Home > Uncategorized > The Death-Dealing ‘Divinity’ in the White House by William Norman Grigg

The Death-Dealing ‘Divinity’ in the White House by William Norman Grigg

March 15, 2012 Leave a comment Go to comments

.….Barack Obama rarely indulges in public displays of dictatorial arrogance. He leaves this to underlings like Eric Holder, Leon Panetta, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In testimony before separate congressional committees on the same day (March 7), Panetta and Mueller made clear the president’s view that his power to kill people – both at home and abroad – is not subject to congressional checks or legal restraints of any kind.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta pointedly refused to recognize that Congress, not the president, has the constitutional authority to commit the United States military to war overseas. Panetta provoked outrage among conservatives by claiming that the UN Security Council or NATO could authorize military intervention abroad. However, less attention was paid to the fact that Panetta’s formulation cut Congress out of this matter entirely – a logical and predictable extension of the Bush administration’s claim that the president, in his role as Grand and Glorious Decider, has plenary authority to wage war wherever he chooses, against whatever target he selects.

On the same day, FBI Director Robert Mueller was asked about Holder’s claim – made before an audience of law students at Northwestern University a few days earlier – that the president can order the execution of American citizens without trial or due process of any kind. Mueller was specifically asked if that applies to Americans living at home, as well as abroad. He artlessly ducked the question by claiming he would “have to go back” and check if it was addressed in administration policy.

The president has not been granted authority to order the assassination of anyone, of course. Doing so is (in descending order of seriousness) an act of criminal homicide and an impeachable offense. Or at least it would be considered as much by anybody other than those who subscribe to the perverse idea that the president is a figure who transcends the law, who “unassailable holds onto his rank,” irrespective of the moral nature of his actions.

This was the essence of Eric Holder’s detestable claim that a presidential kill order, made in secret on the recommendation of an anonymous, unaccountable panel of underlings, satisfies the requirement of “due process.” That vile notion was reiterated by Senate Majority Leader Reid in a March 11 CNN interview.

Correspondent Candy Crowley, after reviewing Holder’s spurious distinction between “due process” and “judicial process,” asked Reid: “Do you understand what that means?”

“No I don’t – but I do know this – the American citizens who were killed overseas were terrorists, and if anybody in the world deserved to be killed, those three did,” Reid said, his eyes bright with the murderous fanaticism that burns away all critical thought. After all, if Reid retained the capacity for skepticism he would wonder if 16-year-old U.S. citizen Abdulraham Al-Awlaki really “deserved” to be murdered while enjoying a barbecue at the home of a friend.

Crowley, to her credit, persisted:…..

EXCERPT

via The Death-Dealing ‘Divinity’ in the White House by William Norman Grigg.

 

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