Assassin Nation

By Edward Girardet Tuesday, July 19, 2011 - 5:34 PM Share

After more than three decades of targeted killings, is there anyone left alive who can actually run Afghanistan?

Read the rest of the article here.

Mamoon Durrani/AFP/Getty Images

EXPLORE:AFPAK, AFGHANISTAN, AFPAK CHANNEL

(1)

HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE

SUNG BRIMM

5:47 AM ET

August 15, 2011

Assassin Nation

How much evidence should the U.S. government be obliged to show before it kills you? None, according to the Obama administration. And how much evidence of your wrongdoing should the government be obliged to possess before officially targeting you for killing? That’s a secret, according to the president’s team. If judges force the government to answer that question, the terrorists will win. The Obama administration now claims a right to kill American citizens without trial, without , and without any chance for the marked men or women to object legally. The Bush administration’s “targeted killing” program has been radically expanded to include Americans far from any war zone. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair testified earlier this year that the targeting-to-kill decision depends only on “whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us.” As former CIA agent Phil Giraldi noted in this magazine last April, “involved” is one helluva vague standard. And the list of officially designated terrorist groups has little or nothing to do with whether those organizations actually pose significant danger to the United States. The poster boy for the targeted killing program is Anwar eva angelina-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric who is reportedly in Yemen. The Obama administration touts allegations that al-Awlaki helped spark the slaughter at Ford Hood, Texas, inspired the attempt to destroy a jetliner on Christmas Day 2009, and has done other dastardly things that the government has not yet disclosed (for our own good, of course). Al-Awlaki might well be a four-star bastard, but government press releases and background briefings have not previously been sufficient to justify capital punishment.