Political Agents of U.S. Gangster-Capitalists Assert “Right” to an Utterly Lawless and Unconstitutional “Kill List”

Attorney general defends presidential assassinations of US citizens
By Tom Eley and Barry Grey
6 March 2012

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/mar2012/hold-m06.shtml

Excerpts:

* In a speech delivered Monday at Northwestern University Law School in Chicago, US Attorney General Eric Holder asserted the ‘right’ of the president to secretly order the assassination of US citizens. Laying out a brief for virtually unchecked executive power to carry out military aggression abroad and repression at home, the speech was a sweeping attack on fundamental democratic and constitutional principles.

* The ‘kill or capture’ list is itself known only to the president and a handful of advisors. There is no way of knowing when or how a name is entered on the assassination list, and there exists no legal means for having a name stricken once the president has selected an individual for elimination. (See: ‘The legal implications of the al-Awlaki assassination’. )

* ‘Because the United States is in an armed conflict,’ Holder declared, ‘we are authorized to take action against enemy belligerents under international law’ None of this is changed by the fact that we are not in a conventional war.’

In fact, the so-called global war on terror is a phony war, conjured up to provide an overarching political framework for a turn by the United States to unbridled militarism abroad and police-state measures domestically. Its geographical scope is the entire planet, its duration is unbounded, and its enemies are determined by the political exigencies of US imperialist foreign policy. Moreover, its initial justification, the events of 9/11, remain shrouded in mystery, including the apparent role of US intelligence and security agencies in facilitating the terrorist plot.

* Holder placed no limits in time or space on those who might be targeted for murder by the White House. ‘Our legal authority is not limited to the battlefields in Afghanistan,’ he said. He baldly asserted that the ‘war on terror’ exempted the president from the 1975 executive order issued by President Gerald Ford banning assassinations. He laid out the supposed guidelines to which the executive branch must adhere in deciding to kill alleged terrorists, stressing that ‘United States citizenship alone does not make such individuals immune from being targeted.’ However, he insisted that such decisions are not subject to judicial review, meaning the executive branch has unilateral power to function as judge, jury and executioner of those targeted for extermination.

* The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has sued to force the government to release classified documents related to the Awlaki assassination, issued a statement condemning the speech.

‘While the speech is a gesture towards additional transparency,’ Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said, ‘it is ultimately a defense of the government’s chillingly broad claimed authority to conduct targeted killings of civilians, including American citizens, far from any battlefield without judicial review or public scrutiny.’

The statement continued: ‘Few things are as dangerous to American liberty as the proposition that the government should be able to kill citizens anywhere in the world on the basis of legal standards and evidence that are never submitted to a court, either before or after the fact. Anyone willing to trust President Obama with the power to secretly declare an American citizen an enemy of the state and order his extrajudicial killing should ask whether they would be willing to trust the next president with that dangerous power.’

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And don’t forget, of course, that the entire “war on terror” is a fraud. In fact, from day one it has been nothing but an imperialist war OF terror waged by America’s gangster-capitalist elite.

28-Year Career CIA Official Says 9/11 An Inside Job
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/september2006/070906insidejob.htm