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Kucinich: White House Assassination Policy Is Extrajudicial
by Jeremy Scahill April 15, 2010
There has been almost universal silence among Congressional Democrats on the Obama administration’s recently revealed decision to authorize the assassination of a US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen, has been accused of providing inspiration for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged “underwear bomber,” and Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged Fort Hood shooter. In recent weeks, there has been a dramatic surge in US government chatter about the alleged threat posed by al-Awlaki, with anonymous US officials accusing him of directly participating in terror “plots” (his family passionately disputes this).Several Democrats refused, through spokespeople, to comment on the assassination plan when contacted by The Nation, including Senator Russ Feingold and Representative Jan Schakowsky, both of whom serve on the Intelligence Committees. Representative Jane Harman, who serves on the Homeland Security Committee, said recently that Awlaki is “probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us.”
Kucinich told The Nation he has sent several letters to the Obama administration raising questions about the potential unconstitutionality of the policy, as well as possible violations of international law, but has received no response. “With all the smart people that are in that administration, they’ve got to know the risks that they’re taking here with violations of law,” he says.
Targeted killings are not a new Obama administration policy. Beginning three days after his swearing in, President Obama has authorized scores of lethal drone strikes, including against specific individuals, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, surpassing the Bush era numbers. The elite Joint Special Operations Command maintains a list of individuals, including US citizens, which it is authorized to assassinate. In January, Dana Priest reported in the Washington Post that the CIA had US citizens on an assassination list, but the Post later ran a correction stating that only JSOC had “a target list that includes several Americans.” The policy of the CIA targeting al-Awlaki, a US citizen, for assassination, therefore, appeared to be a new development, at least in terms of public awareness of approved government assassinations.
“In the real world, things don’t work out quite so neatly as they seem to in the heads of the CIA,” says Kucinich. “There’s always the possibility of blowback, which could endanger high-ranking US officials. There’s the inevitable licensing of rogue groups that comes about from policies that are not strictly controlled and that get sloppy–so you have zero accountability. And that’s not even to get into an over-arching issue of the morality of assassination policies, which are extra-constitutional, extra-judicial. It’s very dangerous from every possible perspective.”
He added: “The assassination policies vitiate the presumption of innocence and the government then becomes the investigator, policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner all in one. That raises the greatest questions with respect to our constitution and our democratic way of life.”
Kucinich says the case of al-Awlaki is an attempt to make “a short-cut around the Constitution,” saying, “Short-cuts often belie the deep and underlying questions around which nations rise and fall. We are really putting our nation in jeopardy by pursuing this kind of policy.”
Defense Secretary Robert Gates Confirms Blackwater in Pakistan
Rebel Reports By Jeremy Scahill
In an interview with the Pakistani TV station Express TV, Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that the private security firms Blackwater and DynCorp are operating inside Pakistan. “They’re operating as individual companies here in Pakistan,” Gates said, according to a DoD transcript of the interview. “There are rules concerning the contracting companies. If they’re contracting with us or with the State Department here in Pakistan, then there are very clear rules set forth by the State Department and by ourselves.”
This appears to be a contradiction of previous statements made by the Defense Department, by Blackwater, by the Pakistani government and by the US embassy in Islamabad, all of whom claimed Blackwater was not in the country. In September, the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, denied Blackwater’s presence in the country, stating bluntly, “Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan.”
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The Hurt Locker, Mercenaries and Palestinian Refugees
The Hurt Locker
After The Nation‘s coverage of the New York Times blog was originally posted, Hurt Locker screenwriter Mark Boal contacted The Nation. “As the producer and supervising producer on set, I can say that The Hurt Locker never hired Blackwater in any capacity on this movie. We did hire a number of former military personnel as advisors, as well as guys from the Jordanian military,” says Boal, who supervised all of the hiring of military consultants for the film. “I think Anthony [Mackie] was doing a kind of stunt where the Oscar blogger for the Times was going to shoot paint guns with him. I think he was using the term ‘Blackwater’ colloquially to refer to contractors or mercenaries, which we had plenty of on set.” When asked about comments made by the film’s director, Kathryn Bigelow, in other interviews mentioning the presence of Blackwater men on set, including as technical advisers, Boal said, “It’s possible that at some point somebody on set worked for Blackwater, but we never hired Blackwater.”
Blackwater’s owner, Erik Prince, has been accused by former employees of “view[ing] himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe.” Two former Blackwater contractors were arrested last week on charges they murdered Afghan civilians and German prosecutors are probing an alleged Blackwater assassination team that was covertly operating in Hamburg after 9/11. Blackwater, whose operatives are accused of killing innocent civilians, has an office in Jordan and has trained Jordanian military forces.
The Hurt Locker has been widely acclaimed as the best Iraq war movie to date and is considered a front-runner for the Academy Awards. It tells the story of an elite US military bomb squad unit in Iraq.
In an online video posted by the New York Times, Mackie’s interviewer, Melena Ryzik asks the actor, “Can you teach me some of those military moves?”
“Why not?” Mackie replies. “I think you’d make a fine soldier.”
Ryzik says, “I think so too.”
With that, the two head to a paintball range to fire guns. As Mackie shows Ryzik his moves, he shows her how the Blackwater men trained him to hold his weapon. “If you’re a trained killer,” he tells her, “you’re very precise.”
In The Hurt Locker, US forces go out of their way to avoid shooting Iraqis, even in the case of a known suicide bomber, practices certainly not among the qualities for which Blackwater forces are (in)famous. Apparently Mackie forgot that Blackwater was at the center of the single worst massacre of Iraqi civilians by a private US force: the 2007 Nisour Square shooting. In what the US military and federal prosecutors said was an unprovoked shooting, Blackwater forces killed seventeen unarmed Iraqi civilians, including women and children. More than twenty others were wounded and some were shot in the back as they fled.
“The Hurt Locker is a terrific film and Blackwater is a horrific lawless, organization,” actor John Cusack told The Nation in response to Mackie’s comments.
