs his Peace Prize melted down in a crown...

Link

Obama has authorized 193 drone strikes in Pakistan – four times the amount authorized by George W. Bush. According to Global Research, over the past four years, Obama has authorized attacks in Pakistan which have killed more than 800 innocent civilians and just 22 Al-Qaeda officers.

or how about a Washington Post Article...

Link

Amnesty International highlighted a July 6, 2012, drone attack in the village of Zowi Sidgi, near the city of Miran Shah, in which it said 18 civilians — including a 14-year-old boy — were killed.

In that case, a group of male laborers had gathered in a tent for dinner when a missile blast killed 10 of them. A few minutes later, as rescuers arrived at the scene to treat the wounded, another round of missiles killed eight more people, according to Amnesty.

In Yemen, Human Rights Watch singled out a Sept. 2, 2012, airstrike in the village of Sarar that blew up a minibus, killing 12 passengers, including three children and a pregnant woman. The group said the Yemeni government, which works closely with U.S. counterterrorism forces, later admitted that the attack had been a mistake and compensated families of the victims.