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Politics : World Affairs Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (2517)	12/4/2002 2:00:43 AM
From: MSI	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3959

Re:'thought police' -- Just make sure someone doesn't call you "al-Qaida" behind your back. According to new Bush policy, the first you'd know about it might be a Hellfire missle coming at you. "That is the most vulnerable aspect of the theory," said Scott L. Silliman, director of Duke University's Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. "Could you put a Hellfire missile into a car in Washington, D.C., under the same theory? The answer is yes, you could." U.S. Can Target American al-Qaida Agents story.news.yahoo.com "By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - American citizens working for al-Qaida overseas can legally be targeted and killed by the CIA (news - web sites) under President Bush (news - web sites)'s rules for the war on terrorism, U.S. officials say. The authority to kill U.S. citizens is granted under a secret finding signed by the president after the Sept. 11 attacks that directs the CIA to covertly attack al-Qaida anywhere in the world. The authority makes no exception for Americans, so permission to strike them is understood rather than specifically described, officials said. These officials said the authority will be used only when other options are unavailable. Military-like strikes will take place only when law enforcement and internal security efforts by allied foreign countries fail, the officials said. Capturing and questioning al-Qaida operatives is preferable, even more so if an operative is a U.S. citizen, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Any decision to strike an American will be made at the highest levels, perhaps by the president. U.S. officials say few Americans are working with al-Qaida but they have no specific estimates. The CIA already has killed one American under this authority, although U.S. officials maintain he wasn't the target. On Nov. 3, a CIA-operated Predator drone fired a missile that destroyed a carload of suspected al-Qaida operatives in Yemen. The target of the attack, a Yemeni named Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, was the top al-Qaida operative in that country. Efforts by Yemeni authorities to detain him had previously failed. But the CIA didn't know a U.S. citizen, Yemeni-American Kamal Derwish, was in the car. He died, along with al-Harethi and four other Yemenis. The Bush administration said the killing of an American in this fashion was legal. "I can assure you that no constitutional questions are raised here. There are authorities that the president can give to officials," said Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), Bush's national security adviser, after the attack. "He's well within the balance of accepted practice and the letter of his constitutional authority."