U.S. drone killings of civilians in Pakistan have WWII precedent

Long before American drones were murdering civilians in Pakistan, American pilots were committing similar war crimes in Germany

In a 1985 autobiography by the American who was the first pilot to break the sound barrier, the author described how, while serving in the US armed forces during World War II in the autumn of 1944, his fighter group was attacking Germany and "...assigned an area fifty miles by fifty miles and ordered to strafe anything that moved...We weren't asked how we felt zapping people. It was a miserable, dirty mission, but we all took off on time and did it ... We were ordered to commit an atrocity, pure and simple, but the brass who approved this action probably felt justified because wartime Germany wasn't easily divided between 'innocent civilians' and its military machine. The farmer tilling his potato field might have been feeding German troops.”

Chuck Yeager, Yeager: An Autobiography (New York: Bantam Books, 1985) pp. 79-80.

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Wall Street mocks Senator Rand Paul's constitutional concerns

The Wall Street Journal Mocks Senator Rand Paul's Constitutional Concerns

By Michael Hoffman

www.revisionisthistory.org | March 7, 2013

When President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder channel the policies of George W. Bush they win plaudits from the Money Power and neocon Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham. 

On March 6 Republican Rand Paul filibustered on the floor of the U.S. Senate against the confirmation of John O. Brennan as CIA director, and the prospect of US government assassination of American citizens on American soil. In news reports of the Orwellian corporate media, the word assassination is seldom employed. The preferred cosmetic euphemisms spoon-fed to the infantilized public are "drone strikes, targeted killings" and "lethal military force." God forbid any reporter or official would utter the word “government assassination.” The phrase carrries with it a potential wake-up call which the managers of opinion avoid like the plague.

During his filibuster, Senator Paul eloquently stated, “I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”

How could anyone object to Paul’s protest? What is there in the words of this senator that could possibly be objectionable to any supporter of the rule of law and the Constitution? Yet, neocon Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham disparaged Paul's protest.

Graham played the 9/11 card, saying, “The drone program he [Obama] has utilized overseas, I think has made us safer. This idea that we’re going to use a drone to attack an American citizen in a cafe in America is ridiculous...I don’t worry about [drones killing Americans]. Here’s what I worry about: that al-Qaeda has killed 2,958 of us (on Sept. 11, 2001), and is going to add to the total if we let our guard down. And I will do everything in my power to protect this president — who I disagree with a lot — and future presidents in having an ill-informed Congress take over the legitimate authority under the Constitution and the laws of this land to be the commander in chief on behalf of all of us.”

The Wall Street Journal blasted Sen. Paul in an editorial titled, "Rand Paul's Drone Rant” (March 7,  p. A16). Here are excerpts:

"...Senator Paul said an 'alarm' had to be sounded about the threat to Americans from their own government...Senator Paul had written the White House about the possibility of a drone strike against a U.S. citizen on American soil. Attorney General Eric Holder replied that...as a hypothetical Constitutional matter, Mr. Holder acknowledged the President can authorize the use of lethal military force within U.S. territory...

"Calm down, Senator. Mr. Holder is right, even if he doesn't explain the law very well...What it (the U.S. government) can do under the laws of war is target an 'enemy combatant' anywhere at anytime, including on U.S. soil. This includes a U.S. citizen who is also an enemy combatant.

"...Mr. Holder is right that the U.S. could have targeted (say) U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki had he continued to live in Virginia. The U.S. killed him in Yemen before he could kill more Americans...if Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms.” (End quote from the Wall Street Journal).

The aforementioned Anwar al-Awlaki was a reckless and foolhardy orator and writer who advocated violence. Contrary to the Wall Street Journal however, there is no conclusive evidence that al-Awlaki ever killed anyone, or ordered anyone to be killed. The U.S. government evidently assassinated him because of the words he spoke and wrote. The same lethal criterion for defining an “enemy combatant" can be applied to radical U.S. writers and speakers who offend His Presidential Majesty.

The George W. Bush administration asserted that the President of the United States could, entirely on his own authority and judgment, designate any American citizen an enemy combatant. Once this absolutist designation was applied, the American citizen could be assassinated by his own government, using an aerial drone, or an FBI, CIA or military intelligence agent, or mercenary contractor.

Bush achieved for himself the same pharaonic power which the crowned heads of Europe exercised over their peons in the eighteenth century. It is one significant reason people fled Europe for America, where a revolution was fought against the tyranny of kings. The twenty-first century "war on terror” has given us King George Bush and now Pharaoh Barack Obama. If Rand Paul is wrong to contest this state of affairs, then the American Revolution was wrong. 

(Even Sen. Paul needs to be reminded that focusing primarily on whether or not Obama's assassins will be allowed to perpetrate the killing of American citizens in the U.S. with flying drones, provides a loophole for government assassination of citizens by other, more conventional killing methods). 

The root of this harbinger of Federal government tyranny is not limited solely to the European monarchies of old. The assassination praxis which “our" government has embraced is an Israeli doctrine which has been used with impunity for decades against Palestinian citizens of the Israeli state, as well as Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and the Lebanese. In the Israeli state the security apparatus decides who needs to die and that person is assassinated by poison, gun fire, tank or artillery shells, or air force missiles and bombs. In several cases which this writer has studied, the victim's wife and children die with him -- not because he was using them as a "human shield” -- but because he had sat down to dinner with his family, or been riding in a car with them when Israeli assassins struck.

Israeli assassination doctrine is considered a legitimate part of “the laws of war" according to that august organ of the money bags, the Wall Street Journal. What the plutocrats have papered over is that one reaps what one sows. When the U.S. abandons the rule of law rooted in western Christian civilization, for the misrule that constitutes state terror, it invites a similar response from its adversaries. If it is right to murder anyone who the president labels an "enemy combatant," even a writer or speaker who has never picked up a gun or a bomb, then what prevents Islamic forces from deciding that U.S. invasion troops and U.S. bombs dropped on their wedding parties, homes and villages, are the actions of terrorist enemy combatants who should be, along with their commanders and political leaders, in retribution, targeted and killed?

Bush and Obama, and their handlers, were and are certainly aware of the invitation to retribution which their assassination policy establishes. It should come as no surprise that this is what they deliberately invite, at great cost to our troops and the American taxpayer. Those who control the U.S. government desire a savage war to the hilt against all who stand in the way of the Israeli holocaust against Palestine and Lebanon, and the spread of the international Money Power and its enslaving usury (a fact about which the libertarian Sen. Paul is tragically unaware).

George W. Bush's vice-president, Dick Cheney, predicted that the war on terror would last for generations. The Cryptocracy that controlled Bush and now Obama seeks a titanic global struggle,  another "Good War” on the World War II model of total mobilization and unconditional surrender, that will firmly galvanize the American people in favor of huge expenditures of blood and treasure; one that will be so brutal it will last for Mr. Cheney’s “generations." Is this not a curse?

According to the Wall Street Journal, those who are receptive to learning about the hidden threat to freedom represented by the executive branch's doctrine of assassination of American citizens, are "impressionable...kids," while Rand Paul is a “ranting...fired-up" hysteric.

But who really is impressionable? The peons who dutifully swallow the official story put forth by the media’s gatekeepers of orthodoxy, or the citizens who ask questions and probe beneath surface appearances and rhetoric?

Moreover, is this writer an enemy combatant for having written this column? Which star chamber, under a cloak of "national security," decides whether I live or die? Are we living in the constitutional republic of America, or the Israeli States of America?

Michael Hoffman is the author of Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not.

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Rand Paul’s filibuster against assassination

Rand Paul conducts filibuster in opposition to John Brennan, Obama’s drone policy

By Ed O’Keefe and Aaron Blake | Washington Post | March 6, 2013 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rand-paul-conducts-filibuster-in-opposition-to-john-brennan-obamas-drone-policy/2013/03/06/1367b1b4-868c-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_story.html?hpid=z3

One of the oldest and most storied traditions of the Senate made a sudden return to Capitol Hill on Wednesday when a junior senator seized control of the chamber with an hours-long ?filibuster involving rambling speeches aimed at blocking a vote on President Obama’s choice to lead the CIA.

Led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) with help from other junior senators, the filibuster was aimed at drawing attention to deep concern on both sides of the aisle about the administration’s use of unmanned aerial drones in its fight against terrorists and whether the government would ever use them in the United States.

Shortly before noon, Paul — the scion of a political family at the heart of the libertarian movement — came to the Senate floor and declared his opposition to the nomination of John O. Brennan, Obama’s choice to lead the spy agency, who has overseen the drone program.

“I will speak until I can no longer speak,” Paul said as he began. “I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found to be guilty by a court.”

...Adding bipartisan credibility to the effort, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) — the most outspoken liberal antagonist of the CIA — praised Paul for pushing Brennan to clarify whether the CIA could ever target Americans on U.S. soil.

“When I asked the president, ‘Can you kill an American on American soil?’ it should have been an easy answer. It’s an easy question. It should have been a resounding, an unequivocal, ‘No,’ ” Paul said. “The president’s response? He hasn’t killed anyone yet. We’re supposed to be comforted by that.”

“I would be here if it were a Republican president doing this,” Paul added. “Really, the great irony of this is that President Obama’s opinion on this is an extension of George Bush’s opinion.” (End quote; emphasis supplied)

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Rand Paul Does Not Go Quietly Into the Night

By Ashley Parker | New York Times | March 6, 2013

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/rand-paul-does-not-go-quietly-into-the-night/?hp

10:28 p.m. | Updated WASHINGTON — A small group of Republicans, led by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, stalled the Senate on Wednesday by waging a nine-hours-and-counting, old-school, speak-until-you-can-speak-no-more filibuster over the government’s use of lethal drone strikes — forcing the Senate to delay the expected confirmation of John O. Brennan to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Paul, who opposes Mr. Brennan’s nomination, followed through on his plan to filibuster the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee after receiving a letter this month from Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. that refused to rule out the use of drone strikes within the United States in “extraordinary circumstances” like the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

On Wednesday, Mr. Paul did exactly as promised, taking to the Senate floor shortly before noon and holding forth. Now moving toward its 10th hour, Mr. Paul and his comrades on the Senate floor show no signs of wear.

Ostensibly, Mr. Paul is objecting to the Mr. Brennan’s nomination. But in fact, Mr. Paul’s main concerns are those of civil liberties and Constitutional rights he says are under attack by the administration’s potential use of unmanned drone strikes on American citizens on United States soil. (Mr. Brennan, who as the White House counterterrorism adviser was the chief architect of the largely clandestine drone program, served as a good proxy.)

“What will be the standard for how we kill Americans in America?” Mr. Paul asked at one point. “Could political dissent be part of the standard for drone strikes?”

Referring to Jane Fonda, who went to North Vietnam during the war there to publicly denounce the United States’ presence in the country, Mr. Paul added: “I’m not a great fan of Jane Fonda. But I’m not so interested in putting her on a drone kill list.”

As Mr. Paul’s filibuster dragged on, it began to resemble a Shakespearean drama, complete with cameos from other A-list actors (a group of more than half a dozen senators who periodically joined him on the floor); a title all its own (the “filiblizzard,” a nickname courtesy of Twitter users); and some willing extras (eager Senate pages, purposefully striding across the stage to deliver Mr. Paul fresh glasses of water).

Although Mr. Paul did not yield the floor — a move that would effectively end his talkathon — he did, with some apparent relief, yield to take questions from his Republican colleagues. (Mr. Paul could not leave the floor to use the bathroom, making his filibuster at a certain point seem less a standoff between Mr. Paul and the administration than a battle between Mr. Paul and his own bladder.)

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, began his question by making the obvious allusion, referring to Mr. Paul as a “modern-day ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,’ ” joking that his effort would “surely be making Jimmy Stewart smile.”

And, perhaps befitting of another public — but hopeless — stand, Mr. Cruz took the opportunity to remind the chamber that Wednesday was the anniversary of the fall of the Alamo, noting with some pride that Mr. Paul “is originally from the great state of Texas.”

Mr. Cruz then proceeded to read from a letter by William Barrett Travis, a lieutenant colonel in the Texas Army who died at the Alamo, concluding, “Does that glorious letter give you any encouragement and sustenance on this 177th anniversary of the Alamo?”

Apparently it did. Mr. Paul soldiered ahead, before again receiving some help, from an unlikely source — Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon.

Mr. Wyden said that while he had voted in favor of Mr. Brennan’s nomination on Tuesday at a Senate Intelligence Committee meeting and planned to vote for him again on the Senate floor, he believed that Mr. Paul “has made a number of important points” about the administration’s lethal drone program.

“I think Senator Paul and I agree that this nomination also provides a very important opportunity for the United States Senate to consider the government’s rules and policies on the targeted killings of Americans and that, of course, has been a central pillar of our nation’s counterterror strategy,” Mr. Wyden said.

He added, “The executive branch should not be allowed to conduct such a serious and far-reaching program by themselves without any scrutiny, because that’s not how American democracy works.”

Up next was Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, entering stage right, complete with a water joke — a reference to his State of the Union response, in which a video of a parched Mr. Rubio chugging water quickly went viral.

“You’ve been here for a while, so let me give you some advice,” Mr. Rubio said. “Keep some water nearby. Trust me.”

Other members who made cameos throughout the day — and night — included the Republican Senators John Barrasso of Wyoming; Saxby Chambliss of Georgia; John Cornyn of Texas; Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois; Mike Lee of Utah; and Jerry Moran of Kansas.

As the filibuster continued into the evening, Mr. Paul moved from speaking extemporaneously to relying more on two thick black binders of notes, heavily referencing and reading from articles in publications ranging from The Washington Post to The Wall Street Journal to Wired magazine.

At one point, Mr. Paul began eating “dinner” — a mystery candy bar — and continued his filibuster between mouthfuls of chocolate.

A bit later, Mr. Kirk, who walks with considerable effort after a stroke in 2012, slowly made his way onto the floor with the help of a walker. He placed a green thermos of tea and an apple on the desk of Mr. Paul, gestured to it, and saluted his colleague before talking a seat to watch some of the proceeding.

In the filibuster’s seventh hour, it looked as if a compromise might be reached. Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the No. 2 leader in the Senate, and some of his aides came to the floor, seeming ready to help wrap things up. Mr. Paul said he would agree to stop his nonstop talking if his colleagues would unanimously consent to a nonbinding vote on a resolution saying it is unconstitutional to kill an American on United States soil — a move to which Mr. Durbin objected. Mr. Durbin offered instead to hold a hearing on drone strikes, which Mr. Paul brushed aside.

And so, on it went.

Mr. Cruz then made a brief return for a second act of sorts, to read from a list of Twitter messages about Mr. Paul’s stand that he had culled. Though electronic devices are not allowed on the Senate floor, Mr. Cruz informed his friend that Twitter was “blowing up” over the day’s events.

“I was getting kind of tired,” Mr. Paul said, thanking Mr. Cruz for “cheering me up.”Mr. Paul again said his true goal was simply to get a response from the administration saying it would not use drone strikes to take out American citizens on United States soil — and, perhaps with Twitter still in the forefront of his mind, offered Mr. Holder a variety of ways to respond.

“We’ll take a telegram,” Mr. Paul said. “We’ll take a Tweet.”

MICHAEL HOFFMAN'S AFTERWORD:

Note that New York Times blogger Ashley Parker dare not use the word “assassination.” This truthful description is policed out of the discourse, in favor of euphemisms such as “drone strikes.” The fact that “our” government assassinates its own citizens cannot be forthrightly reported in the Orwellian corporate media.

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