The American Civil Liberties Union sued the U.S. government over an alleged policy of killing American citizens who are suspected of terrorism.Needless to say, these jokers have impeccable timing. As this story was released a couple of terror suspects of Yemeni origin were arrested.
The lawsuit, filed today in federal court in Washington, argued that such targeted assassinations by the government are unconstitutional.
“A program that authorizes killing U.S. citizens, without judicial oversight, due process or disclosed standards is unconstitutional, unlawful and un-American,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement announcing the filing of the case against U.S. President Barack Obama, the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency.
The New York-based group, together with the Center for Constitutional Rights, brought the case on behalf of Nasser al- Awlaki, father of a U.S.-born Islamic cleric in Yemen, Anwar al- Awlaki, who is accused of having ties to al-Qaeda.
The younger al-Awlaki, who was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico, has been marked for death by the U.S. Defense Department and the CIA, according to the organizations.
U.S. forces are trying to find al-Awlaki, saying he has been linked to plots against American targets including the failed attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate an explosive device aboard an airliner approaching Detroit in December.
Monday's arrests of two suspects of Yemeni descent are another example of what federal officials and observers say is a growing problem with extremism and terrorist threats emanating from Yemen.Surely the ACLU will be representing them in court.
During the past year, a number of high-profile terrorism cases -- especially those involving Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim-American cleric of Yemeni descent -- have caused concern among government officials and others concerned about anti-American threats. The CIA says it now believes that a branch of al-Qaida in Yemen is a greater threat than al-Qaida in Pakistan, the main focus since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a report last week in the Washington Post.
With his fluent English, al-Awlaki has become popular over the Internet among some radical Muslims living in the West. U.S. intelligence officials found e-mails between al-Awlaki and Nidal Malik Hasan, the Muslim man accused of going on a shooting rampage on a military base in November that killed 13 people. Al-Awlaki also is believed to have inspired the Dec. 25 bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound airplane. The suspect in that case is Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a native of Nigeria.
The Boy From Brazil seems very concerned over Al-Awlaki's rights, such as they are.
It's an authoritarian scene out of some near-future dystopian novel, yet it's exactly what is happening. This is precisely the reaction of a substantial portion of the population which has been trained to believe every unproven government accusation of Terrorism. The mere utterance of the accusation -- Terrorist -- sends them into mindless, fear-driven submission, so extreme that they're willing even to endorse a Presidential-imposed death penalty on American citizens with no due process: about the most tyrannical power that can be imagined, literally.Get a grip.
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