Obama administration admits killing 16 year old in drone attack a mistake

March 12, 2013 — bunkerville

So Barry admits he did a oopsie when he killed al-walki’s 16-year-old son. It has plagued me during these months that little attention has been paid to the son, but rather just his father. Not one word about him was mentioned at the hearings. It is the son that has been my issue. What was the evidence against a 16 year-old that deserved a drone? Let me first give you a reminder of the path we are going down here in the U.S.

CNET News: (Only obtained by a FOIA request) that is how we know.

Homeland Security’s specifications say drones must be able to detect whether a civilian is armed. Also specified: “signals interception” and “direction finding” for electronic surveillance.

Homeland Security’s specifications for its drones, built by San Diego-based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, say they “shall be capable of identifying a standing human being at night as likely armed or not,” meaning carrying a shotgun or rifle. They also specify “signals interception” technology that can capture communications in the frequency ranges used by mobile phones, and “direction finding” technology that can identify the locations of mobile devices or two-way radios.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center obtained a partially redacted copy of Homeland Security’s requirements for its drone fleet through the Freedom of Information Act and published it this week. CNET unearthed an unredacted copy of the requirements that provides additional information about the aircraft’s surveillance capabilities.

Oops!… Obama Adminstration Admits Killing 16 Year-Old Denver Boy in Drone Strike Was a Mistake

Barack Obama is the official who makes the final call on overseas drone strikes.

This weekend, The New York Times reported that US officials now admit that the drone bombing of the Denver teen was a mistake.
The New York Times reported:

The missile strike on Sept. 30, 2011, that killed Mr. Awlaki — a terrorist leader whose death lawyers in the Obama administration believed to be justifiable — also killed Mr. Khan, though officials had judged he was not a significant enough threat to warrant being specifically targeted. The next month, another drone strike mistakenly killed Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, who had set off into the Yemeni desert in search of his father. Within just two weeks, the American government had killed three of its own citizens in Yemen. Only one had been killed on purpose. Oops.     H/T:Gateway Pundit

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Pelosi: Obama can keep drone strikes against Americans a secret

February 19, 2013 — bunkerville

Nothing to think about. No worries.  This is even more reason I am looking forward to the confirmation of Brennan. He will be more than happy to follow the Emperor’s orders.

Brennan Sidesteps Query on Drone Kills in U.S.

In written answers to Senate Intelligence Committee questions released Friday, CIA director nominee John Brennan would not say whether the U.S. could conduct drone strikes inside the United States — only that it did not intend to do so. Roll Call

FBI Director: I have to check to see if Obama can kill citizens on U.S. soil

FBI Director Robert Mueller on Wednesday said he would have to go back and check with the Department of Justice whether Attorney General Eric Holder’s “three criteria” for the targeted killing of Americans also applied to Americans inside the U.S.
Pressed by House lawmakers about a recent speech in which Holder described the legal justification for assassination, Mueller, who was attending a hearing on his agency’s budget, did not say without qualification that the three criteria could not be applied inside the U.S.
“I have to go back. Uh, I’m not certain whether that was addressed or not,” Mueller said when asked by Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., about a distinction between domestic and foreign targeting. Graves followed up asking whether “from a historical perspective,” the federal government has “the ability to kill a U.S. citizen on United States soil or just overseas.”
“I’m going to defer

 

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., believes that President Obama doesn’t necessarily have to announce that an American citizen suspected of terrorism has been killed in a drone strike.

“Maybe. It just depends,” Pelosi replied when The Huffington Post asked her if “the administration should acknowledge when it targets a U.S. citizen in a drone strike.” When Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a drone strike, President Obama announced the killing within hours. “People just want to be protected,” Pelosi also said. “And I saw that when we were fighting them on surveillance, the domestic surveillance. Would you care to explain Pelosi?  People just want to be protected: ‘You go out there and do it. I’ll criticize you, but I want to be protected.’”

Somehow we never get around to talking about the 16 year son of al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen killed at a restaurant one week after killing his father.

More at washington examiner

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Obama’s secret ‘kill list’ not shared with Romney

November 26, 2012 — bunkerville

Strange isn’t it. The Progressives have no trouble with Obama’s “Kill list”. But trouble with water boarding which might actually get information that would more likely save lives. I have been on the story of our drone bombing which has been causing many civilian casualties and instigating unrest from the populations. So here is an update on Obama’s list, First a bit of what is going down.

From :Drones away- here, there, everywhere

Somalia is the sixth country where the US military has engaged in unauthorized aerial bombing campaigns through the use of its remote-controlled aircraft.Press TV Ir

Here we go:

The matter may have lost some urgency after Nov. 6. But with more than 300 drone strikes and some 2,500 people killed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the military since Mr. Obama first took office, the administration is still pushing to make the rules formal and resolve internal uncertainty and disagreement about exactly when lethal action is justified.

“One of the things we’ve got to do is put a legal architecture in place, and we need Congressional help in order to do that, to make sure that not only am I reined in but any president’s reined in terms of some of the decisions that we’re making,” Mr. Obama told Jon Stewart in an appearance on “The Daily Show” on Oct. 18. (Chuckle time)

The administration of United States President Barack Obama feared they might lose re-election and in the weeks before Election Day began to develop a set of rules for using drones, according to a New York Times report by Scott Shane.

An unnamed official with the Obama administration told : (Link to NYT article-worth it) Shane

…“There was concern that the levers might no longer be in our hands,” said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity. With a continuing debate about the proper limits of drone strikes, Mr. Obama did not want to leave an “amorphous” program to his successor, the official said. The effort, which would have been rushed to completion by January had Mr. Romney won, will now be finished at a more leisurely pace, the official said.

The revelation is remarkable in that it shows GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney—not the fact that the power to extrajudicially kill people suspected of committing or having ties to terrorism was being claimed—was why the administration began to have increased concerns over drone warfare.

A video had circulated just after the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, where John Cook was stopping Democrats to ask if Romney could be trusted with the kill list. It was a shrewd way to expose how they had given Obama a pass to normalize targeted killings when they would not like the program if a Republican had the power. Lanny Davis, who served as special counsel to President Bill Clinton, said, “I’m not regarding that question as a serious questions so I’m not interested in your interview.” Sen. Charles Schumer answered, “I don’t think he’ll do that, but I think there are a lot of other issues we shouldn’t trust him on.” Gloria Allred, a lawyer known for taking women’s rights cases, did not answer the question but in a follow-up stated she would trust Obama “one thousand percent” with the decision to extrajudicially assassinate people on the kill list.

Full Story over at Fire Dog Lake well worth the full read

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