Obama's Kill List Sanctioned by Department of Justice: US Becomes Outlaw Nation ... For months, the White House has been leaking how President Obama "carefully" reviews a kill list (assassination) of alleged terrorists (and who knows what other troublemakers end up on the potential target list?). Off-the-record comments (and some on the record) are meant to reassure Americans that the president doesn't take the authorization of kills (with the attendant "collateral damage" of civilians and children if a drone strike) lightly, but seriously contemplates who ends up dead as a sanctioned hit. As has been repeatedly noted by commentators not dazzled by the assumption of extra-judicial death warrants, it is perplexing and dismaying that a Harvard Law School grad who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago is showing such a lethal disregard for the nation's fundamental legal document. Deciding who shall live and who shall die is generally a power attributed to Gods in most religions; or one can go back to history before the birth of states founded on democracy, when tyrants and monarchs held absolute powers. The authority Obama has assumed without any legislative or court permission goes well beyond the Bush/Cheney torture protocol; this is a kill list, not just a rendition order. The condemning of a person to death without due legal process, without habeas corpus, violates the Constitution in the most fundamental way. In doing so, Obama is undercutting and eroding the most basic guarantee in our legal system, at a time when the tide, ironically, is turning against capital punishment in the US. A Washington Post article today that reveals a hither-too classified document that adds a chilling corroboration of what has until now only been the subject of strategic leaks (for which we might add, no one has been prosecuted because these classified leaks are meant to enhance President Obama's image as a tough guy): The United States can lawfully kill a US citizen overseas if it determines the target is a "senior, operational leader" of al-Qaeda or an associated group and poses an imminent threat to the United States, according to a Justice Department document published late Monday by NBC News. The document defines "imminent threat" expansively, saying it does not have to be based on intelligence about a specific attack since such actions are being "continually" planned by al-Qaeda. "In this context," it says, "imminence must incorporate considerations of the relevant window of opportunity" as well as possible collateral damage to civilians.
