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The letter Eric Holder sent that caused this. http://paul.senate.gov/files/documents/BrennanPaul.pdf http://paul.senate.gov/files/documents/BrennanPaul.pdf

anigbrowl 14y ago
That's a letter from John Brennan, nominee for head of the CIA. This is the letter from Eric Holder: http://paul.senate.gov/files/documents/BrennanHolderResponse.pdf http://paul.senate.gov/files/documents/BrennanHolderResponse... In my view it's entirely reasonable, and Rand Paul is full of shit. His filibuster is nothing other than pandering to a right-wing fringe that considers Obama to be the reincarnation of Josef Stalin.
- Uhhrrr 14y ago
  Don't you think there should be legal limitations on the President's ability to order someone's death? Note that Holder's letter recognizes no such limitations.
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    There should and there are. These have been presented in detail before and no doubt will be again. If Holder were to submit a lengthy memo restating the administration's legal position in regards to military action within the borders of the US, people would complain that he was trying to bury the issue in obfuscatory language. Let me offer you instead a rule of thumb by which to judge this situation. You are aware, no doubt, that there are many combat-ready planes and ships operated by our armed forces in the airspace and waters of the continental US; and you can surely conceive of situations where those planes and ships might be ordered to intercept or even fire upon targets in response to military or terroristic threats. The primary purpose of having armed forces, after all, is for a country to defend itself from attack. If tomorrow we were to find that hostile actors had control of a jet airliner and were flying it towards a city or similarly important target, nobody would be surprised or upset if the President were to order fighter jets scrambled in order to divert even destroy it if necessary. Indeed, the previous administration came in for quite a bit of criticism over its lack of preparedness to take such actions on September 11 2001. If you are OK with this, and I would bet money that you are, because no government in its right mind would respond to military attack by filing suit in the Supreme Court or asking congress to legislate before doing anything, then you should be OK with drones being employed for the same purpose. On the off-chance that you are opposed to any military assets of any kind being deployed within or around the US during peacetime, and that the US should not maintain any sort of defensive capability, then we are doomed to disagree.
    - obelos 14y ago
      What you describe is not targeted assassination. Your scenario depicts incident response. For example, "neutralize the several people that have hijacked this plane." Targeted assassination is, as the name suggests, aimed at a specific person, not because they are currently engaged in firing guns, hijacking planes, taking hostages, and so on, but because "intelligence suggests" that this person has been or could be involved with threats at some point. While we most all of us can envision situations in which targeted assassination is an appropriate response to a threat, the problem is that there are currently no inter-branch checks on the process that determines who is a threat. While due process doesn't mandate a trial or situation-specific court review, it's hard to argue that it doesn't demand input from any other federal branch at all. The criteria are currently determined by executive fiat and are not subject to general review by the judiciary or to modification by legislature. It's not just a matter of "drones," though the use of drones makes these issues more salient. It's about the balance of power distributed throughout the federal government.
      - anigbrowl 14y ago
        While due process doesn't mandate a trial or situation-specific court review, it's hard to argue that it doesn't demand input from any other federal branch at all. I would entirely agree that the AUMF (which underpins the administration's policy on the use of drones) is overbroad and that Congress should either drastically narrow its scope or consider rescinding it completely after US troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2014, after which we would arguably no longer be in a state of war. Likewise, I think it's past time for Congress to develop legislation on the scope of military technology - not least because we are approaching or already at the point where we have technology capable of automatically identifying and firing on targets more quickly and accurately than any human. We don't have the technology for making ethical or legal determinations about the rightness of targeting someone; I'm talking purely about the physical capabilities of machines v. humans. Only Congress can bind the Executive on such matters. The incumbent administration can eschew any intention of using drones domestically (as they have done) but can't bind future administrations.
        14y ago
- stevesearer 14y ago
  This isn't necessarily proof against what you're saying, but many articles I've been reading are chock full of commenters saying they dislike Rand Paul and usually disagree with him, but agree with him on this matter. So from what I can tell, many people agree with him on the matter of drone attacks on US soil.
- shill 14y ago
  Would you say the same thing if there was a Republican in the White House touting the power to execute you without a trial?
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    False premise. That said, if I were engaged in some sort of military-style assault upon the US then of course I would expect to encounter armed opposition. Is it your view that when a country is attacked the executive is supposed to sit on its hands? Call me cold-heart, but I think George W. Bush would have been better off ordering fighter jets into the air back in 2001 instead of listening to a story about a pet goat. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pet_Goat#George_W._Bush:_9.2F11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pet_Goat#George_W._Bush:_9.... for context). EDIT: I forgot to add that the US has been employing drones since at least 2002. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan and http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1900248,00.html http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1900248,00.html among other sources. I thought it was wholly reasonable then and I think it's wholly reasonable now.
    - shill 14y ago
      >>> if I were engaged in some sort of military-style assault upon the US then of course I would expect to encounter armed opposition. The Senator is talking about preemptive drone attacks against non-combatant American citizens on American soil who are merely accused of some crime.
      - anigbrowl 14y ago
        And Holder has told him that that's not going to happen, short of an obvious military emergency. The President is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and is responsible for the defense of the US in such situations. If the Senator is so worried about pre-emptive drone attacks, why hasn't he crafted any legislation defining the scope of the executive's power to deploy military assets within the domestic boundaries of the United States? Or introduced a bill to rescind or amend the Authorization for Use of Military Force that is presently the law of the land? Why, in short, is he engaging in windy rhetoric but making no use of his legislative power?

anigbrowl 14y ago

That's a letter from John Brennan, nominee for head of the CIA. This is the letter from Eric Holder: http://paul.senate.gov/files/documents/BrennanHolderResponse.pdf http://paul.senate.gov/files/documents/BrennanHolderResponse... In my view it's entirely reasonable, and Rand Paul is full of shit. His filibuster is nothing other than pandering to a right-wing fringe that considers Obama to be the reincarnation of Josef Stalin.

Uhhrrr 14y ago
Don't you think there should be legal limitations on the President's ability to order someone's death? Note that Holder's letter recognizes no such limitations.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  There should and there are. These have been presented in detail before and no doubt will be again. If Holder were to submit a lengthy memo restating the administration's legal position in regards to military action within the borders of the US, people would complain that he was trying to bury the issue in obfuscatory language. Let me offer you instead a rule of thumb by which to judge this situation. You are aware, no doubt, that there are many combat-ready planes and ships operated by our armed forces in the airspace and waters of the continental US; and you can surely conceive of situations where those planes and ships might be ordered to intercept or even fire upon targets in response to military or terroristic threats. The primary purpose of having armed forces, after all, is for a country to defend itself from attack. If tomorrow we were to find that hostile actors had control of a jet airliner and were flying it towards a city or similarly important target, nobody would be surprised or upset if the President were to order fighter jets scrambled in order to divert even destroy it if necessary. Indeed, the previous administration came in for quite a bit of criticism over its lack of preparedness to take such actions on September 11 2001. If you are OK with this, and I would bet money that you are, because no government in its right mind would respond to military attack by filing suit in the Supreme Court or asking congress to legislate before doing anything, then you should be OK with drones being employed for the same purpose. On the off-chance that you are opposed to any military assets of any kind being deployed within or around the US during peacetime, and that the US should not maintain any sort of defensive capability, then we are doomed to disagree.
  - obelos 14y ago
    What you describe is not targeted assassination. Your scenario depicts incident response. For example, "neutralize the several people that have hijacked this plane." Targeted assassination is, as the name suggests, aimed at a specific person, not because they are currently engaged in firing guns, hijacking planes, taking hostages, and so on, but because "intelligence suggests" that this person has been or could be involved with threats at some point. While we most all of us can envision situations in which targeted assassination is an appropriate response to a threat, the problem is that there are currently no inter-branch checks on the process that determines who is a threat. While due process doesn't mandate a trial or situation-specific court review, it's hard to argue that it doesn't demand input from any other federal branch at all. The criteria are currently determined by executive fiat and are not subject to general review by the judiciary or to modification by legislature. It's not just a matter of "drones," though the use of drones makes these issues more salient. It's about the balance of power distributed throughout the federal government.
    - anigbrowl 14y ago
      While due process doesn't mandate a trial or situation-specific court review, it's hard to argue that it doesn't demand input from any other federal branch at all. I would entirely agree that the AUMF (which underpins the administration's policy on the use of drones) is overbroad and that Congress should either drastically narrow its scope or consider rescinding it completely after US troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2014, after which we would arguably no longer be in a state of war. Likewise, I think it's past time for Congress to develop legislation on the scope of military technology - not least because we are approaching or already at the point where we have technology capable of automatically identifying and firing on targets more quickly and accurately than any human. We don't have the technology for making ethical or legal determinations about the rightness of targeting someone; I'm talking purely about the physical capabilities of machines v. humans. Only Congress can bind the Executive on such matters. The incumbent administration can eschew any intention of using drones domestically (as they have done) but can't bind future administrations.
      - 14y ago
stevesearer 14y ago
This isn't necessarily proof against what you're saying, but many articles I've been reading are chock full of commenters saying they dislike Rand Paul and usually disagree with him, but agree with him on this matter. So from what I can tell, many people agree with him on the matter of drone attacks on US soil.
shill 14y ago
Would you say the same thing if there was a Republican in the White House touting the power to execute you without a trial?
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  False premise. That said, if I were engaged in some sort of military-style assault upon the US then of course I would expect to encounter armed opposition. Is it your view that when a country is attacked the executive is supposed to sit on its hands? Call me cold-heart, but I think George W. Bush would have been better off ordering fighter jets into the air back in 2001 instead of listening to a story about a pet goat. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pet_Goat#George_W._Bush:_9.2F11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pet_Goat#George_W._Bush:_9.... for context). EDIT: I forgot to add that the US has been employing drones since at least 2002. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_attacks_in_Pakistan and http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1900248,00.html http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1900248,00.html among other sources. I thought it was wholly reasonable then and I think it's wholly reasonable now.
  - shill 14y ago
    >>> if I were engaged in some sort of military-style assault upon the US then of course I would expect to encounter armed opposition. The Senator is talking about preemptive drone attacks against non-combatant American citizens on American soil who are merely accused of some crime.
    - anigbrowl 14y ago
      And Holder has told him that that's not going to happen, short of an obvious military emergency. The President is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces and is responsible for the defense of the US in such situations. If the Senator is so worried about pre-emptive drone attacks, why hasn't he crafted any legislation defining the scope of the executive's power to deploy military assets within the domestic boundaries of the United States? Or introduced a bill to rescind or amend the Authorization for Use of Military Force that is presently the law of the land? Why, in short, is he engaging in windy rhetoric but making no use of his legislative power?