Comment by Zooey — February 27, 2007 @ 4:50 pm

bat·tle·field (bāt’l-fÄ“ld’) Pronunciation Key
n. In both senses also called battleground.

1. An area where a battle is fought.
2. A sphere of contention.

No where in the definition of “Battlefield” doe it require a declaration of war.

And, BnF, the White House is a legitimate military target. ANY government facility with the exclusion of hospitals is a viable target.

Zooey,
The difference between assassination and death by combat action is a very thin line.

Look, you may believe that that 3,000 innocent people who were deliberately slaughtered on 9/11 deserved it. That is you right. It is a perverted and morally twisted position, but it is your right to hold that position. I and many others here just happen to disagree.

Comment by Exley

Exlaxley is a proud citizen of the united states of amnesia. 9-11 is the only day he can remember. 3000 people is a drop in the bucket compared to death americans wreak upon each other and the rest of the world. Exlaxley doesnt think america attacks civilian infrastructure when it goes to war. Exlaxley thinks that america is justified in causing as many civilians deaths as it needs to in Iraq because saddam was a bad man, except when he was kiling people with OUR help. Exlaxley thinks america doesnt support death squads who kill civilians whenever it suits thier ends. Exlaxley thinks america doesnt overthrow democracies. Whatever america does from now on is ok, because on one day, out of the millions of days througout history, some brown people gave america a taste of the medicine its been dishing out for centuries .

Im not arguing that America is the source of all evil.. I’m not. I dont even beleive the concept of evil. Leave it to egotistical straussian psychopaths to even think they could tell the difference between good and evil.

I’m just saying morons like the Exlaylaxmeister have no idea of terms like “blowback” or “what you reap you will sew”. For Exlay, history started on 9-11. Either that or hes a broken, poorly programmed AI bot who has long ago run our of anything original to say.

All I have to say is this comment makes the presumption that the United States currently has a legitimate government. It doesnt. There was a bloodless electronic electoral coup in 2000 aided and abetted by Diebold, Katherine Harris, and Jeb Bush, who conspired to commit voting fraud and install a cocaine-damaged puppet whose victory was made possible only by the violation of the electoral process spelled out in the constitution and laws of the united states. This fraud was perpetuated in 2004 by tools like Kenneth Blackwell and his army of goons who worked to disenfranchise tens if not hundreds of thousands of voters. For the first time in history, the umbrella company who runs exit polls felt the need to write a lengthy public paper about why the exit polls had been wrong and had “incorrectly” predicted a Bush defeat.

read the “Black Box Voting” ebook available for free download here:

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

Our current “government” is not legitimate, not legal, and more people would be wise to stand up and speak the truth, which is that the people who control this country now are usurpers and theives. I personally would not choose to act in any questionable manner against this “government”, nor would I advocate it, but I don’t comdemn anyone who wishes the organizers of this orwellian coup ill. Their ill wishes are completely legitimate and deserved, and in no way reflect a disrespect for america as a country. What Cheney, Rove, etc are doing now is exactly the sort of thing our founding fathers sought to avoid, and I have little doubt that were they alive today they would be advocating open revolt against these type of people.

the jist of what our current “government” has been telling us:

“We are at war with an unseen enemy, we can’t tell you anything about the war, and until we tell you we are arent at war anymore, we can do anything we want”.

that is not democracy, that is a dictatorship.

and it needs to end as soon as possible.

Happy Belated!

…Best Wishes…

…Best Wishes…

Happy Belated!

…Best Wishes…

I am enjoying reading your posts as I do so many others here at Think progress.

Keep up the good work you do!

It depends what the definition of ‘assassination’ is

Friday, March 21, 2003

By THOMAS HARGROVE, Scripps Howard News Service

For the record, the second Persian Gulf War began when President Bush ordered a large missile and bomber strike against a “senior Iraqi leadership compound” in Baghdad. No mention of Saddam Hussein himself.

Administration officials admit they hoped Saddam was at the receiving end of Wednesday night’s attack, although they deny the operation was an assassination attempt. It comes down to what the definition of “assassination” is.

“In military conflict, command and control (sites) are legitimate targets,” White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said Thursday.

“Coalition forces hit a senior Iraqi leadership compound last evening,” said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “That was the first. It will likely not be the last. The days of the Saddam Hussein regime are numbered.” The 1907 Hague Convention banned international assassination as “treacherous killing.” President Gerald Ford in 1976 became the first U.S. chief executive to order that no federal government employee or anyone acting on behalf of America “shall engage in – or conspire to engage in – assassination.” The order was amended and renewed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Despite these and other legal niceties, the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force have industriously bombed the homes, offices, bunkers and other known haunts of Saddam and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. The White House reviewed Reagan’s executive order, No. 12333, late last year and decided it does not apply during times of war and therefore needed no further amendment.

Military and legal authorities within the United States have been rethinking the decades-old prohibition on deliberate attacks on world leaders. The debate has become a dispute over the meaning of “leaders” vs. “command-and-control centers” during time of war.

“The administration was looking at Saddam Hussein as part of the military apparatus of Iraq and, therefore, as a legitimate target,” said attorney Robert Teplitz, special assistant to the Pennsylvania Department of the Auditor General. “They were fairly targeting him not as a civilian leader of a country but as a military target.” Teplitz reviewed the law on assassination in a 1995 article for the Cornell International Law Journal.

“Yes, there is some rationalization involved, but it is a rationalization that makes all this legal,” Teplitz said. “International law gets tricky. But a case can always be made that the United States has the right to act in self-defense.” According to a Rand Corp. study, the United States has used military means to target specific individuals at least five times: – The 1986 bombing raid on Gadhafi ’s house and the Azziziyah Barracks compound.

n Multiple bombing and missile attacks in 1991 against command sites in Iraq where Saddam might have established his headquarters. The United States went so far as to construct a massive “bunker buster” bomb from the barrel of a World War II naval gun to be used on one particularly reinforced Iraqi site.

-U.S. helicopter gunship raids in 1993 against a suspected United Somali Congress headquarters in Mogadishu, Somalia.

The 1998 cruise missile strike against military sites in Afghanistan suspected of hosting Osama bin Laden.

The 1999 NATO air attacks against Slobodan Milosevic’s house and command bunkers in Serbia during Operation Allied Force.

U.S. naval officer Patricia Zengel, in a 1991 “Military Law Review” article about assassination and the international law of armed conflict, concluded that there is “no longer any convincing justification” for the idea that international law treats assassination apart from other kinds of military force during war.

But military scholars in the rest of the world are not so certain.

“Assassination is proscribed in international law mainly because war is seen as a nation-state matter,” said military analyst Atul Bharadwaj, an officer in the Indian navy. “The U.S. is adding a fresh dimension to concepts of war by pretending to deal with the state, which is Saddam, minus the nation, which is the Iraqi people.”

How was Saddam’s bunker on a battlefield if war had not been formally declared? If he was killed at that time, it seems like it would have been an assassination, not a battle related death, since we were not at war.

I’m no expert at this, it just seems like common sense.

You DO support us being in Afghanistan, right? After all, that day to-not-be-mentioned was the an act of agression by AQ and they reside in Afghanistan.
Comment by hacker bob — February 27, 2007 @ 3:30 pm

First, I do not believe the crimes committed on the day-not-to-be-mentioned were committed by AQ. I beleive it is far more likely the PNAC is responsible.

Secondly, those were crimes. If some fringe group of Americans, say, the “Bloods” or the “Crips” committed a similar crime against, say, China, would China be justified in invading the United States and deposing our government? After all, various gangs, certainly dating back to the Mafia, could be called terrorist orgainizations. Thus, it could be said Bush harbors terrorists. And the U.S. certainly has weapons of mass destruction?

Do you begin to see the ugliness of the precedent set once you claim the invasion of Afghanistan was justified? I doubt there is a country in the world that does not have some people residing within its borders who could be deemed terrorists. Do you then justify invading any given country and deposing its government based on the acts of a few criminals?

Bunkers are, by definition, military targets, are they not? A military target is located on a BATTLEFIELD. So it would have been a battle related death.
Comment by hacker bob — February 27, 2007 @ 3:30 pm

Again, war was not declared. But, following your logic, there are reputed to be bunkers beneath the White House. Is the White House therefore a legitimate target and part of the battlefield in the International War on Terror?

Two points:

1) Prisoners of war have never, in the history of the republic, had access to civilian courts. That is because under international law, prisoners of war are not being detained as punishment, but to prevent them from returning to the battlefield while hostilities are ongoing.

2) The Military Commission Act provides alien unlawful enemy combatants to dispute charges against them and includes a number of due process rights, including right to counsel, right to questions witnesses, right to appeal to higher courts INCLUDING the civilian U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and the U.S. Supreme Court

Pathetic arguments there, Exley. We should be giving anyone accused of a civil crime, “unlawful combat act”, a war crime, or any other action that might lead to detention, incarceration, execution, or other punishment the opportunity to dispute the charges. Otherwise, where is the over-riding “rule of law” to ensure against mob rule or a dictatorial policy?

Only reason it happened = petroleum concessions.
proof: Iraq passed law allowing it this week.

Cynically allowing all that death for those oil concessions = something anyone with a conscience should be ashamed of for a very long time.
proof: ask a German.

Arguing the finer points = pointless.
proof: Al Gore.

Incorrect. There is no obligation under international or U.S. law to try unlawful combatants in civilian courts.

Comment by Briseadh na Faire — February 27, 2007 @ 3:14 pm

Do you see me saying that the Iraqis should not be shooting at us? We placed ourselves in combat, didn’t we? Also, just to make sure I am not speaking out of my back pocket. You DO support us being in Afghanistan, right? After all, that day to-not-be-mentioned was the an act of agression by AQ and they reside in Afghanistan.

In the initial attack on Iraq, the missles were directed to a bunker where we thought Saddam was. There was no formal declaration of war. Was that an attempted assassination attempt, or a legitimate military target?

Comment by Briseadh na Faire

Bunkers are, by definition, military targets, are they not? A military target is located on a BATTLEFIELD. So it would have been a battle related death.

Comment by Dale

Option 1: I’m smarter than they are. (LOL)
Option 2: Cowardise
Option 3: Just wait.

Actually, there is movement in this direction. Consider the notion of revisiting and limiting the resolution which originally authorized force in Iraq. That resolution laid out some specific (and some very vague) benchmarks, with most of the specific ones having been met. Thus, the authorization to use force in Iraq can and should be rescinded.