Author Topic: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?  (Read 22526 times)

Fitz

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #50 on: February 09, 2013, 08:24:13 AM »
Obama literally blows up little kids from the sky, and sells guns to Mexican drug gangs, and somehow he's the compassionate alternative to republicans.

Nutty as he is, Ron Paul is the only person with a shred of sanity that stood for election.

Ron Paul is a big old meanie who we should revile and hate because he pointed out a particular bit of truth in a tweet
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lee n. field

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #51 on: February 09, 2013, 11:08:26 AM »
Obama literally blows up little kids from the sky, and sells guns to Mexican drug gangs, and somehow he's the compassionate alternative to republicans.

Nutty as he is, Ron Paul is the only person with a shred of sanity that stood for election.

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seeker_two

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #52 on: February 09, 2013, 11:12:55 AM »
Another thought: Would we condemn Obama as much if the directive specified the use of snipers instead of missle-armed drones?
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longeyes

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #53 on: February 09, 2013, 11:17:33 AM »
Won't Obama eventually, given his insemination of his administration with people of questionable background and ties, have to target his own White House...?
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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #54 on: February 09, 2013, 11:20:23 AM »
Another thought: Would we condemn Obama as much if the directive specified the use of snipers instead of missle-armed drones?

Snipers are usually a tad more discriminate on the battlefield.  Less of that whole collateral damage thing.
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Blakenzy

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #55 on: February 09, 2013, 11:40:51 AM »
Another thought: Would we condemn Obama as much if the directive specified the use of snipers instead of missle-armed drones?

In the case of American citizens, yes I believe the condemnation would be equal. The problem isn't with the tools employed it's with the Executive ignoring Constitutional guarantees and restraints, bypassing due process and declaring it can act as judge, jury and executioner of it's citizens with no oversight or accountability. It is reminiscent of the power kings attributed to themselves. It's a conceptual problem. And if snipers were used, the assassination of al-Awlaki's son for example wouldn't have been able to be conveniently excused as a "woopsie.. collateral damage!"... it would be hard to deny who was targeted, creating more condemnation.

In the case of criticism regarding the assassination of foreigners with snipers, it would be less notorious, simply because the body count would be so much lower. It takes more resources and is more risky to set up a sniper hit, therefore the overall number of attacks would be far less, not to mention the specificity would be nearly 100%. No children or bystanders killed. No killing first responders by "double tapping" . It just wouldn't grab enough public attention State side to generate muchbcondemnation.
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Tallpine

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #56 on: February 09, 2013, 11:52:29 AM »
Another thought: Would we condemn Obama as much if the directive specified the use of snipers instead of missle-armed drones?

If you are an American citizen fighting for the other side on a battlefield, well - then you take your chances like everyone else.

The problem is that now the fed.gov considers the entire world to be the battlefield.

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RocketMan

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #57 on: March 05, 2013, 09:13:12 PM »
This is how Eric Holder weighed in yesterday on armed drone strikes in the US.  Troubling, this is.
If there really was intelligent life on other planets, we'd be sending them foreign aid.

Conservatives see George Orwell's "1984" as a cautionary tale.  Progressives view it as a "how to" manual.

My wife often says to me, "You are evil and must be destroyed." She may be right.

Liberals believe one should never let reason, logic and facts get in the way of a good emotional argument.

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #58 on: March 06, 2013, 01:13:14 AM »
This is how Eric Holder weighed in yesterday on armed drone strikes in the US.  Troubling, this is.

Where is that Castle "Huh?  Wha?  Yeah..." animated gif?

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MicroBalrog

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #59 on: March 06, 2013, 01:37:04 AM »
Waterboarding foreign killers = war crime
Killing Americans with drones = humanitarian

And when Americans betrayed the country and fired on Ft. Sumter, they weren't given a jury either. Instead, American troops rode towards them on horses, stabbed them with sabres and shot them with shrapnel. None were ever read their Miranda rights.

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RoadKingLarry

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #60 on: March 06, 2013, 02:16:27 AM »
And when Americans betrayed the country and fired on Ft. Sumter, they weren't given a jury either. Instead, American troops rode towards them on horses, stabbed them with sabres and shot them with shrapnel. None were ever read their Miranda rights.



Not everyone sees "the war of Northern aggression" in quite that light.  =D
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MicroBalrog

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #61 on: March 06, 2013, 02:22:20 AM »
Quote
Obama literally blows up little kids from the sky, and sells guns to Mexican drug gangs, and somehow some people still think Ron Paul is the crazy one

Fixed that for you.
Destroy The Enemy in Hand-to-Hand Combat.

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MicroBalrog

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #62 on: March 06, 2013, 02:24:04 AM »
As on the topic of snipers.

How would that sniper get to, say, the parts of Afghanistan where we need to kill people?

Oh, he'd need to be airlifted in? With a support team?

And then the support team would probably need to fight people?

...and if something goes south it would require extractino and air support and artillery support?

If you were to kill a thousand terrorists a year through the use of ground forces I'm betting there'd be even more collateral damage.
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De Selby

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #63 on: March 06, 2013, 06:42:54 AM »
And when Americans betrayed the country and fired on Ft. Sumter, they weren't given a jury either. Instead, American troops rode towards them on horses, stabbed them with sabres and shot them with shrapnel. None were ever read their Miranda rights.



Yeah, they also had uniforms that made identifying the parties easy and there were clearly delineated zones - military trials even under those conditions were controversial - executing non-uniformed people on suspicion of being a rebel wasn't even floated as a possibility, and yet that is exactly what Obama is doing.

These are war powers that would've shocked and embarrassed Lincoln.
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MicroBalrog

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #64 on: March 06, 2013, 06:49:36 AM »
De Selby:

I am not sure I know a good answer to the problem we're facing, but let us consider the problem.

Given:

1. Terrorist organizations exist.

2. Terrorist organizations will not vanish, even if the US will announce total isolationism. Even if these specific organizations vanish - unlikely - the problem itself will rise again in another context.

3. Terrorist organizations number thousands of men and wae what is effectively war again the US or its allies.

What do we do?

Clearly the toolboxes we have aren't too good for this.

We have a military toolbox - which works quite nicely, our guns kill theterrorists quite dead - but we are not always certain who the terrorists are. If it is a terrorist training camp in North Waziristan we can of course blow  it up - but if it is a guy standing in line at an airport in England, blowing him up would be less desirable.

We have a police toolbox. We're certainly not reading the guysi n North Waziristan their rights. On the other hand we want to do that if we spot a terrorist suspect in Nebrasks.

How do we build a terrorist toolbox  is a question which is so far non-resolved by our society.

Clearly "let us huddle in our caves and nuke all the foreigners" isn't a workable solution.

But "let us pretend that the problem doesn't exist and we should treat Al-Quaeda the same way we'd treat an enemy army, or, alternatively, a group of criminal suspects" isn't a workable solution e3ither. Neither is "let us pretend any collateral damage is entirely non-acceptable and accepting even one innocent man being killed is the same as being Hitler".
Destroy The Enemy in Hand-to-Hand Combat.

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De Selby

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #65 on: March 06, 2013, 06:54:29 AM »
Wait a second, why isn't going about our daily lives while chasing down terrorists just like we did before 9/11 a viable option?

Fewer Americans would have died, and our counter-terror policy would have likely been just as if not more effective.  Then there's the billions in savings we might put to use actually saving lives, for example, by improving road safety.

There are not hordes of people capable of inflicting damage on the US.  There are very few, and they have mostly been caught by the criminal process that has worked just fine for a hundred years. 

Drone strikes have not changed the game one bit - we still have to identify terrorists.  If they're in places so remote we could never arrest them, how the hell were they going to attack us?
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MicroBalrog

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #66 on: March 06, 2013, 07:52:11 AM »
The issue is not the remoteness.

The issue is that they are guarded by other terrorists, and any operatives we sent to arrests them would likely have to be involved in a shooting fight. It wouldn't be like a  police officer arresting a criminal.

And how they would harm is easy: train and fund terrorist operatives.

Further, back then we also used drones. Long-range drones that crashed into things. They were called cruise missiles.
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RoadKingLarry

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #67 on: March 06, 2013, 08:17:43 AM »
Quote
Wait a second, why isn't going about our daily lives while chasing down terrorists just like we did before 9/11 a viable option?

Our anti-terrorist "policies" prior to 9/11 are a big part of why we had the the 9/11 attack.
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Fitz

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #68 on: March 06, 2013, 08:57:28 AM »
Wait a second, why isn't going about our daily lives while chasing down terrorists just like we did before 9/11 a viable option?

...


You're joking right?

I mean, i'm no longer a big friend of the idea of drone strikes... but returning to our methods pre-9/11 is a pretty idiotic idea.

Although, maybe you're right. Maybe complete incompetence is better than the current situation :-/
Fitz

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #69 on: March 06, 2013, 09:37:56 AM »
The way I see it is thus.

You cannot separate terrorism from our worldwide footprint and foreign policy.

Our foreign policy goals and plans are not really public and would probably look something like three dimensional chess if someone actually sat down and tried to explain the world situation to us.

The "terrorists" are those who are actively fighting against the western world empire.

If you find yourself aligned against the empire's goals you better be careful who you run with. Or you might go all splodey!

The best we can do is elect folks who hold the same principles of liberty that we espouse. Once they get elected it then becomes up to them to try and untangle the mess and do the right thing.

If Ron Paul got elected president he would probably go into a deep deep depression at just how far gone we are and how deeply we have insinuated ourselves into just about every nook and cranny of everyone's business across the globe.

 
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Blakenzy

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #70 on: March 06, 2013, 11:58:50 AM »
Our anti-terrorist imperial "policies" prior to 9/11 are a big part of why we had the the 9/11 attack.

Sadly, that's more in tune with reality.

I am of the thought that not even a tenth of what is done in those foreign countries is about preventing strikes in the US. Most of it is about eliminating militant political resistance to highly questionable governments and political structures favored by our rulers. All about maintaining control. At this point in time I am skeptical about there being more than a handful of redeemable actions taken in those places by the US Government.

I am just bracing for the time when "lessons learned" overseas are imported wholesale to keep things under control in the "homeland"  ;/
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MicroBalrog

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #71 on: March 06, 2013, 12:41:43 PM »
If you really think that withdrawing America from the world will eliminate terrorism I've got another thing coming.
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Fitz

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Re: When can the US Government assasinate Americans?
« Reply #72 on: March 06, 2013, 12:46:33 PM »
If you really think that withdrawing America from the world will eliminate terrorism I've got another thing coming.

I think i see what you did there.
Fitz

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I have reached a conclusion regarding every member of this forum.
I no longer respect any of you. I hope the following offends you as much as this thread has offended me:
You are all awful people. I mean this *expletive deleted*ing seriously.

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