US Senator Ron Wyden, statement on the DOJ killing americans memo

“As I and ten other senators told the President yesterday, if individual Americans choose to take up arms against the United States, there will clearly be some circumstances in which the President has the authority to use lethal force against those Americans, just as President Lincoln had the authority to use force against the Confederate Army during the Civil War..

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that quote is the first sentences in the quote above.

Ron Wyden is saying he agrees that a President DOES have authority to use lethal force.

Ron Wyden, LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC SENATOR Oregon.

That's exactly how you are framing his comments. You are either for it or against it.

He is saying in some cases it is justified, but that there needs to be clarification as to exactly how those decisions are being made. It is a fair question. I'd think people WOULD want him to ask that, wouldn't you?

BTW I am from Oregon and Wyden has always been a great senator.

the point being- Ron is a liberal democratic senator.
And he is for it.
(and yes, he wants a few more answers, nothing wrong with more answers, nothing wrong with drones.

that is my point.

"Every American has the right to know when their gov't believes it is allowed to kill them." - Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) (

He is talking generally not specifically.
Not prior to.

That is specifically covered in the already approved Congressionally voted what a president can do.

he is talking after the fact, not indiviually needing to pre-announce so the perp can get away before hand.

And if BinLaden was any example, it took months before permission was given and specifically a drone was not used so as not to further a conspiracy theorist saying he wasn't there, which is why they did it old school and not drone, but who wouldn't have wished for a drone
two months prior to OBL giving out the plans to his team and saving 3000 lives, and the mass destruction of the economy.
I know I wouldn't have minded, and I live in the NYC area and see the empty space where the WTC used to be every single day.

Important part of his statement is the first pargraph above.

and btw, attempting to overthrow the government is from our founding fathers, treason.

Anything Lincoln did is legal.
War powers act. Congress declared it war on terror.
The President already has the permission. And needs it.

and terrorism is something that terrorizes.
There are no longer USSR cold war borders.
Now, war has been gerrymandered and people who want to hurt people is here there and everywhere. And wanting to hurt ones own people are just as bad and the same as wanting to hurt someone elsewhere.

One life to save 3000 lives(plus multiplied out to all their families) well, it seems obvious.

Don't want Presidential abuse? Don't elect a bad president.

feel free to disagree.
but the important part to me is the 1st paragraph.


Do cops send a mesage over the airwaves or a call or text to any criminal, saying
we are going to knock on your door and arrest you Wednesday morning 9am?
Of course not. They get permission.
The president already has permission (and again-it is months or more that the person is known. It doesn't happen over night anyhow. And most times they have a needle in the haystack opportunity of finding the perp.


IMHO as always feel free to disagree.

Yes, in theory I agree the President should be allowed to strike an American terrorist. However, my objection is that mistakes WILL be made. An American tourist will be mistaken for a terrorist. There will be collateral casaulties in these strikes.

We already have too many instances of police killing innocent people in drug raids that later proved faulty. And that's with court oversight necessary to get the warrant. Certainly, if the President is going to execute these police-type functions, then we should know what oversight and limitations he's operating under, and that he will bear the responsibility for his mistakes.

Is everyone part of the action/arena who gets killed in a ground war?

Everything is a split second calculation, nothing from a human is perfect.

A warless society would only work if all the people in the society were perfect and did not fight. That doesn't exist.

Why does someone like, say Zimmerman,been allowed as a private citizen the right to choose who lives and died? Why did he get that right, but Mr. Martin didn't?

I would prefer a President elected by the majority under our elective office system, making the choice, instead of 320 million Zimmerman's in the nation each making their own personal decision. Because a helleva lot more collateral damage happens that way.

Would you rather in 1960-1963, President Kennedy have the right (as he did then, as Lincoln did earlier, as President Obama does now) to decide the fate of the nation
Or would you rather in 1963, that Oswald was the one who decided the fate of the nation.
(or if you believe someone else did, that someone else had the right?)

between being at war with a nation, like Japan or Germany, and targeting individuals in a country we are not at war with, like Yemen and Pakistan.
I thinks its understood that in a war against a country, there will be collateral casaulties, even if steps are taken to minimize them. Targeting individuals in non-hostile countries has little room for error. Get it wrong, and theres a huge political price to pay.
Fighting terrorism is similar to fighting piracy. No one objects to killing a Somali pirate if necessary. But get it wrong, and kill the innocent crew of a fishing boat with US Navy guns, and there's going to be hell to pay. No one, here or abroad, is going to put up with that.

“As I and ten other senators told the President yesterday, if individual Americans choose to take up arms against the United States, there will clearly be some circumstances in which the President has the authority to use lethal force against those Americans, just as President Lincoln had the authority to use force against the Confederate Army during the Civil War..."

Beyond that precedent, it appears that the questions are designed to clarify the process and, primarily, to ensure that it's actually targeting people who take up arms against the U.S.

to understand?

terrorists threatening to destroy it & some were in the US, and it came over here with drones and killed them (incidentally killing a few civilians in the process) -- would the US accept that?

I think the answer is obvious, & I think it makes a mockery of all this bullshit.

We go to other countries and kill people because we *can*. because we're the biggest bullies on the block.

that's the long and short of it, and all the rest is bullshit.

There are people dressed the part in these joke countries, but most are incapable of keeping their crazies in line.

'joke" (i.e. weaker) so we can kill them.

I agree with his third paragraph and the memo itself raises a dangerous precedent after Obama. What if a Michele Bachmann became president? Remember when she said liberals in the US house of Representives were traitors?

After reading the memo and comments, I'm thinking of the movie 'Minority Report' taken from a short story from Philip K Dick. There is no test outlined to determine if someone is a high ranking member of al Quaeda. There is no requirement to prove beyond reasonable doubt, by preponderance of evidence, by anything whatsoever, that someone is an imminent threat. In fact, the individual cannot even sue the government to prove he does not meet the requirements for "legal assassination." The only possible legal recourse anyone could have is to sue the administration after he is assassinated and claim that he did not meet the administration's own definition. This, of course, is impossible.






Wyden has, on more than one occasion, left the american public with only cryptic hints at substantial government wrongdoing. He has said things like "if the American public ever found out what we are told in our committee, it would be a massive scandal." Yet Mr. Wyden seems to refuse to leak these kinds of details. He's PRECISELY in the position where leaking information is both justified and actually demanded by his obligation to his constituents and the nation at large.

So, in short, the only reason I have any criticism for Mr. Wyden is that he's the only one with the proper ethical center to be in a position to not act on those ethics for the public good in a meaningful way.

You can count on one thing, those in power fashion the laws to do what they want to do. Today, they fashion legal papers to keep their own asses out of jail for war crimes.

It's a secret inside of a secret inside of a secret. We used to have a policy of not killing foreign leaders (a public policy anyway, wink wink), and now we are making a policy to kill Americans, abroad or here in the USA. And we (Americans) just have to 'TRUST' our government that they are doing the right thing, i.e. actually going after a REAL terrorist. There's no oversight. It looks unconstitutional and maybe impeachable. In the Bush Adm they created a law to allow them to go around the Geneva Conventions and torture to Chenies sadistic heart's desire. Now we're going around the law to use these drones to kill supposed terrorists, be it an American or not, here or over there. Of course, Bush Adm wasn't held accountable, so I guess PO (or Bush leftovers in POs administration, i.e. Brennen who's up for confirmation for the CIA post) think they are above the law too. I don't know about anyone else, but I think it's time to come to halt on going around the law. They gave Hagel hell, but Brennen is the one that should not be confirmed. (Brennen is the granddaddy of these drones, isn't he?)

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." ~~Voltaiare, 1694-1778

We will never know!

It's against the USA PATRIOT Act to release certain provisions to the public it "serves."

started the whole ball rolling years ago and each time its brought up in the senate .

Its kind of depressing

Frederick Douglass




I know its not the same but I'm seeing an increase of two tier justice in the States and this is just another slice at it.

The Douglass quote comes from here



Mr. Gore acted fully up to the maxim laid down by slaveholders, -- "It is better that a dozen slaves should suffer under the lash, than that the overseer should be convicted, in the presence of the slaves, of having been at fault." No matter how innocent a slave might be -- it availed him nothing, when accused by Mr. Gore of any misdemeanor. To be accused was to be convicted, and to be convicted was to be punished; the one always following the other with immutable certainty. (4.2)

As Mr. Gore's conduct demonstrates, the rule for slaves is simple: the slave is always wrong and the master is always right. Douglass is showing us that slavery doesn't operate according to any principles of justice or fairness but is, instead, simply about power.



http://www.shmoop.com/life-of-frederick-douglass/truth-quotes-2.html

These are gangster times, no different than in the antebellum South.

Thank you, Ichingcarpenter. Mr. Douglas put it into perspective perfectly. And the same property-over-people warmongers and slavemasters own and operate the government.

I haven't read it yet, but there's a new book about Vietnam by Nick Turse, "Kill Everything That Moves," that pretty much puts the situation into words almost as well as Mr. Douglass.

“No book I have read in decades has so shaken me, as an American. Turse lays open the ground-level reality of a war that was far more atrocious than Americans at home have ever been allowed to know. He exposes official policies that encouraged ordinary American soldiers and airmen to inflict almost unimaginable horror and suffering on ordinary Vietnamese, followed by official cover-up as tenacious as Turse’s own decade of investigative effort against it. Kill Anything That Moves is obligatory reading for Americans, because its implications for the likely scale of atrocities and civilian casualties inflicted and covered up in our latest wars are inescapable and staggering.” —Daniel Ellsberg, author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

This is the sort of thing that makes one question the legitimacy of government per se! Were governments created to sanction the right to kill people? I don't think so.