The Glade 4.0

Because ignoring civil rights is something George W. Bush would do. Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for not being George W. Bush.

Seriously, the administration has better things to do with their time than pander to the tinfoil hat fears of the opposition party.

Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for not being George W. Bush.

I love how this is always trotted out as a criticism of Obama when what it really says is that Bush was so terrible for US foreign relations that his successor was given a prestigious international award simply for replacing him.

Yea, "pandering" to "tinfoil hat fears" like murdering citizens and violations of rights.

Please tell me you're just trolling, because I wouldn't believe you to be this **** retarded.

Seriously, the administration has better things to do with their time than pander to the tinfoil hat fears of the opposition party.

“There is a possibility somewhere out there on the edge that a tough– not going to say he did it– but somebody pretty far on the far right like Dick Cheney…will push this thing too far? Do you think it’s possible that a Jane Fonda could be targeted even by the most right-wing American politician we can imagine?” - Chris Matthews

Seems your side of the isle has worries of their own...

Seems your side of the isle has worries of their own...

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

cite?

cite?

In Aizle's defense, that "should have a far more responsible father" line from Gibbs was so frackin' over-the-top awful that it's easy to assume it has to be a misquote.

In Aizle's defense, that "should have a far more responsible father" line from Gibbs was so frackin' over-the-top awful that it's easy to assume it has to be a misquote.

If he was speaking specifically regarding the misquote, I apologize for the vehemence of my reaction.

I presumed he was talking about the killing having occurred at all, based on his prior questioning within the thread.

Two weeks after the U.S. killed American citizen Anwar Awlaki with a drone strike in Yemen — far from any battlefield and with no due process — it did the same to his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, ending the teenager’s life on Friday along with his 17-year-old cousin and seven other people. News reports, based on government sources, originally claimed that Awlaki’s son was 21 years old and an Al Qaeda fighter (needless to say, as Terrorist often means: “anyone killed by the U.S.”), but a birth certificate published by The Washington Post proved that he was born only 16 years ago in Denver. As The New Yorker‘s Amy Davidson wrote: “Looking at his birth certificate, one wonders what those assertions say either about the the quality of the government’s evidence — or the honesty of its claims — and about our own capacity for self-deception.”

It saddens me that you are ignorant of these events, Aizle.

Abdulrahman Anwar al-Aulaqi (also spelled al-Awlaki; August 26, 1995[1] – October 14, 2011) was a 16-year-old American citizen who was killed while eating dinner at an outdoor restaurant[2][3][4][5] in an airstrike by an armed C.I.A. drone in Yemen on October 14, 2011. Abdulrahman Al-Aulaqi was the son of Anwar al-Aulaqi, a dual Yemeni-American citizen who was alledged to have worked as a propagandist for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Anwar al-Aulaqi was killed by an airstrike by an armed C.I.A. drone[6] two weeks prior to the death of Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi.
Human rights groups have raised questions as to why Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi, an American teenager, was killed by the U.S. in a country with which the United States is not at war. Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, stated "If the government is going to be firing Predator missiles at American citizens, surely the American public has a right to know who’s being targeted, and why."[7]
Two U.S. officials speaking on condition of anonymity stated that the target of the October 14, 2011 airstrike was Ibrahim al-Banna, an Egyptian believed to be a senior operative in Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.[7] Another U.S. administration official speaking on condition of anonymity described Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi as a bystander who was "in the wrong place at the wrong time", stating that "the U.S. government did not know that Mr. Awlaki’s son was there" before the airstrike was ordered.[7]
In the days following his killing, again speaking on the condition of anonymity, two U.S. officials suggested that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was in his 20s, calling him a "military-age male".[7] However, Aulaqi’s family refuted the claim by releasing a copy of his U.S. birth certificate showing that he was born on August 26, 1995 in Denver and was aged 16 at the time of his death.[1]

/shrug

After looking into these events because of this thread I frankly feel like I could have remained ignorant of them and been perfectly happy.

Shockingly after doing a little bit of research it turns out that this isn't some sinister plot to murder US citizens but an unfortunate case of a kid who got involved with bad people because of his father and was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulrahman_al-Aulaqi



I'm having a hard time getting all riled up about this.

A U.S. citizen who gets killed because they happened to be in physical proximity to a foreign target has not been murdered.

Sure they have. So was the "foreign target." Killing anybody who isn't in combat is murder.

Look, I get it. Aizle's on the left hand side of agreeing with this because he loves Obama and doesn't want to condemn his actions. You're on the right hand side of agreeing with this because of your profession and background.

Neither of those biases (and they are biases) change the fact that making people dead outside of a warzone has, since the advent of modern governments, either followed due process involving judicial review in the form of a trial or been considered a crime by government. Period. You will not be able to argue historical evidence to the contrary.

The fact that you and Aizle are ok with it is fine as well, but let's be honest about what you're both endorsing: the murdering of people because you feel it's strategically or tactically advantageous.