January 1 of this year President Obama signed into law the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act). The stir caused throughout the internet was of biblical proportions, while the main stream media hardly spoke a word of it.
The most chilling aspect of NDAA was the indefinite detention of US citizens who were only assumed to be tied to terrorist organizations. Never mind the fact that our own government has been in bed with these same terrorists and continue to fund them. A good example is the recent take over of Libya and execution of Gaddafi.
The thing that is so amazing is that the American people are more concerned about how much they pay for gas, than they are about their God given rights being trampled upon. NDAA is in effect stating that the government can merely say you are a terrorist or affiliated with terrorists and can ship you off to anywhere in the world to be detained and even tortured at its discretion without proof and without due process, which you are supposed to be guaranteed under the Constitution.
Just this month it became even more alarming as in a 60 minutes interview, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta acknowledged the the US has the authority to assassinate those they deem to be terrorists. No arrest. No jury. No trial.
When asked what the legal justification was Panetta responded, “If someone is a citizen of the United States and is a terrorist (I’ll note, is not proved to be a terrorist, just claimed to be one by the government) who wants to attack our people and kill Americans (again that would make a person a suspect and should be innocent until proven guilty) in “my book” that person is a terrorist.”
He went on to explain that, “In reality, under our laws that person is a terrorist and we are required under a process of law to be able to justify that despite the fact that this person may be a citizen, he is first and foremost a terrorist who threatens our people and for that reason we can establish a legal basis in which we ought to go after that individual just as we go after bin Laden, just as we go after other terrorists.”
Well Mr. Panetta you have given us your opinion of things including what’s in “your book”. However, though the law may define a terrorist. Our Constitution also has a way of dealing with them if they are citizens here and that is called due process. Maybe you’ve heard of it? If you think a citizen is guilty of terrorism, then you arrest them and prove they are indeed engaged in what you are accusing them of doing. They stand trial before a jury of their peers and if found guilty then you apply the punishment, but you, nor the President, are not allowed to just target American citizens for assassination.
Anyone who thinks otherwise should consider the measures our government is going to in order to find out who gives criticism of their government. It may be you one day that is placed in the cross hairs of a tyrannical government and targeted for assassination just because you disagree strongly with the government over 2nd Amendment rights, which by the way if the one right that ensures all the others. Freedom of speech and particularly political speech is guaranteed under the Constitution and yet all around us are the signs that our government want to shut down free speech.
This is only the beginning though. This week the New York Times carried an article where the Obama administration’s top Pentagon lawyer said that American citizens who join Al Qaeda can be targeted for killing and that courts should have no role in reviewing executive branch decisions about whether someone has met such criteria.
Jeh C. Johnson is quoted as saying, “Belligerents who also happen to be U.S. citizens do not enjoy immunity where non-citizen belligerents are valid military objectives “. We are not talking about people out on the battlefield engaging our troops. We are talking about citizens of the United States of America being targeted for assassination without ever proving they are guilty and furthermore going on to say that courts can’t even call the executive branch to account! This is very, very dangerous.
Please don’t get me wrong here. I firmly believe if there is credible evidence that a US citizen is engaged in planning to attack America, even if they are not considered a “terrorist”, they should be arrested and given due process and punished accordingly if they are found guilty. However, this is not what is being stated in the interview now what Mr. Johnson has said.
The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the DOJ, the DOD and the CIA demanding that they release all pertinent information of the killing, in 2011, of the three American citizens that are alleged to have been terrorists.
“Our government’s deliberate and premeditated killing of American terrorism suspects raises profound questions that ought to be the subject of public debate,” Nathan Freed Wessler of the ACLU wrote in a statement.
A list that Panetta eluded to in the interview has also been questioned. The ACLU has submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to find out what the process is by which American citizens are added to that list. The government has ignored the request.
The government has gotten the public to buy into torture tactics. Now they are getting the public to buy into the assassination of American citizens just because they tell us they know they are terrorists without any proof of their claims. What next? Will they be declaring that Christianity is the religion of terrorism and that all those who are openly Christian can be targeted? After all they are stating quite openly the Islam is a religion of peace and that we should not link Muslims to terrorism.
My fellow Americans, we had better quit hitting the snooze button and wake up! The day is well spent and we are at the edge of night. It is time to look past the things that we are engaged in and see the leviathan that is growing in Washington, D.C. We must, for our sakes and the sakes of our children stand up and declare this is enough and demand answers and a return to the Constitution. Only then will we truly know what it is to be free again.
Don’t forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook, Google Plus, & Twitter. You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here.
Tagged with
