What? The Constitution grants our President the right to act like a Mafia don, ordering “hits” on his enemies? The answer is “Yes”, at least, according to one official in his administration:
Feb. 13, 2006 issue – In the latest twist in the debate over presidential powers, a Justice Department official suggested that in certain circumstances, the president might have the power to order the killing of terrorist suspects inside the United States. Steven Bradbury, acting head of the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, went to a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week to defend President George W. Bush’s surveillance program. During the briefing, said administration and Capitol Hill officials (who declined to be identified because the session was private), California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein asked Bradbury questions about the extent of presidential powers to fight Al Qaeda; could Bush, for instance, order the killing of a Qaeda suspect known to be on U.S. soil? Bradbury replied that he believed Bush could indeed do this, at least in certain circumstances.
This really shouldn’t shock anyone. This is the same administration which believes the President can order torture willy-nilly without worrying about our country’s treaty obligations under the Geneva convention or our own constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. A President who believes he can secretly spy on American citizens without obtaining a warrant as required by law and the Fourth Amendment, and a President who has his underlings arrest people at public events he attends because they wear t-shirts that implicitly criticize his actions.
Officially sanctioned murder on American soil is only the next logical step. Hypothetically, of course. Let’s just hope no one ever gets the mistaken impression that you or I have terrorist connections, because we all know where that leads:
The family of an innocent Brazilian shot by London undercover police who mistook him for a terrorist called on the capital’s police chief to consider his position after reports that evidence to an inquiry had been faked.
Special Branch officers from London’s Metropolitan Police tried to change a surveillance log detailing the movements of electrician Jean-Charles de Menezes to hide the fact that they had wrongly identified him, a Sunday newspaper claimed.
De Menezes, 27, was shot several times in the head on a London Underground train at Stockwell station in south London.
The interesting part of this story is that the question was asked at all. Why did Senator Feinstein raise this issue? Does she have information about possible murders already ordered and carried out by the Bush administration? I find it difficult to believe she decided to ask this question off the top of her head without any forethought whatsoever. It makes me wonder, once again, what don’t we know about how Bush is waging his “War on Terror.”
Now to be fair, I can see instances where a President would be faced with such a situation. Flight 93, which had been hijacked and redirected toward Washington on September 11, 2001, presents the most obvious example. I am not going to say that the President and our Government have no right under those circumstances to order the plane to be shot down, even though it would result in the deaths of innocent civilians.
But I don’t believe that was what Feinstein was attempting to get at with her question. The President has the authority to act to prevent a greater loss of life if he has sufficient information to indicate that an imminent threat to our nation’s security exists. No, what I believe Feinstein’s query was focusing on was not an ad hoc emergency in which the President’s options are limited, but instead a premeditated plan by the Government to murder “terrorist suspects” in which the threat is not imminent, and indeed may only be based on pure supposition.
Admittedly, that is specualtion on my part. But I sure would like to know why she felt the need to ask that question at a closed door session of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Wouldn’t you?
