Somewhere there would seem to be a need for EVIDENCE that Iraq and/or Hussein was involved in 9-11, and there was none. That was a personal vendetta on Bush’s part.
Imagine that there was an attempt on Obama’s life, and the evidence proved a vast conspiracy by the KKK.
Obama could not invade Fox new headquarters and kill Glenn Beck, just because Beck is clearly a racist and had insulted Obama without proof that he was a member of the KKK.
I’m pretty sure that this isn’t new by any definition of the word. I don’t doubt for one moment that the US government has been regularly assassinating people for at least a hundred years without checking in with all branches of government for their thoughts. I’d worry if it wasn’t.
You are a bit confused on the facts here. Immediately after 9/11, Congress passed a use of force authorization that allows the President to attack people and organizations who were connected to the 9/11 attacks.
In October 2002, Congress passed a separate use of force authorization allowing the President to attack Iraq, and Iraq only.
Not entirely true. See here. But generally, yes, the whole point of FISA is to provide some check against our government spying on us in our own country under the guise of furthering some supposed vital state interest.
But you’ve missed my point. American citizens have rights vis-a-vis the US government regardless of whether they’re within the borders of the US or not. To your expat example, the British government certainly has its own laws and standards regarding the investigation and arrest of persons within their national boundaries. But if a US federal agent heads to London to arrest an American citizen, and they don’t secure an arrest warrant from an American court, they’ve just violated that citizen’s Fourth Amendment rights.
And not that this really needs to be said, but mere surveillance isn’t analogous to ordering somebody killed. If the government is just trolling for juicy foreign intel, they have lots of leeway in what they can do so long as they take steps to minimize the collection of information from US citizens who are collaterally involved. On the other hand, if the point of the surveillance is to build a criminal case against a citizen, it doesn’t matter that they’re outside of the US, the government isn’t going to be able to use it against them in an American court. Just like it doesn’t matter if al-Alwaki is sitting in Yemen, hating on America; the President can’t simply decree that he’s Scary and Dangerous and must be eliminated.
That’s a pretty long winded response, and it’s unclear to me what your getting at. Are you conceding that, as Bricker posted above, “the Constitution’s full force of protection applies inside the United States, and not outside the United States.” Because earlier you said that was wrong. Certainly some rights are in force, but not all. Whether Americans in Britain have rights under British law is immaterial. We were talking about the US constitution.
Under what circumstances do you believe that the US government could legitimately use the military to target an American citizen outside of the US?
On a battlefield, or any other area that Congress has approved for combat operations, subject to the laws of war. Which nobody is disputing, and I hope you don’t mean to imply otherwise.
I assume you didn’t actually research this confident claim. Because it’s simply wrong.
If you had, you might have read about the case of Wadih EL-Hage, a US citizen living in Kenya in the late 1990s. Believing that he was involved in terrorist activities, US authorities wiretapped his Kenyan telephone for a year. This was done without any warrant. They also broke into his house and searched it, again with no warrant.
Evidence gained from that wiretap and search was used to convict El-Hage in criminal court in the United States, of conspiracy to murder United States nationals; conspiracy to murder internationally protected persons, United States officers, and employees engaging in official duties; and conspiracy to destroy buildings and property of the United States, all related to several embassy bombings.
On appeal, El-Hage made the same argument that you just did: the Constitution forbids the introduction of warrantless wiretap evidence and warrantless search evidence against him, even if the evidence was gathered while he and the phone in question were in Kenya.
The court disagreed:
The court went on to extensively analyze the factors associated with warrantless foreign wiretap evidence, and concluded it was properly admitted against El-Hage in his criminal trial. The Second Circuit unanimously affirmed his conviction. In Re Terrorist Bombings of US Embassies in East Africa, 549 F. 3d 146 (2nd Cir 2008), cert denied, 130 S.Ct. 1050 (2010)]
So what the hell were you talking about?
Interesting case to cite, Bricker.
In In re TERRORIST BOMBINGS OF U.S. EMBASSIES IN EAST AFRICA (Fourth Amendment Challenges), the same second circuit you cited stated:
"In United States v. Toscanino, a case involving a Fourth Amendment challenge to overseas wiretapping of a non-U.S. citizen, we observed that it was “well settled” that “the Bill of Rights has extraterritorial application to the conduct abroad of federal agents directed against United States citizens.”
The court went on to hold that, while the warrant requirement of the 4th Amendment does not apply, the “reasonable” standard does. Cite
In addition, in Reid v. Covert, the Supreme Court stated:
“At the beginning we reject the idea that when the United States acts against citizens abroad it can do so free of the Bill of Rights. The United States is entirely a creature of the Constitution. Its power and authority have no other source. It can only act in accordance with all the limitations imposed by the Constitution. When the Government reaches out to punish a citizen who is abroad, the shield which the Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution provide to protect his life and liberty should not be stripped away just because he happens to be in another land.”
In that case, the Court found that trying a wife in the killing of her husband in military court in a foreign country violated her constitutional rights.
Finally, I think it’s pretty clear from recent caselaw that the US cannot designate US citizens as “enemy combatants”, even if they are in a foreign land, without a hearing.
With those in mind, I find it preposterous to argue that the US government is allowed, to not just detain or unreasonably search (which seemingly are verboten), but to murder a US citizen without even the slightest hint of “due process”? I understand the whole “we’re at war”, but we’re not at war with Yemen, where he is supposedly hiding. Hell, we’re not really at “war” at all, let alone a war where the entire world is declared the battleground. They are not on the battlefield. And hiding behind the “state secrets doctrine” is, once again, reprehensible.
And, putting aside the Constitutional issues, it’s a horrible, horrible idea that is bad policy, immoral, and unethical and I wholeheartedly condemn Obama for doing it. He has, once again, let us down.
Glenn Greenwald is disputing it, but I suppose if you don’t have a problem with it, I guess I’ll just ask Glenn the same question.
Sure…the due process clause of the 5th Amendment.
Isn’t this different than the scenario presently being discussed? Here, you have a battlefield situation where it is possible American citizens are occupying machine gun nests, and are anticipated to fire upon the lieutenant and his men as they approach the hill, and present active resistance by firing the machine guns.
This is different from President Obama authorizing some component of the federal government, military, CIA, or some combination of both, to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen in a foreign country. What is conspicuously lacking from the two scenarios is a battlefield, where U.S. forces are actively engaged in a military combat situation or something substantially similar to it, and the enemy is actively resisting them with machine gun fire.
Why exactly do you see these two scenarios are parallel enough that if one is justified, then so is the other?
Yes. and then they went on to write several pages showing that the warrantless wiretapping of El-Hage was reasonable, didn’t they?
To remind you, I said:
FULL FORCE. I didn’t say then, and don’t say now, that the Constitution has no force whatsoever overseas. But it lacks the FULL FORCE that it has inside our borders.
MOIDALIZE then claimed that wiretapping evidence obtained without a warrant outside the US could not be used to convict someone:
I posted a case in which the US government wiretapped a phone in Kenya without a warrant, and used the information gained to criminally convict someone.
We’re at war with Al-Queda, which has acted like a hostile nation-state and can be thus treated like a hostile nation-state.
Good. Run for office. Change the law.
I better parallel is some Al Qaeda dude sitting in a hut, sending emails to his agents on how next to attack the United States.
If we have the opportunity to capture him and interrogate him, that’s great. If that is not feasible, then I do not believe we have any obligation to let him go until the point where we can capture him. I have no problem shooting a missile at him to disrupt his plans (permanently).
It does not matter to me whether that person is a Saudi, a Yemeni, an Afghan, or an American. That person is an enemy of the United States who is plotting harm and should not be allowed to do so.
ETA: I should add that if the Al Qaeda agent is captured, I do believe that an American citizen should be treated differently than a foreign national. That’s IF they are in US custody.
It’s true that the traditional battlefield concept is not delineated nearly as clearly in the real-life example.
But it’s the contention of the government, and one I agree with, that because Al-Quada acts like a hostile state, and attacks outside the battlefield, that simply extends and changes the traditional view of a battlefield. Guess what? We don’t march our archers up and have the commanders agree to start the battle at 10:00 AM, either.
Now, you may be right – there may be more legal significance to a battlefield than I am allowing. But right now, that area of law is unsettled at best.
And I am not claiming anything different. And I couldn’t help but notice that you snipped the rest of my post with the other cases and arguments, which dealt with the application of other Constitutional protections to US citizens. Funny thing, that. Why, to you, would the reasonableness standard of the 4th Amendment and the jury trial requirements of the 5th and 6th apply to US citizens abroad, but not the due process clause?
Ah, there it is. We’re at “war” with “Al Queda”, so all the protections of the Constitution for US citizens don’t really matter. Nevermind the determination of who is “Al Queda” and thus can be summarily executed is completely unchecked and the whole entire world is the “battlefield”, it’s constitutional. Does that hold in the US? Suppose that the President determines someone currently in Virginia is a member of Al Queda, do you believe it is Constitutional for him to order the summary execution of that person, even if he is in the US? Since all the world is the battlefield, and Al Queda is everywhere (we’ve had them in the US), is there anything in the Constitution that would stop him from ordering him executed without a trial?
Nice attempted diversion. You disagree? You see no problems with allowing the President to be able to order the summary execution of anyone in the world?
It isn’t “completely unchecked.” Congress, not the courts, have oversight of the issue.
By declaring war? Once Congress declared war against Al Queda, that suddenly changed the Constitution to allow the President to assassinate US Citizens without due process? And the Courts suddenly no longer have the power to determine what the Constitution means or where and how it applies to US citizens?
That doesn’t quite sound like the Constitution I know.
Since when does the Constitution require “due process” for the killing of enemies?
Since when have the courts gotten involved in war powers issues in which Congress and the President appear to be in agreement? (In that there appears to be no serious concern in Congress about targeted attacks on Al Qaeda and their associates.)
When the “enemies” are US citizens, for one.
Umm, forever. Do the names Hamdan, Hamdi, or Padilla mean anything? How about Quirin? Tingy? Bollman?
In your view, is there anything in the Constitution that prohibits the President from ordering the summary execution of anyone, even someone in the US, as long as he thinks that person is somehow related to Al Queda?
I suspected you might reply by asserting the traditional concept of the battlefield is not useful here and the concept of what constitutes as a battlefield needs to change/should change, and this is a fair point to make.
I suppose the difficulty here is with the idea of President Obama, or any president, designating who our enemy is and ordering the person to be killed, and nothing more. This is what distinguishes the traditional battlefield from the scenario we are presently discussing. With the traditional battlefield, we do not have to solely or exclusively rely upon presidential proclamations of who our enemy is and therefore, they are to be killed.
I am just not very comfortable with the idea of simply deferring to the president, and having to just trust him, when it comes to identifying our enemy/enemies and they are to be killed.