Do our laws and morals as it were only apply to certain individuals and not to others???
Some even wonder out loud that while everyone was happy about the death or assassination of Osama Bin Laden because of the crimes he committed other who are or were in positions of authority get away with their crimes no matter how egregious ie George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld,Karl Rove (Turd Blossom) John Woo, Condoleeza Rice and so on and now possibly including those working in the Obama administration.
After the Holocaust, Winston Churchill wanted to execute the Nazi leaders without trials. But the U.S. government opposed the extrajudicial executions of Nazi officials who had committed genocide against millions of people. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who served as chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, told President Harry Truman: “We could execute or otherwise punish [the Nazi leaders] without a hearing. But undiscriminating executions or punishments without definite findings of guilt, fairly arrived at, would … not set easily on the American conscience or be remembered by children with pride.”qoute from : "The Targeted Assassination of Osama Bin Laden"By Marjorie Cohn via Information Clearing House, May 10, 2011
Glenn Greenwald comments in regard to the murder of innocent civilians by Nato and American forces
There's nothing much new to say here, but every now and then, it's worth highlighting not only what we're doing, but what the results are. Just imagine the accumulated hatred from having things like this happen day after day, week after week, year after year, for a full decade now, with no end in sight -- broadcast all over the region. It's literally impossible to convey in words the level of bloodthirsty fury and demands for vengeance that would arise if a foreign army were inside the U.S. killing innocent American children even a handful of times, let alone continuously for a full decade.
They hate us for our freedoms by Glenn Greenwald atSalon.com, May 15, 2011
The United States government has decided after 9/11 that the entire globe is now a "free fire zone" so that the killing of innocents may be regrettable but in fact is unavoidable.
Rather than accepting that US and Nato troops should be more cautious in picking their targets instead the innocent civilians are told they are no longer free to move about inside their own countries or cities or towns or villages or in any outlying areas.
Innocent civilians are not safe in America or in Afghanistan or Iraq etc. If the US law enforcement personnel in the United States or their counterparts in the U.S. military shoot first without giving a warning or give the so called enemy a chance to surrender if at all possible then this tantamount to murder.
But it appears that such niceties no longer can be defended and so whether soldiers or police officers or the local Sheriff is not obliged to offer up terms for surrender or a chance for the suspect to prove his innocence.
So as Nato and the US authorities see nothing wrong with simply taking Bin Laden out we can now apply the same thinking process to killing someone who is merely defending his own family and home or a non-combatant who has a legal weapon in their possession.
You would think even the NRA would take a dim view of this attitude that iif you have a weapon on you you are therefore a legitimate target for the local police or Sheriff or FBI etc. or the US military and its special forces.
So even sheperd boys out gathering wood or looking after their flocks are not safe.
So as Afghanistan and Iraq have become "free fire Zones' so have parts of the United States itself.
USA killing innocents at home and abroad
Police kill Iraqi vet becaue he owns a gun so much for supporting the troops.
Nato forces kill young girl and a police officer
Afghans allowed to own one rifle so why are these
Keeping to America's wild west the police being like wyatt Erp -the sheriff who shoots first who lynches cattle Rustlers and shoots all non-whites on sight or the modern day version Dirty Harry
Its a bit strange that police would invade someone's that they are surprised the homeowner has a rifle
but large numbers of Americans have a fire arm in their home for self protection
He Served the Empire Abroad; The Regime Killed Him in His Home By William Grigg Via Information Clearing House, May 12, 2011 "LR"
-- Jose Guerena survived two combat tours of Iraq, only to become a casualty of the Regime’s longest war — the one waged against its domestic subjects in the name of drug prohibition. The former Marine was slaughtered by a SWAT team during a May 5 assault on his home in Arizona.
Guerena’s wife, Vanessa, heard a noise outside the couple’s home near Tucson at about 9 a.m. Jose, who had just gone to bed after pulling a 12-hour shift at the Asarco Mine, suspected — correctly, as it turned out — that his family was threatened by an armed criminal gang. Grabbing his AR-15, Guerena instructed his wife and four-year-old son to hide in the closet while he confronted the intruders. According to Mrs. Guerena, the stormtroopers from the Pima County Regional SWAT team never identified themselves as police; they simply stormed into the home and started shooting.
“I saw this guy pointing me at the window, Vanessa recalled in a television interview. “So, I got scared. And, I got like, ‘Please don’t shoot, I have a baby.’ I put my baby [down]. [And I] put bag in window. And, I yell ‘Jose! Jose! Wake up!’”
“A deputy’s bullet struck the side of the doorway, causing chips of wood to fall on his shield,” recounts the Arizona Daily Star, paraphrasing an account provided by Pima County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO) functionary Michael O’Connor. “That prompted some members of the team to think the deputy had been shot.” Guerna never fired a shot; the marauders who invaded his home fired no fewer than seventy-one. As is standard procedure in such events, the invaders claimed that Guerna had fired on the officers, as he had every moral and legal right to.
"NATO and Afghan raid kills girl, cop " By ASSOCIATED PRESS Arab News, May 16, 2011
KABUL: NATO says its troops and Afghan forces mistakenly killed a young girl and a man who turned out to be a police officer during an overnight raid in eastern Afghanistan.
A NATO statement Thursday says a combined NATO-Afghan force was pursuing a Taleban leader in Nangarhar province’s Surkh Rod district on Wednesday, when a man came out of the targeted house threatening them with a gun.
It says the troops killed the man and then discovered he was a police officer. The troops also shot at someone running out of the back of the compound who they believed had a weapon. The soldiers later realized there was no weapon and that they had killed “an unarmed Afghan female adolescent.”
A neighbor, who goes by the name of Ayatullah, says the girl was 12 years old.
"The Targeted Assassination of Osama Bin Laden" By Marjorie Cohn via Information Clearing House, May 10, 2011
" -- -When he announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed by a Navy Seal team in Pakistan, President Barack Obama said, “Justice has been done.” Mr. Obama misused the word, "justice" when he made that statement. He should have said, "Retaliation has been accomplished." A former professor of constitutional law should know the difference between those two concepts. The word "justice" implies an act of applying or upholding the law.
Targeted assassinations violate well-established principles of international law. Also called political assassinations, they are extrajudicial executions. These are unlawful and deliberate killings carried out by order of, or with the acquiescence of, a government, outside any judicial framework.
Extrajudicial executions are unlawful, even in armed conflict. In a 1998 report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions noted that “extrajudicial executions can never be justified under any circumstances, not even in time of war.” The U.N. General Assembly and Human Rights Commission, as well as Amnesty International, have all condemned extrajudicial executions.
In spite of its illegality, the Obama administration frequently uses targeted assassinations to accomplish its goals. Five days after executing Osama bin Laden, Mr. Obama tried to bring “justice” to U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who has not been charged with any crime in the United States. The unmanned drone attack in Yemen missed al-Awlaki and killed two people “believed to be al Qaeda militants,” according to a CBS/AP bulletin.
After the Holocaust, Winston Churchill wanted to execute the Nazi leaders without trials. But the U.S. government opposed the extrajudicial executions of Nazi officials who had committed genocide against millions of people. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who served as chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, told President Harry Truman: “We could execute or otherwise punish [the Nazi leaders] without a hearing. But undiscriminating executions or punishments without definite findings of guilt, fairly arrived at, would … not set easily on the American conscience or be remembered by children with pride.”
Osama bin Laden and the “suspected militants” targeted in drone attacks should have been arrested and tried in U.S. courts or an international tribunal. Obama cannot serve as judge, jury and executioner. These assassinations are not only illegal; they create a dangerous precedent, which could be used to justify the targeted killings of U.S. leaders.
Fahad Ansari in his article criticizes the wanton unnecessary killing of Bin Laden argues that if some foreign power or group were to assassinate President Obama or some other leader the Americans and others would condemn such an act of violence.
According to accepted rules of war Bin Laden should have been offered terms of surrender and if turned down then the attack could go forward but if Bin Laden offered no resistance and was willing to lay down his arms those attacking him would be forced to take him alive.
International Law and the Quran stipulate that once someone ie the enemy asks for a ceasefire and expresses their willingness to set terms for surrender then the fighting must cease and an agreement reached.
If no agreement reached then the fighting can be resumed.
The issue here is that according to some official statements Bin Laden was not resisting and was not given the opprtunity to surrender so the special forces if this is the case had no legal or moral right to kill Bin Laden.
Some have made the argument that if this had been Hitler surely no one would object to a summary execution and that Osama Bin Laden 's case is no different.
But in fact if Hitler had been surrounded by ally troops in his bunker they would be required to first ask for his peaceful surrender before killing him. If he agreed to surrender or was taken alive by force then he would have to face a trial in whichhe would be permitted to defend himself as other Nazi war criminals were given the chance to do.
If the evidence against them was not refuted then they would face sentencing by the court.
The same requirements should also have held true even for Osama Bin Laden that is to be taken alive if at all possible.
As others have pointed out they believe that bringing bin Laden to justice would in the long run damage his cause.
By summarily assassinating Bin Laden just helped to make Bin Laden into a martyr.
"All events contained in this article are purely fictional What If You Read This Headline? Breaking News - Barack Obama Is Dead "We Got Him!" By Fahad Ansari may 2011
Paul Craig Roberts writes that Americans and Westerners are unable to view any action except through its own propaganda which promulgates the notion that Western Nations and especially the USA and its military can do no wrong even though the reality is something quite different.
" The West Is Trapped In Its Own Propaganda " By Paul Craig Roberts via Information Clearing House, May 12, 2011
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- One of the wishes that readers often express to me came true today (May 11). I was on the mainstream media. It was a program with a worldwide reach--the BBC World Service. There were others on the program as well, and the topic was Hillary Clinton’s remarks (May 10) about the lack of democracy and human rights in China.
I startled the program’s host when I compared Hillary’s remarks to the pot calling the kettle black. I was somewhat taken aback myself by the British BBC program host’s rush to America’s defense and wondered about it as the program continued. Surely, he had heard about Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo detainees, CIA secret torture prisons sprinkled around the world, invasion and destruction of Iraq on the basis of lies and deceptions, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya. Surely, he was aware of Hillary’s hypocrisy as she demonized China but turned a blind eye to Israel, Mubarak, Bahrain and the Saudis. China’s record is not perfect, but is it this bad? Why wasn’t the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs criticizing America’s human rights abuses and rigged elections? How come China minds its own business and we don’t?
Glenn Greenwald once again argues that American and Western propaganda which claims "they hate us for our freedom" is nonsense it is rather that these people in Afghanistan Iraq etc. are not all fanatical Islamic terrorists but many of those who have taken up arms against the US and Nato occupations are average citizens responding to the American and Nato's indiscriminate use of force and the killing of far too many innocent civilians.
But it appears Nato and the USA believe that they can kill and murder rape and destroy with impunity.
Every time an innocent person is killed this helps fuel the resistance in these countries.
So even legitimate resistance fighters according to the USA and Nato including my country Canada are categorized as being fanatical anti-western pro-Taliban pro-Al-Qaeda terrorists who must be killed or captured and then abused and tortured all in the name of what ? Democracy ?Women's rights? Capitalism?
The slaughter taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan is in fact a crime against humanity perpetrated by Western nations.
Nato and the USA have little regard for the safety of civilians so why should the peoples of these occupied nations regard America or Nato forces as being on their side.
Glenn Greenwald comments in regard to the recent killings or murder of innocent civilians by Nato and American forces in Afghanistan .
They hate us for our freedoms by Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, May 15, 2011
There's nothing much new to say here, but every now and then, it's worth highlighting not only what we're doing, but what the results are. Just imagine the accumulated hatred from having things like this happen day after day, week after week, year after year, for a full decade now, with no end in sight -- broadcast all over the region. It's literally impossible to convey in words the level of bloodthirsty fury and demands for vengeance that would arise if a foreign army were inside the U.S. killing innocent American children even a handful of times, let alone continuously for a full decade.
also see Glenn Greenwald's article about crimes committed by George W. Bush et al compared to Osama Bin Laden: "The quaint and obsolete Nuremberg principles" BY GLENN GREENWALD, Salon.com, May 13, 2011
To be candid, I've been tempted several times to simply stop writing about the bin Laden killing, because passions are so intense and viewpoints so entrenched, more so than any other issue I've written about. There's a strong desire to believe that the U.S. -- for the first time in a long time -- did something unquestionably noble and just, and anything which even calls that narrative into question provokes little more than hostility and resentment. Nonetheless, the bin Laden killing is going to shape how many people view many issues for quite some time, and there are still some issues very worth examining.
One bothersome aspect about the reaction to this event is the notion that bin Laden is some sort of singular evil, someone so beyond the pale of what is acceptable that no decent person would question what happened here: he killed civilians on American soil and the normal debates just don't apply to him. Thus, anyone who even questions whether this was the right thing to do, as President Obama put it, "needs to have their head examined" (presumably that includes Benjamin Ferencz). In other words, so uniquely evil is bin Laden that unquestioningly affirming the rightness of this action is not just a matter of politics and morality but mental health. Thus, despite the lingering questions about what happened, it's time, announced John Kerry, to "shut up and move on." I know Kerry is speaking for a lot of people: let's all agree this was Good and stop examining it. Tempting as that might be -- and it is absolutely far easier to adhere to that demand than defy it -- there is real harm from leaving some of these questions unexamined.
No decent human being contests that the 9/11 attack was a grave crime. But there are many grave crimes, including ones sanctioned by (or acquiesced to) those leading the chorus of cheers for bin Laden's killing. To much controversy, Noam Chomsky recently wrote: "uncontroversially, Bush's crimes vastly exceed bin Laden's." That claim prompted widespread objections, including from Andrew Sullivan, who specifically criticized Chomsky's use of the word "uncontroversially" in making that claim. That semantic objection is not invalid: of course that comparative judgment is controversial, especially in the U.S.
...Yet the very same country -- and often the very same people -- collectively insisting upon the imperative of punishing civilian deaths (in the bin Laden case) has banded together to shield George Bush from any accountability of any kind. Both political parties -- and the current President -- have invented entirely new Orwellian slogans of pure lawlessness to justify this protection (Look Forward, Not Backward): one that selectively operates to protect only high-level U.S. war criminals but not those who expose their crimes. Worse, many of Bush's most egregious crimes -- including the false pretenses that led to this unfathomably lethal aggressive war and the widespread abuse of prisoners that accompanied it -- were well known to the country when it re-elected him in 2004.
Those who advocated for those massive crimes -- and even those who are directly responsible for them -- continue to enjoy perfectly good standing in mainstream American political circles. The aptly named "Shock and Awe" was designed to terrify an entire civilian population into submission through the use of massive and indiscriminate displays of air bombings. John Podhoretz criticized the brutal assault on Fallujah for failing to exterminate all "Sunni men between the ages of 15 and 35." The country's still-most celebrated "foreign affairs expert" at The New York Times justified that attack based on the psycopathic desire to make Iraqis "Suck. On. This." The Washington Post hires overt torture advocates as Op-Ed writers and regularly features Op-Ed contributions from the architects of the Iraq crime, as they did just today (Donald Rumsfeld claiming "vindication"). And, of course, we continue to produce widespread civilian deaths in multiple countries around the world with virtually no domestic objection.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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