The States Secrets of a Policital Question: The Anwar Al-Aulaqi Story

(archived from September 25, 2010)

by Scott Creighton

Why is President Obama trying use the ‘states secrets” excuse to thwart a preliminary injunction brought by Anwar Al-Aulaqi’s father? Because if he doesn’t he could be impeached and the truth about this story, were it to come out in court and then go mainstream, would expose the Global War on Terror as a complete fraud. That’s why.

The evidence is there and the history of the story is undeniable; President Obama killed 41 innocent civilians including 14 women and 21 children with a BGM-109D Tomahawk missile strike on Dec. 17th 2009. That is a fact.

Then, to retroactively justify what the president of CHANGE did, the state department allowed a ”terrorist” onto a plane on Christmas day after his father had warned them several times about his motives. That is also a fact.

It was at that point that a contract was put out on the life of a U.S. citizen to retroactively justify the Dec. 17th 2009 attack which killed civilians, mainly children, in a country we are not at war with.

Though that bullshit official story will hold up under the “scrutiny” of a complicit media, it would shatter under cross-examination in a court of law and the Obama administration damn well knows it.

The only “political question” here is the survival of our Peace Laureate president.

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Late last night, according to the Washington Post, Barack Obama’s administration filed a very disturbing motion in the case brought against them by Anwar Al-Aulaqi’s father. Anwar Al-Aulaqi is a U.S. citizen who Barack Obama has decided he has the right to kill without a trial or even having indicted him before a grand jury, for that matter. Anwar’s father has filed a suit for a preliminary injunction in the District Court of DC to basically take the bounty off his son’s head before the CIA can kill him. What father wouldn’t?

As if having a president proclaim that he has the authority to kill a US citizen without the due process of law isn’t bad enough, the motion filed late last night (surely to kill the story as much as possible) stoops to such a new abysmal low one can only stand in awe at its pure audacity and cower in the face of the implications it holds. 

The Obama administration submitted a document late last night which stated that they had the right to kill a US citizen, without any due process of law, simply by the say-so of the president, and if someone were to challenge them on this matter and try to take it to court, then they claim the right of “states secrets” to keep it out of court.

Glenn Greenwald, as he often does, sums it up beautifully..

“But what’s most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is “state secrets”:  in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate its legality”.  Glenn Greenwald

It’s remarkable isn’t it? President Obama decides that he has the authority to kill any US citizen he wishes and can keep the reasons for doing so ”a secret”.  Even more remarkably, they refer to the targeted assassination of this man’s son as a “political question” and therefore something that is outside of the purview of the judiciary.

“Defendants Barack H. Obama, President of the United States, Leon E. Panetta, Director of the Central Intelligence, and Robert M. Gates, Secretary of Defense, hereby move to dismiss Plaintiff’s complaint, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), on the grounds that Plaintiff lacks standing and that his claims require the Court to decide non-justiciable political questions. Alternatively, the Court should exercise its equitable discretion not to grant the relief sought. In addition, Plaintiff has no cause of action under the Alien Tort Statute.

To the extent that the foregoing are not sufficient grounds to dismiss this lawsuit, plaintiff’s action should be dismissed on the ground that information properly protected by the military and state secrets privilege would be necessary to litigate this action.”  Obama administration motion to dismiss

A “political question”? The president can kill US citizens at the drop of a hat and declare that he doesn’t have to tell anyone why because it’s a ”secret“… all because of  what he calls a “political question”?  Does that sound right?

How far does that go? Are there limits as to how deeply into US soil the CIA death squads can chase a US citizen before he can appeal to a court of law for justice and a fair hearing?  How much of a “political question” is required to take a man’s life?

Now I can understand why Barack Obama wants to keep this particular case out of the limelight of the court system. That’s something Glenn Greenwald won’t tell you… but I will.

You see, Anwar Al-Aulaqi was supposedly being targeted in Yemen on Dec. 17th 2009 when Barack Obama gave the authorization to use our Tomahawk missiles to attack an al Qaeda stronghold. Anwar Al-Aulaqi wasn’t there and neither was al Qaeda. Our puppet dictator in Yemen is having a bit of an uprising, and that just won’t do for our friends in the region.  But what was there were 14 women and 21 children and they were killed by our president’s order.

“President Obama late last week ordered cruise missile attacks on two locations in Yemen, which “U.S. officials” say were “suspected Al Qaeda hideouts.”  The main target of the attacks, Al Qaeda member Qasim al Rim, was not among those killed, but: “a local Yemeni official said on Sunday that 49 civilians, among them 23 children and 17 women, were killed in air strikes against Al-Qaeda, which he said were carried out ‘indiscriminately’.”  Glenn Greenwald

Suddenly Barack Obama and his regime desperately needed a reason to be launching Tomahawk missiles into homes with women and children in a country we were not even at war with and so along came the Anwar Al-Aulaqi story… and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

You see, the story about the link between Anwar Al-Aulaqi and Maj. Nidal Hasan, the alleged Fort Hood shooting suspect was weak and it was falling apart. Since then the Obama administration has refused to release documents in that case as well and with good reason; they certainly don’t implicate Anwar Al-Aulaqi in any way that would justify attempting to kill him (and accidentally killing 21 kids instead). If nothing else, the emails between Hasan and Al-Aulaqi clearly showed that the U.S. born cleric had not suggested killing anyone, let alone U.S. soldiers.

“The Defense and Justice departments say that release of the disputed data would compromise the prosecution of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the disgruntled Army doctor charged with killing 13 people.  AP

Military officials told CNN on Monday that intelligence agencies intercepted communications from Hasan to al-Awlaki and shared them with other U.S. government agencies. But federal authorities dropped the inquiry into Hasan’s communications after deciding that the messages warranted no further action, one of the officials said.

According to the FBI, investigators from one of its Joint Terrorism Task Forces determined “that the content of those communications was consistent with research being conducted by Maj. Hasan in his position as a psychiatrist at the Walter Reed Medical Center [in Washington].”  CNN

So the whole story was a convoluted mess with piles of dead women and children lying on the ground and the Fort Hood connection certainly didn’t provide the justification for trying to kill a U.S. citizen without due process of law in a country we are not at war with.  So they needed something else, something that actually connected Anwar Al-Aulaqi to an attempted terrorist act.

“But, you know, this guy (Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab), looking at it in some respects, looking at it in retrospect, probably did us a favor.”  Thomas Kean, Co-Chair of the 9/11 Commission Report

“But today it is being reported that the target was in fact, Anwar al-Awlaki, the controversial cleric who communicated with Ft. Hood shooting suspect Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.  This most recent attack comes on the heels of another one, just a week ago, in which 17 women and 23 children were slaughtered in order to protect the investments of “U.S. assets” in Yemen (namely, Kuwait Energy and the IMF and World Bank).  As bad as that was, Obama’s killing of innocent civilians to protect pipelines and IMF’s investors, this most recent assassination attempt may be even more troubling.”  Scott Creighton, Dec. 25 2009

It took them a week to put together a story that would possibly save the presidency of their puppet Obama. He was their Manchurian candidate, their vehicle of CHANGE, a carefully scripted facade of “progressive politics” was about to be exposed as just another neoliberal version of Murderer Inc. and they could not let that happen so soon. There was still that HOPE thing to exploit, don’t ya know.

“The State Department didn’t revoke the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because federal counterterrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top State Department official revealed Wednesday.

Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab’s visa wasn’t taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would’ve foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.” Nathan Hurt, Detroit News

So on Dec. 25th 2009, the Hillary Clinton run state department allowed a “known terrorist”, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to board an international flight to Detroit with his “sparkler of doom” underroos, and the mythology of Umar Fizzlepants was born. And immediately all the globalist politicians and CIA assets from DC stepped up to the mics and conveniently made the connection between Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab and Anwar Al-Aulaqi and the presidency of CHANGE was saved… retroactively… while the mothers of 21 dead children were still weeping.

Two days later, President Obama stepped up and declared a new military offensive in Yemen and he promised to get that dastardly Anwar Al-Aulaqi and few Americans even took the time to wonder aloud about the curious timing of it all. There is no real evidence connecting Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to Anwar Al-Aulaqi and the ONLY ones that we KNOW helped get Abdulmutallab onto that flight… was the U.S. state department.

And thanks to this story and the complicity of the U.S. corporate media, the 21 dead children in a country we aren’t even at war with, killed by our president, faded into memory as if they never existed.

(read The Prestige – Part 1:The Pledge , Dancing With Snakes , and Billions in Recent Yememi Investments and The Underwear Bomber’s Daddy. It’s a Small World Ain’t It? )

Now, do the facts of this case sound like something they would want declared “state secrets”? It does to me.

Does this case sound more and more like a “political question” when put in these historical terms? Does to me.

President Obama gave the authorization to use a Tomahawk missile strike against a target in a country we weren’t even at war with in order to protect the regime of our puppet dictator (Field Marshal Ali Abdullah Saleh – Dictator of Yemen for the past 30 years) and US oil and banking interests in Yemen. 

“One of the targeted sites was a suspected al Qaeda training camp north of the capital, Sanaa, and the second target was a location where officials said “an imminent attack against a U.S. asset was being planned.”  ABC News

But it all went horribly wrong.

But rather than take the hit and expose the Global War on Terror for what it really is, the Obama administration decided to cut-and-paste a new terror king-pin into the scene and the hit was put out on Anwar Al-Aulaqi.

It all made perfect sense if you didn’t look to close at the timing of it all, but it damn sure won’t hold up in a court of law will it?

State secrets and a political question. That’s the Anwar Al-Aulaqi story.