JEREMY SCAHILL: …you were one of only half-a-dozen members of Congress — not a single senator — to simply state on the record that American citizens have the right not to be assassinated by their own government without due process.
REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: …it’s amazing that we’re in an America where we have to defend the rights of Americans to be free from assassination by their own country… How long is it before some local police department uses a drone to intercept and kill a suspect, and when that becomes commonplace? –Jeremy Scahill and Dennis Kucinich: In Obama’s 2nd Term, Will Dems Challenge U.S. Drones, Killings?
Mr. Kucinich submitted a bill to Congress guaranteeing Americans couldn’t be assassinated by Uncle Sam without due process a year before the drone assassination of American imam Anwar al-Awlaki — and 2 weeks later, his 16 yr-old American son because, as Obama front-man Robert Gibbs put it, “he should have a far more responsible father.” Only six of “our” 535 public servants in Congress would support it. 529 of them apparently thought that assassinating the folks they are supposed to protect and serve — and who elect and pay them — is just fine.
So one of the things that can happen here is your assassination by Uncle Sam — and coming soon perhaps, by your local cop-shop.
Comb through the archives at Radley Balko's site, theagitator.com. Cops in America are already at war with the people. They brutalize and kill people all the time almost always without facing any negative consequences. Dennis is right. Give local law enforcement the power to assassinate by drone and the local news anchors will cheeerfully report on how bravely the police are getting rid of all the bad guys for us.
Thanks for trying to cheer me up, JLS!!
Yeah JLS, I was cheerful and ready for the weekend when you gave me a kick in the groin.
lol sorry y'all. I have to take a break from reading Balko's site sometimes for the same reason. It really s depressing.
Since many brainwashed soldiers who leave the service find themselves looking to continue their careers kicking some ass at home some citizens are going to be brutalized. Even more troubling is that the weapons profiteers are drooling at the lucrative market for their WMD's in the hands of local cop shops. It's time for some good, old fashioned investigative journalism.
Those soldiers are insensitized to killing other human beings, and that´s their value to those running the police departments.
Exactly. The whole point of the imperial sojourn to Iraghanistan, in addition to securing oil resources for the Reigning Elite, has been to train a corps of domestic Janissaries to impose the Reign of Terror at home. There's certainly no logical reason to think that predator drones won't become a key weapon in the armory domestic repression.
Operative words…Old Fashioned…
One would think this could viewed as, at the very least, a ‘feel good’ bill to support. They must feel like it wanders into conspiracy territory – which of course, it doesn’t. They are so isolated in DC, they have no clue what an average American citizen’s reaction to or support for (or rejection of) a particular bill looks like. All they hear are themselves and the evil little party DC pundits that tell them what’s important. Naturally, all they ever hear is ‘win’. We must win for its own sake!!
Bastards.
Assassination by Uncle Stalin, uh, Sam, has already happened here–remember Ruby Ridge and Waco? And most certainly at this point by local pigs, but it just never made the news, or it's spun as an "accident" or "he shot at the cops first", or something similar. And yet the sheeple continue to worship as "heroes" these unaccountable, militarized, brainwashed, strutting, arrogant, buzz-cut, steroid-popping, scumbag government-approved terrorists and murderers. Yep, I was looking forward to a nice weekend, too.
Just think of the tax cuts possible if Americans would just get with the pogrom and authorize law enforcement officers to merely execute suspects at the first point of contact. America could save billions in court and prison costs. I'm sure that private prison operators would balk due to losses in their revenue stream, but they need to place their collective nationalist duty ahead of profits.
C'mon folks, let's get those heels clicking and stand behind extrajudicial executions. The combination of increased entitlement benefits and decreased taxes made possible by this pogrom would restore freedom and prosperity to the greatest nation to ever exist in the entire solar system.
Kucinich's legislation is well intended, but unnecessary. If it's already against the law to assassinate someone without due process, what good does it do to pass additional laws saying the same thing?
The correct thing to do would be to prosecute the President and those associated with carrying out the assassination, including the drone operator.
But of course in today's US of America, prosecution of such obvious criminality is as likely as Kucinich's legislation passing in Congress.
The RESULT of the legislation may well be as intended: It shows EXACTLY where "your" public servants stand on the laws, precedents, and the U.S. Constitution they swear an oath to uphold and defend. What would be a proper "sanction" for these folks do you think??
The correct thing to do would be to prosecute the President and those associated with carrying out the assassination, including the drone operator.
But of course in today's US of America, prosecution of such obvious criminality is as likely as Kucinich's legislation passing in Congress.
You're correct in that the current official machinery for prosecuting these creatures will never do so on its own. The only means by which to effectively prosecute these creatures is for citizen tribunals, independent of "government" entities, to do so. Only when We the People take charge and bring about just ourselves will it ever be done.
Of course the odds of that happening are approximately the same as those of a mass marriage taking place between Orthodox Jewish settlers on the West Bank and Palestinians whom they're murdering and whose lands they're stealing…
You really think the odds are that good?
What was that?… Did I just feel a cold breeze blow over Hell? Nah!… Musta been dreaming because I'll bank on the inter-faith marriages happening before the American Imperium ever doing the right thing.
And wasn't it 95 out of 100 Senators who voted "Yea" on NDAA, including the indefinite military detention of citizens?
Anyone have any illusions left to diss?
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I did.
You were supposed to stop reading at this point (assuming that a) some of you can actually read and b) you read that far into this waste of time blog post): "There was no way of being certain if the strike was indeed American, or for that matter if it was a drone strike at all, although it had all the markings of one." thANKS
You must have the wrong post, fella. No specific drone strike mentioned here, just that nearly all of the U.S. congress apparently thinks it's OK to kill Americans without a trial. As Ohio Rep. Kucinich suggests, however, an "efficient" way of carrying out such executions of Americans might be drone strikes on us – – –
So what IS your problem?