Did I wake up in Russia?

[Ender]

2 days ago, after I woke up I was looking at NBC news, my first thought was I must have gotten up in the wrong country.
At first I thought it was authorizing kill strikes against any US citizen who appeared to be a "imminent threat" to the USA. (the NBC article isn't very clear on this point) after reading this artical I found out that what it actually says, is US citizens which are thought to be al qaeda operatives and are living abroad.
What is interesting in this article is the way imminent threat is defined

First, the condition that an operational leader present an imminent threat of violent attack agains the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future[/.quote]

I am unable to find the article on the DoJ website, Can anyone conform or deny this articles validity. as much as I would love to trust news, they are mostly there for a story.

What are you thoughts, should the USA be allowed to kill its citizens who are abroad and thought to pose a threat , with out a trial or even congressional oversight?
My thought is the next logical step [for them] would be to expand that to include US owned territories.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Most of us are not from the USA. You are probably being more worried about it than you should. The government will not use it on you unless you do something threatening (which most people never will).

 

[Mechanical Man]

What you have against Russia???

 

[trolman]

First selected individuals are taken out. Then whole reeducational camps and special homes are established where suspicious black smoke exits trough the chimneys.

 

[Strikest]

I recommend the movie Rendition. It shows you what our government is really capable of doing to you...

 

[Ender]

@Super Good, actually this effects other countries too, if you had read the article you would have noticed the part where the DoJ claims the USA has the right to capture or kill US nationals in other countries (even if said country refuses to cooperate with the US) Basically it is says the US can ignore extradition laws of other countries, it's also a really good way to get other countries mad at the USA.

@Mechanical Man, if you are Russian I apologize. Russia is just kind of famous for its internment camps, and government tyranny

 

[Dr Super Good]

@Super Good, actually this effects other countries too, if you had read the article you would have noticed the part where the DoJ claims the USA has the right to capture or kill US nationals in other countries (even if said country refuses to cooperate with the US) Basically it is says the US can ignore extradition laws of other countries, it's also a really good way to get other countries mad at the USA.

Only if they are USA citizens. Do you know how hard it is to become a USA citizen?

If they did this to someone who is not a USA citizen in a reasonable country then there would be a lot of problems.

 

[Ender]

@Dr. Super Good, did you read the post? I will reiterate if say a country is harboring an al qeada terrorist who is a citizen of the US. The US claims it can, if said country refuses to extradite them, kill or capture that citizen. Basically ignoring that countries rights etc.. Of course doing so would cause an international incident, but, in the document in the early post it claims the US can (regardless of how said country feels about it)

offtopic

Do you know how hard it is to become a USA citizen?

its not that hard, you just have to live here for five years, have some knowledge on US history, Know who your senators are, know how the US government is organized, know the bill of rights oh and be of a good moral character.

 

[Dr Super Good]

you just have to live here for five years

And that is something easy to do? It is not like a person can just fly into the USA, buy a house and live there.

The US claims it can, if said country refuses to extradite them, kill or capture that citizen.

Nothing stops the citizen renouncing their USA citizenship before becomming a threat to the USA and thus rendering such action impossible (as the person is not a citizen anymore).

 

[Zakamutt]

It is very hard to get a green card (or what it's called..) to work in the US. No, I can't be arsed to source this, but I vividly remember a long blog post with a story about fuckloads of questioning, lots of different costs in general for required services and so on which was for a guy who was trying to join his significant other in the US (or travel there with her as she already was a citizen) apparently.

As for the whole thing, all it really tells us is that the US has a new assassination method. They're just being more open about it in general (still, the document was a leak..).

I wonder what pressures presidents are under when it comes to these things - both previous like W (maybe he's less to blame than you'd think, though I herd (probably from Michael Moore in one of his books, take that as you will) that the Patriot Act was sneaked past most of Congress by less-than-pretty tactics) and Obama are under. It can hardly be a good PR move to do these things. I think this might be an opportunity to find out these things, though who knows if people doing so won't get hit by drones themselves (on the other hand, that would make the US as bad as current-day Russia, and wide-spread unrest is not good).