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Cheney, Vice President under George Bush II, praised the Obama Administration for it’s courage, and wisdom in authorizing a Drone strike that killed al-qaeda Anwar al-Awlaki, and Samir Khan, both of whom were American citizens who were members of al-qaeda, as well as others in the convoy… then Cheney stated that the Obama administration should immediately apologize to the Bush II administration for comments made about the American use of torture…
The fact that these two person were American citizens does raise some questions.. Like can the government target American citizens as targets for assassination? I would think the answer there is a qualified NO, then I would point out that both of these people could be considered Traitors to the United States, and if they had been found in an American Jurisdiction, be tried in U.S. Courts for their crimes. The fact that they are members of a group dedicated to the destruction of their own country, and would continue to do so, takes the act into the realm of self-defence. It would, of course, be another matter if they had been in a place where we would be able to have them extradited for trial but, that would not have been possible under the circumstances.
On the other hand, lets say that a bank robber had fled the U.S. Court system and had gone to some place we did not have extradition treaties. Would that make him a candidate for his own drone strike? NO. Why not? because he would not be an ongoing threat to the stability of our nation, and so NOT a threat. Would it be right, for one example, to track down Roman Polanski, who fled the U.S. before he could be sentenced for Statutory Rape, for his own drone strike? NO. He also would not have been a threat.
Now, let us look at why exVice President Cheney think they are due an apology..
When we started the war on terrorism our major target was Osama Bin Ladin, and we found that he was hiding among the Taliban in Afghanistan. To get him we had to take out the Taliban. To do this we got a number of other nations to go in with us.
We got rid of the Taliban, and then searched for Bin Ladin, who escaped into the Pakistan Tribal areas on the border of the two countries. The problem started when we figured out that the Taliban, and al-Quada, were not uniformed member of a military, such as you would meet in other countries. They were in fact an armed terrorist organization. PERIOD.
The Bush II administration stated that these people were not covered under the Geneva Conventions which detailed how prisoners of war would be treated. NO TORTURE. Would we be the only ones to go by it? Maybe not. Do we expect others to go by it? Yes, of course. If other countries do not respect the Geneva Conventions, does that justify our use of torture? NO.
Abu Ghraib prison became famous for the American torture of those prisoner that the Bush II administration said were not covered by the Conventions, not being Uniformed Combatants, or, as they were not in the United States, U.S. law. They were tortured by members of the Central Intelligence Agency and Army Intelligence, with Army personnel being used to soften them up for the interrogators. I will not go into what the CIA did but, the U.S. Army personnel ARE covered by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and the Army Military Police have, just like other services, regulations that define the treatment of prisoners. Once the conduct of the personnel at Abu Ghraib got out there were several Court Martial, and the Army brass stated that the people involved acted on their own… REALLY?
What do you believe the chances are that some Army M.P. would abuse prisoners with out direction, and NOT be psychotic? I have read in a couple of reports about this being a Reserve Unit, and not very well trained. That would make sense, to a degree, but even poorly trained troops should know that this type of activity is prohibited by regulation.. Did the people in the chain of command order it to be done? They have said NO.. Even then writen regulation take priority over verbal commands, and it is the troopers responsibility to refuse to obey an unlawful command. For protection, slim, the troop should have insisted that these commands be written so that he could prove that someone gave them to him.
My take is that these abuses came down from the upper leven of the command structure, with at least the tacit agreement of the Bush II Administration.
That then brings up a problem… Getting these people into U. S. Courts where U. S. laws would say that any information that was tortured out of a prisoner would be inadmissible in that court.
Does Obama owe them an apology? NO. Mr Cheney owes the American people, and the troops, that their actions endangered, a really BIG Apology.
Cheney says Obama should apologize for slams on Bush administration – New York Daily News (news.google.com)
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