Not Counting Niggers: Another Victory For Due Process

Not Counting Niggers: Another Victory For Due Process

Not Counting Niggers "I reminded them that war in Iraq is really about peace." -- George W. Bush
"There simply is no justification to engage in violence." -- Scott McClellan

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May 16, 2005

Another Victory For Due Process

An al Qaeda figure killed last week by a missile from a CIA-operated unmanned aerial drone had been under surveillance for more than a week by U.S. intelligence and military personnel working along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, a U.S. official and two counterterrorism experts said yesterday. [...]
Al-Yemeni's importance in the al Qaeda organization could not be learned yesterday. He is not listed by that name in either the FBI or Pakistani "Most Wanted" list, but the active surveillance of him suggests his importance.
The CIA declined comment. Pakistan's information minister denied that any such incident, which was first reported by ABC News, even happened. "No such incident took place near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border," Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told the Associated Press yesterday.

Was he an al-Qaeda operative? If so, had he committed a crime? If so, had he committed a crime on U.S. soil? If so, do we have any evidence?

None of it matters, because

The CIA is permitted to operate the lethal Predator under presidential authority promulgated after the Sept. 11 attacks. Shortly after the attacks, Bush approved a "presidential finding" that allowed the CIA to write a set of highly classified rules describing which individuals could be killed by CIA officers. Such killings were defined as self-defense in a global war against al Qaeda terrorists.

This is known in the literature as "spreading freedom". Essentially, it is an exact counterpart to bin Laden's call for jihad against any American citizens.

Al-Yemeni's death is one of only a handful of known incidents in which the CIA has fired the remote-controlled, missile-equipped Predator to kill an al Qaeda member. In November 2002, the CIA used a Predator fitted with a five-foot-long Hellfire missile to kill a senior al Qaeda leader, Abu Ali al-Harithi, as he was riding in a car in the Yemeni desert. Also killed with Harithi, who was suspected of masterminding the October 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole, was a naturalized U.S. citizen, Kamal Derwish.

That incident was the impetus for the founding of this-here blog (in case you were curious).

Posted by Eddie Tews at May 16, 2005 06:01 PM

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