The U.S. government has the right to order the killing of American citizens overseas if they are senior al-Qaeda leaders who pose an imminent terrorist threat and cannot reasonably be captured, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Monday.
“Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen — even one intent on murdering Americans and who has become an operational leader of al-Qaeda in a foreign land — is among the gravest that government leaders can face,” Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school in Chicago. “The American people can be — and deserve to be — assured that actions taken in their defense are consistent with their values and their laws.”I actually cringe a little at this, only because it does seem to be an unlimited authority type of statement. I recognize that, like the Bush Administration, Obama's actions are justified by the severity of the threat, but the potential for abuse is enormous, and I would prefer some Congressional or judicial oversight on this.
What angers me is that it was exactly this sort of thing that the left claimed to hate about Bush--and now Obama does not even have a Democratic challenger, showing that the left did not believe their own high-minded rhetoric about Bush.
Can't Rumsfeld or somebody write a letter to the Washington Post thanking them for the ratification? Such hypocrisy absolutely must be called out for what it is.
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