Obama Administration Illegally Withholding Osama bin Laden Documents

Posted: June 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, CIA, Obama Administration, Osama, Osama bin Laden, Osama bin Laden Assassination | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment »

The Obama Administration once again is demonstrating its disdain for the rule of law and the American people.  The administration is legally required to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests but they are refusing to do so.  Obama believes he is above the law and that he does not owe any facts, evidence, or explanations to the American people regarding his assassination of Osama bin Laden.  What is he hiding?

Judicial Watch, which describes itself as a “conservative, non-partisan educational foundation” pursuing transparency and integrity in government, filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the Defense Department and CIA last month.

The CIA acknowledged receiving the request May 4, according to court papers. On May 9, the Defense Department replied that it would not be able to comply with the request within the statutory 20-day period. Nor would a 10-day extension provide sufficient time, the department said.

Both departments had 20 business days to respond: June 2 for the CIA, this past Tuesday for the Defense Department, according to Judicial Watch. The group now says the government is “unlawfully withholding records,” causing irreparable harm to the watchdog organization.

via Watchdog seeks bin Laden photo, says White House ‘not above the law’ – This Just In – CNN.com Blogs.

Noam Chomsky: Osama bin Laden Operation was a Planned Assassination

Posted: May 22, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Counterterror Policy, George W. Bush, Noam Chomsky, Obama Administration, Osama, Osama bin Laden, Osama bin Laden Assassination, War on Terror | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

On May 1, 2011, Osama bin Laden was killed in his virtually unprotected compound by a raiding mission of 79 Navy Seals, who entered Pakistan by helicopter. After many lurid stories were provided by the government and withdrawn, official reports made it increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law, beginning with the invasion itself.

There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 79 commandos facing no opposition – except, they report, from his wife, also unarmed, who they shot in self-defense when she “lunged” at them (according to the White House).

via PressTV – Osama bin Laden’s Death: There is much more to say. (Cached)

These are harsh words coming from an individual who is a widely recognized and cited Academic.  The entire article is a very good read.  I recommend it.  He draws a number of comparisons between the Bush and Obama Administrations and how the Nazi’s were handled during the Nuremberg Trials.

He also makes the following comparison between the Obama and the Bush Administrations regarding foreign policy related to terrorists:

As the Atlantic inquiry observes, “The decision to kill bin Laden outright was the clearest illustration to date of a little-noticed aspect of the Obama administration’s counterterror policy. The Bush administration captured thousands of suspected militants and sent them to detention camps in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. The Obama administration, by contrast, has focused on eliminating individual terrorists rather than attempting to take them alive.” That is one significant difference between Bush and Obama. The authors quote former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who “told German TV that the U.S. raid was ‘quite clearly a violation of international law’ and that bin Laden should have been detained and put on trial,” contrasting Schmidt with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who “defended the decision to kill bin Laden although he didn’t pose an immediate threat to the Navy SEALs, telling a House panel on Tuesday that the assault had been ‘lawful, legitimate and appropriate in every way’.”

Did Obama Violate the Ban on Political Assassinations?

Posted: May 21, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, CIA, Obama Administration, Osama, Osama bin Laden, Osama bin Laden Assassination | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

The raid was carried out by the US military but under CIA legal authorities and command, partly for deniability if something went wrong and partly because the United States is not at war with Pakistan, a US official said.

via Special Report:The Osama bin Laden kill plan.

Well as I understand it this is a thorny legal point then.  If the raid was conducted under CIA legal authorities then the question of whether Obama violated the ban on political assassinations comes into question.  If the RAID had been conducted as a military mission then the Obama administration could claim that we had just killed a leader of our enemy, but with the CIA in charge that claim is rendered moot.  Or so it would appear.

The Obama Kill Order: Was Osama bin Laden Executed?

Posted: May 11, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Geneva Conventions, George W. Bush, Obama Administration, Osama, Osama bin Laden, Osama bin Laden Assassination, War on Terror | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

Yes, says a source who is no friend of George W. Bush:

Osama bin Laden wasn’t killed by a Navy SEAL team — he was straight up executed.
– Michael Moore in an exclusive interview with The Wrap, May 4, 2011

Given all of the conflicting narratives surrounding what actually happened during the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound it is not surprising that this claim is surfacing.  I am surprised by the source, though.  But maybe not.  This is Michael Moore’s type of issue.  You loved his Columbine.  He wow’ed you with Fahrenheit 9/11.  So why not this?

But before you go all kook nuttery on me, there is actually something to this.  There are a lot of legal scholars debating whether this killing was actually legal, or not.  Of course the Obama Administration claims they were completely legally justified, but other more independent voices are not so certain.  Obviously the Obama Administration was concerned about the whole legality issue which is why they were initially claiming that Osama bin Laden was an active participant in a firefight with the Navy SEALS who ultimately killed him.  They painted a picture of a fight straight out of a Hollywood script to insure that the official record could not be questioned.

But then another account came out in which only one person in the house was actually armed and they were killed on the first floor.  Osama was killed on the third floor and he was apparantly unarmed at the time.  This, of course, is now raising serious questions about whether the killing was justified.  And of course the White House has now ceased releasing any details regarding how the incident actually went down.  This is all very suspicious.  As was the haste with which Osama was sent to sleep with the fishes.

Taking Obama at his word that Osama was actually dispatched from this world we need to have the details of the raid released so that the legality of the operation can be properly assessed.  At a time when the Obama Administration is actively investigating the Bush era personnel who conducted the enhanced interrogations that pointed our intelligence community down the path of tracking Osama bin Laden down we need to also be mindful of excesses on the part of this administration.  After all, there are active investigations into whether the enhanced interrogation of a handful of terrorists violated the Geneva Conventions, so too should there be an investigation into whether Obama has likewise violated the Geneva Conventions by summarily executing Osama bin Laden.  Like it or not, if waterboarding is a violation of those conventions then an unlawful execution would certainly be a war crime.

I think we need to have an independent investigator look into whether Obama is guilty of a war crime here.  Given the current stance of this administration vis a vis the enhanced interrogations they should be self-consistent and seek an investigation into their own activities surrounding this raid.  The American people are owed the truth.

Now I have a lot more investigating to do on this subject.  I have not reached a final conclusion as of yet since there are too many facts out there which are not yet in evidence.  But the reading I have been doing thus far is not encouraging.  See for yourself, though.  I am attaching pointers to all of the material I have researched thus far for your continued consideration.

News Roundup:

General Material About the raid:

Regarding the differing accounts of the raid:

Regarding the kill order:

Regarding the legality of the killing:

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