The legality of execution by executive decree without due process

glenn...

The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights this morning filed a lawsuit in federal court against several Obama officials, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and CIA Director David Petraeus. The suit is brought on behalf of the survivors of three American citizens killed in Yemen by the U.S. Government — killed specifically by the CIA and the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command — with no due process and far from any battlefield: Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan (killed together in a drone strike) and Awlaki’s teenaged son Abdulrahman (killed two weeks later).

The suit alleges that the killing of these Americans violates their Constitutional rights (including their Fifth Amendment right to due process) because “the United States was not engaged in an armed conflict with or within Yemen” and “these killings rely on vague legal standards, a closed executive process, and evidence never presented to the courts.”

by all means, go read the rest...

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The U.S. considers Iran to be a threat...?

izzat so... let's go to the visuals...

first, a comparison of military spending, iran vs. the u.s...



now, let's look at a map of the u.s. military bases that literally surround iran...



glenn comments...

Indeed: imagine if the blue in that map were the U.S. (rather than Iran), and the large red areas were Mexico and Canada (rather than Iran’s neighbors), and the stars represented Iranian military bases. Then further imagine that Iranian political leaders and media figures routinely told their population that it was the U.S. that was an aggressive, threatening power that had to be stopped: the mocking condemnations of that level of propaganda would be endless. Yet American political officials and commentators feel free to insist, with a straight face, that Iran is an aggressor nation posing a serious threat to the U.S.: such a serious threat, in fact, that war may be necessary to stop it. And there is, tragically, little doubt that if there is an attack on Iran by Israel — with direct U.S. involvement or, more likely, U.S. support and approval — there will be little opposition in either American political party, and even less challenge to the ludicrous claims about the Grave Iranian Threat that will be invoked to justify it.

yesterday, in response to the incessant sabre-rattling, people took to the streets...

Hundreds of protesters demonstrated Saturday in New York and pacifist groups took to the streets in dozens of other US and Canadian cities in a "Day of Mass Action" against a possible war with Iran.

About 500 protesters gathered in Manhattan's Times Square and marched to http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthe headquarters of the US mission to the United Nations and to the Israeli consulate.

"No war, no sanctions, no intervention, no assassinations," read a banner leading the march.

The demonstrations came as Europe and the United States slapped tough new sanctions on Iran, and Israel this week launched new threats of military intervention if the Islamic republic fails to rein in its suspected nuclear development program.

There is heightened speculation that Israel is contemplating air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, fueled in part by US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's comments to the Washington Post in which he said he believes there is a "strong possibility" that Israel will launch such air strikes this spring.

our super-rich elites know how effective war is as a tool to keep the u.s. population in line... so far, that strategy has bought them almost ten and a half years counting from the time of the start of the afghanistan war through the iraq war and right on to the present day... now, with iraq "finished" and afghanistan slated to "wind down" soon, i'm sure they're just itching to get another one going... my prediction...? this time it's not going to happen...

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Oh, yay... Learned helplessness...

a societal and organizational dynamic that i've observed for many years is what i have come to call "learned helplessness"... many of us develop that mindset when, over many, many years, we've come to believe that no matter what we do, our employer won't change a damn thing, our society will still be off the rails, and our government will still feel perfectly within its rights to do whatever it goddam well pleases no matter what we, the people, think about it...

now, i come to find out that very same dynamic, using the very same name underpins the oh-so-euphemistically labeled "enhanced interrogation techniques," known to you and me as torture, methods have been - and probably still are - so liberally applied at our < snark > club med-style < /snark > "detention" facilities, known to you and me as prisons and to our friends in russia as gulags...

well, at least panetta isn't sitting on his hands...

CIA Director Leon Panetta fired Mitchell, Jessen & Associates and all other contractors that aided the CIA in its interrogations of alleged terrorists, the New Yorker reported this weekend.

The firings took place in April, around the same time the Senate Armed Services Committee reported on the role played by James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen in developing "countermeasures to defeat" the resistance of captured enemy detainees from whom intelligence was being sought.

Mitchell and Jessen, who run the firm, had worked on a Pentagon program that taught U.S. service members how to survive harsh enemy interrogation methods. They relied on elements of that training in proposing an interrogation program for the CIA. It included methods such as sleep deprivation and other actions based on "theories of 'learned helplessness,' " the New Yorker reported.

our minders have worked long and hard to instill in us the learned helplessness mindset... we're ever so much easier to control when we feel and think that way... nothing to see here, folks... just move along...

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An Obama-appointed fool speaks: "We are a nation at war"

here's just a couple of sample news items of the sort that prompted yesterday's grouch-post...

leon panetta...

We are a nation at war. We have to confront that reality every day. And while it's important to learn the lessons of the past, we must not do it in a way that sacrifices our capability to stay focused on the present, stay focused on the future, and stay focused on those who threaten the United States of America.

oh, yeah... woo-hoo... permanent war... just the kind of thinking we were trying to kill by electing obama and definitely NOT what i want to be hearing from his cia director... the whole concept and practice of "permanent war" is a big piece of why our world is in the mess that it is... it allows those whose mindset is irrevocably fixed on money and power to continue having their way with the rest of us...

chris hedges in truthdig...

The embrace by any society of permanent war is a parasite that devours the heart and soul of a nation. Permanent war extinguishes liberal, democratic movements. It turns culture into nationalist cant. It degrades and corrupts education and the media, and wrecks the economy. The liberal, democratic forces, tasked with maintaining an open society, become impotent.

[...]

The military-industrial establishment is a very lucrative business. It is gilded corporate welfare. Defense systems are sold before they are produced. Military industries are permitted to charge the federal government for huge cost overruns. Massive profits are always guaranteed.

Foreign aid is given to countries such as Egypt, which receives some $3 billion in assistance and is required to buy American weapons with $1.3 billion of the money. The taxpayers fund the research, development and building of weapons systems and then buy them on behalf of foreign governments. It is a bizarre circular system. It defies the concept of a free-market economy. These weapons systems are soon in need of being updated or replaced. They are hauled, years later, into junkyards where they are left to rust. It is, in economic terms, a dead end. It sustains nothing but the permanent war economy.

Those who profit from permanent war are not restricted by the economic rules of producing goods, selling them for a profit, then using the profit for further investment and production. They operate, rather, outside of competitive markets. They erase the line between the state and the corporation. They leech away the ability of the nation to manufacture useful products and produce sustainable jobs.

so, what the fuck did we elect obama for...?

again, chris hedges..

Our permanent war economy has not been challenged by Obama and the Democratic Party. They support its destructive fury because it funds them. They validate its evil assumptions because to take them on is political suicide. They repeat the narrative of fear because it keeps us dormant. They do this because they have become weaker than the corporate forces that profit from permanent war.

[...]

We have been drawn into the world of permanent war by these fools. We allow fools to destroy the continuity of life, to tear apart all systems—economic, social, environmental and political—that sustain us.

so, with the fools still in charge, we stumble on...

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How would you like it if Argentina announced the possibility of future "economic instability" in the US?

even if it's true...?

it's stunning to me how the u.s. can make sweeping pronouncements about other countries but won't bother to look in the mirror...

from al jazeera...

The Argentinian government has angrily criticised Leon Panetta, the new director of the CIA, for warning of a potential economic crisis in the country.


Leon Panetta, CIA Director

The country's foreign ministry summoned the US ambassador to Buenos Aires "to explain the lamentable statements" made by Panetta earlier this week, describing them as "unacceptable interference" in its affairs.

Panetta told reporters on Wednesday he had been informed that the US would have to pay more attention to Latin America because of "some serious problems … that involve economic instability".

The CIA chief later said the concerns "particularly involved Argentina, Ecuador, and Venezuela".

But Jorge Taiana, the Argentinian foreign minister, said at a news conference on Thursday that such remarks were "irresponsible, unfounded and do not show respect".


Jorge Taiana, the Argentinian foreign minister

"It is an unacceptable interference in our internal affairs," he said.

"This isn't the view of the country expressed in our dialogues with representatives of the [US] State Department and numerous members of the two main parties in the House of Representatives and the Senate."

He said Earl Wayne, the US ambassador, would be asked to explain Panetta's statements on Friday.

what such a pronouncement does once more is to reinforce the all-too-prevalent image of argentina in the minds of most u.s. citizens as some sort of third-world backwater... since i live there part-time, i can definitely attest to the fact that it's not...

is there a possibility of economic unrest in argentina...? hell, yes... given its history and current state of affairs, there's ALWAYS a possibility of economic unrest in argentina but, fercryinoutloud, do we have to get up on our bloody pulpit, shake our paternalistic, condescending finger as though we were somehow pure as the driven snow, and rub their face in it, particularly when they obviously weren't consulted...? does ANYONE in our government have the ability to see things from another country's perspective...? can you imagine the uproar in the u.s. if ANY other country made a pronouncement like this about the u.s...?

i had much higher - but obviously misplaced - hopes for the obama administration...

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Dems, now hear this! Go kick some butt!

greg sargent at TPMelectioncentral...

The polls show clearly that the public strongly supports efforts by Dems to confront Bush both on Iraq and on corruption. Check out the numbers in this recent Pew poll:

Do you think Democratic leaders in Congress are going too far or not far enough in challenging George W. Bush's policies in Iraq, or are they handling this about right?

Too far 23%
Not far enough 40%
About right 30%
Don't know/Refused 7%

how very interesting, and particularly appropriate given my previous post about the dems "faltering momentum" and the bullshit being peddled by rahm emanuel and leon panetta... more greg sargent...

[T]he reporters quote Leon Panetta making the case that Dems had better watch out and not be too confrontational with the White House:

"The primary message coming out of the November election was that the American people are sick and tired of the fighting and the gridlock, and they want both the president and Congress to start governing the country," warned Leon E. Panetta, a chief of staff in Bill Clinton's White House. "It just seems to me the Democrats, if they fail for whatever reason to get a domestic agenda enacted ... will pay a price."

[T]he choice the public faces isn't between "fighting" and "gridlock" on the one hand, and "bipartisan cooperation" on the other. Rather, it's between (a) accepting the disastrous Bush/GOP status quo; and (b) backing Democratic efforts to change it. And the public supports the latter. Even though those efforts are partisan and confrontational. Is that really so hard to fathom?

let's keep the butt-kicking going strong...!

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Leon Panetta is full of shit

saying "no open-ended commitment" to the iraqis will accomplish absolutely nothing except giving bushco an open-ended invitation to extend the iraq war for the rest of his presidential term... i don't care if leon panetta is "former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and a member of the Iraq Study Group," he's still full of shit...

Instead of dividing over the strategy on the war, the president and the Congress should make very clear to the Iraqis that there is no open-ended commitment to our involvement. As the Iraq Study Group recommended, Iraqi leaders must pay a price if they continue to fail to make good on key reforms that they have promised the Iraqi people.

In calling for a specific withdrawal date, the House and Senate versions of the supplemental spending bill send a clear message to the Iraqis (even if they do face a certain veto). The worst mistake now would be to provide money for the war without sending the Iraqis any message at all about their responsibility for reforms. Both the president and the Congress at the very least must make the Iraqi government understand that future financial and military support is going to depend on Baghdad’s making substantial progress toward the milestones Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has publicly committed to.

and what's included on panetta's list of satisfactory benchmarks...? if you guessed the oil law, you can go to the head of the class...

The Iraqis promised to achieve, by the end of 2006 or early 2007, the approval ... of a law to regulate the oil industry and share revenues...

i find it so very interesting that something that totally favors big oil in ways unheard of in the industry gets buried in a list of so-called "benchmarks" and the benefit to big oil never gets mentioned... why is that, do you suppose...?

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