US airstrikes in Yemen kill man suspected of connection to USS Cole bombing

[The Northerner]

Updated at 11:17 a.m. ET: Yemeni security and military officials revised the number of suspected militants killed in a U.S. airstrike on Tuesday down to four people killed, and said one of the victims was a man suspected of involvement in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.

Tribal officials in the southern Abyan province said the strike hit the militants late on Monday as they were holding an important meeting at the school. Yemeni security officials had originally put the death toll at 15 people but later lowered that figure. They also said 12 militants were wounded in the strikes.

They said one of the suspected militants killed was named Abdel-Monem al-Fathani who was involved in the bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors and injured 39 others. The attack on the U.S. destroyer occurred while it was in the Yemeni port of Aden for refueling.

A Western official in Washington confirmed the U.S. carried out a strike against suspected leaders from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, saying initial indications were that five people were killed. The official did not say where the strike occurred or specify whether it was carried out by a drone or a warplane.

Read more: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/31/10275742-us-airstrikes-in-yemen-kill-man-suspected-of-connection-to-uss-cole-bombing

[gratuitous]

1. "Due process" is just a quaint relic of olden times

Now we get judge, jury and executioner all with the push of a button. So much more efficient.

[wtmusic]

4. From 8,000mi away, somebody sitting at a desk at Langley

ID'd this guy as a possibly suspicious suspect and toasted him.

Ah, progress.

[msanthrope]

8. I wish we'd done that November 2001, to a place called Tora Bora.

Might have saved us quite a lot of trouble, eh?

[msanthrope]

5. Tell me the due process he was denied. Be specific.

Under the AUMF of 9/18/2001, which is the legal justification for the strikes, tell us the due process of law that AQAP members are owed.

[a simple pattern]

7. What about the other <15 people killed in the strike

I guess they weren't suspected of anything, since they didn't even have names

eta I guess they must have been suspected militants if they were hanging out with that other guy at the school tho so that's all good

[msanthrope]

11. Looks like it was 4 people, and the Yemenis aren't claiming any civilians died.

The AUMF of 9/18/2001 allows us to go after members of AQAP. When others die, I think it's horrible, but I'm not surprised that terrorists shield themselves with civilians.

[arcane1]

15. They're not really shields if we kill them anyway.

The 9/11 hijackers lived in apartments, stayed in hotels, ate in restaurants, etc. Were they shielding themselves? Would it be ok to blow up a Holiday Inn if a hijacker might be sleeping inside?

I suppose the ATF put a day-care center in their Oklahoma City office in order to use the children as human shields.

[msanthrope]

18. That you find the ATF and AlQaeda like entities really says quite a bit, doesn't it?

Funny, I would have called Tim McVeigh and AlQaeda more like-minded, but there you go...

[arcane1]

19. I do?

I missed that part.

Nice try though.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

12. Memorizing an acronym does not confer moral superiority, or even permission

You're using a legal justification put in place by a piece of shit who needs to be in prison for the rest of his miserable life, a justification put in place by a completely frightened and cowed congress, who was being sent anthrax by the guy whose AUMF you're worshiping. Any port in a storm, I guess.

[msanthrope]

16. Actually, it does confer permission. That's precisely what an AUMF does.

It gives the President permission to use military force. I wish Bush had done drone strikes instead of frog-marching us to Iraq.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

21. ahem.....moral permission

[gratuitous]

13. Evidence? Trial?

Sorry I haven't seen fit to trim my ideals to fit this year's fashion. I just can't quite get comfortable with summary execution of "suspected militants," whatever that means. And as for the AUMF, the neat legalistic circularity of jurisdiction and standing ensure that our courts don't have the huevos to declare it unconstitutional (you can't file suit against the law unless you can show harm, and you can't be harmed by the law unless you're a terrorist, and if you're a terrorist, you don't have any rights under the law). The AUMF will pass into history as a miscarriage of law to stand beside the "legal" underpinnings authorizing the detention of Japanese Americans and Jim Crow laws in the Old South.

[msanthrope]

14. You don't need a trial to kill people we are at war with. Just as Confederate soldiers didn't

get a trial, and Nazi's didn't either, in combat.

Did you think Osama Bin Laden's rights were violated because he didn't have a trial?

And why do you think there is no evidence? The USS Cole bombing was extensively documented. In fact, one of the conspirators is on trial, right now, in Gitmo. If you are member of AQAP, and you are subject to capture or kill orders, at any time.

[gratuitous]

23. We're not at war, government nonsense notwithstanding

We're ignoring our own Constitution and treaty obligations by declaring "war" on an ill-defined group of people. There is no threat, no present danger, we're not locked in combat with anyone. Lobbing missiles into meetings of "suspected" militants and enemies is a war crime, defined very specifically in our own law. Yes, we are violating their rights. It doesn't matter what they've been accused of, we're supposed to be the law-abiding country, remember?

If we have evidence, we need to produce it, try the accused, and sentence them. Blasting people to Kingdom Come based on the say-so of someone after the fact is as illegal as things get. If we're pretending the orders are "capture or kill" what did we do to try to "capture" these alleged enemies? If the answer is "nothing" or "they didn't surrender after we pushed the missile launch button," that hardly qualifies as an attempt at capture.

Are you comfortable with these same rules you're advocating for so fervently to be applied to you and your relatives and loved ones? Because that's what the United States is advocating, that we are in a war of all against all. Right now we have superior firepower, but that might not be the case forever.

[msanthrope]

29. What is ill-defined about Al Qaeda?

As for imminent danger, I'm guessing you haven't looked at a map lately.

Ya think we might have a bit of interest in Yemen, given the Somalian situation and the waterway involved? Ya think that having AQAP not take over Bin Laden's ancestral homeland might be a good idea?

[a simple pattern]

24. That's right msanthrope.

And we're at war with whoever, whenever, wherever, forever.

[phantom power]

25. +oo

[msanthrope]

28. I will be very happy the day a congressperson introduces

a resolution to repeal the AUMF.

[wtmusic]

30. But of course you'd rule out an airstrike on a house in the US.

If several innocent Americans are killed when a missile demolishes a house where a murderer lives, that unacceptable, isn't it?

That's what's so blatantly ethnocentric and frankly racist about your point of view.

By the way, these men were not "in combat" either. The word has a definition, and if you're going to use it you might as well know what it means.

[malaise]

9. Sure looks that way

[surfdog]

17. The guy could've turned himself in for trial

Do you honestly think that if you commit a crime and run from the police that they will just let you go because you won't turn yourself in ?

Do you really think the police give up if you don't turn yourself in ?

"sorry guys we got to let him go he wont turn himself in"

[EFerrari]

32. What about the nine other people who died in this strike?

"Sorry guys, we had to get the alleged terra-ist"?

[Canuckistanian]

26. Yes, and "suspected of" is the new "convicted of"

It's a brave new world.

[surfdog]

27. well the suspect could've turned himself in

[phantom power]

2. I wonder how long it will be...

before drones start killing "suspects" here in America.

Trials are risky. Safer to kill people we "suspect" of crimes.

[surfdog]

20. Oh please

Here's how it plays out , the suspect in America is running from the police he gets cornered at his house perhaps he's in the Home Depot the police order him to come out of his house he refuses maybe he shoots back maybe they shoot and kill him

You honestly think the police would call in a drone strike on the guys house ?

[phantom power]

22. I honestly think it will happen in my lifetime:

We associate aerial drones with airstrikes in Pakistan, so it came as a bit of a shock to hear last week that the Mesa County Sheriff's Department bought its own drone. The department is only one of three law enforcement agencies in the country that's operating a drone.

Comments from department officials in an Associated Press report suggested they plan to use the device mainly for search and rescue incidents. But the report indicated it will also be used for investigations, which could easily lead to constitutional and privacy issues and is certain to raise suspicion from defenders of civil liberties. We have already seen numerous cases of the law failing to keep up with technology, especially in the post-9/11 era of hyper-surveillance.

Drones have long ceased to be the stuff of science fiction and their use inevitably will become routine in countless fields outside of military combat. Scientists are busy perfecting automated flying devices the size of insects, and it takes no stretch of the imagination to conceive of a world not too far in the future when everyone has his own drone of some sort. Perhaps they'll pick up groceries for us.

Drones themselves are not the problem. Concern comes with questions of use, and the Mesa County sheriff has yet to develop a drone policy. Courts recently have had to grapple with how law enforcement may properly employ GPS tracking technology when conducting surveillance on suspects, and legal norms and precedents are evolving around that issue. A similar process is due with drones.

http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/ci_19801607

[EFerrari]

33. Of course. And people will rationalize it

just like you're doing here in this thread.

This cr@P always comes home to us, always.

[Cali_Democrat]

3. "suspected"

[arcane1]

6. WTF is a "suspected militant" anyway?

[RC]

10. Anyone that the 'Powers That Be' say are.

How is anyone to prove otherwise? The rest of the dead don't seem to have names anyway.

[MadHound]

31. Hmm, engaging in extra-legal assassination again

Just like Bush did. Violating a country's sovereignty, again, just like Bush.

Joy, oh joy. How long before all of this comes back home

[truth2power]

34. Suspected? Connected? ...

There are no words.