New strategy: kill suspected terrorists rather than imprison & interrogate them

[steven johnson]

The legal difficulties of rendition, imprisonment and prosecution of high-value terrorists , killing them has become increasingly attractive, accoeding to experts.

"The international community doesn't accept the idea that individuals can be held without trial over a long period of time," says John Bellinger, who was legal adviser to the State Department under President Bush. "So it's unlikely that we'd be able to persuade other members of the international community, particularly those in Europe, to join in holding people for any significant period of time unless they were going to be tried."


"To be perfectly blunt, I don't think that they'll pick them up at all," says Ken Anderson of the Hoover Institution and American University's Washington College of Law, who has written about these issues. "I think that we've actually allowed the courts to arrange the incentives to kill rather than capture."

Many national security experts interviewed for this story agree that it has become so hard for the U.S. to detain people that in many instances, the U.S. government is killing them instead.

Last month, American forces staged a raid on a car in Somalia. The man inside the car was a suspected terrorist on the FBI's most wanted list. American troops did not seize him. Instead, helicopters fired on the car, and commandos retrieved his body.

Capture Or Kill? Lawyers Eye Options For Terrorists

[Sabriel]

1. I'm fairly sure that's not legal.

Of course, I was fairly sure torture wasn't legal, too.

[steven johnson]

6. John Yoo said it was legal

In 2005 John Yoo recommended assassinating more suspected terrorists.
He proposed cirvumventing the federal rule around since the 1970s.

Yoo hinted that he had written a classified Justice Department opinion justifying assassinations.

It's nice to know the Obama Administration is on solid legal footing.

http://www.lawschool.com/yoo.htm

[geek tragedy]

7. Perversely, it is.

US constitution only applies if you detain them. There's no right under the US constition for someone in Yemen to not have a bomb fall on them.

[Taverner]

2. The Law of Unintended Consequences

No matter how much we prepare...it always hits us

[timeforpeace]

5. Makes you wonder what the unintended consequences of some changes occurring now will be.

Just kidding. Everything will be jim dandy.

[rgbecker]

3. Not New!

[undeterred]

4. Its a recession, and justice is expensive.

:sarcasm: