USA: OBAMA ADMINISTRATION CONSIDERS ASSASSINATING ANOTHER AMERICAN OVERSEAS

11 February 2014 :

The Associated Press is reporting the White House is considering using a drone to kill an American citizen who is allegedly a member of al-Qaeda. The AP did not name the man or the country where he is residing.
Obama approved new guidelines after coming under fire for approving the targeting of another US citizen, radical Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011.
Three other Americans have been killed in counter-terror strikes but were not intentionally targeted, US officials admitted last year. "US Suspect Possibly Targeted for Drone Attack." It’s by Kimberly Dozier, AP intelligence writer. Just the first paragraph says, "An American citizen who is a member of al-Qaida is actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say, and the Obama administration is wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year."
The Associated Press has agreed to the government’s request to withhold the name of the country where the suspected terrorist is believed to be, because officials said publishing it could interrupt ongoing counterterror operations. And in a later part of the piece, it says, "one U.S. official said the Defense Department was divided over whether the man is dangerous enough to merit the potential domestic fallout of killing an American without charging him with a crime or trying him, and the potential international fallout of such an operation in a country that has been resistant to U.S. action. Another of the U.S. officials said the Pentagon did ultimately decide to recommend lethal action." Glenn Greenwald, the former columnist for The Guardian who first broke the story about Edward Snowden, now writing for The Intercept, a digital magazine, said: “The very idea that the U.S. government suspects an American citizen, not of having already engaged in crimes, but of planning to do so, as Jeremy said, it’s like a pre-crime framework, where the U.S. government tries to guess at who will engage in crimes in the future and then treat them as a criminal. But then, not just treat them as a criminal, but declare them guilty in secret proceedings, not involving any court, but by the decree of the president of the United States to literally, A, declare the person guilty, B, impose the death penalty, and then, C, go out and carry out the execution—just like they did with Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan. And now they are obviously viewing it as a regular practice. I mean, no American, no matter your political affiliation or ideology, should accept the idea that the president of the United States has the power to order American citizens killed, not on a battlefield or anywhere else that is in a war zone, but simply on the suspicion that they intend to engage in future criminal behavior. To describe that power is to describe the most extremist and out-of-control government you can get”.
A few hours later, more information came from The New York Times, writing that the American citizen is living in Pakistan.
 

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