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This Hastings incident has interesting parallels to Andrew Breitbart's death. http://rt.com/usa/coroner-arsenic-death-breitbart-456/ http://rt.com/usa/coroner-

This Hastings incident has interesting parallels to Andrew Breitbart's death. http://rt.com/usa/coroner-arsenic-death-breitbart-456/ http://rt.com/usa/coroner-arsenic-death-breitbart-456/ Namely the fact that both of these men were prominent journalists, living in the US, each with 'big stories' they were working on that have not seen the light of day due to their untimely death shortly after proclaiming they were working on said stories. To compound the dire possibilities, in February the US Justice Department confirmed the existence of legal justification for the assassination of American citizens: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/us/politics/obama-orders-release-of-drone-memos-to-lawmakers.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/us/politics/obama-orders-r... Not drawing conclusions here, but I think it's important in this day and age to be diligent in connecting dots and evaluating ALL possibilities.

res0nat0r 13y ago
Meh. Breitbart died of an enlarged heart and also had a major heart attack a few months prior.
groby_b 13y ago
Uh, no. Breitbart was a lot of things, but certainly not a journalist of nearly the same caliber. And given that he claimed to work on "big stories" pretty much all the time, we can take that out of the equation, too. And your disingenuous argument trying to tie drone attacks into that is an utter disservice to truth. To quote from the fine article: "could target a citizen if he was a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda involved in plots against the country and if his capture was not feasible." Whatever your position on this is, you need to stretch mightily to make this into "the government is indiscriminately killing people it doesn't like". So please remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And try to bring at least the tiniest bit of evidence to a post that's rather light on them.
- mrschwabe 13y ago
  So please remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Thank-you, I will remember that. I will also remember that, on occasion, extraordinary crimes happen in secret. And that there exist criminals in this world who have successfully suppressed, destroyed, or hidden evidence of their crimes; and as a result have not - and may not ever be - brought to justice. Note that I wasn't making any claims - just pointing out some relevant information to consider.
- lazyjones 13y ago
  > "could target a citizen if he was a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda involved in plots against the country and if his capture was not feasible." They have already assassinated a 16 year old US citizen who was not a senior Al Qaeda leader and who wasn't "collateral damage" either: http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/awlakis.html http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/awlakis.html
  - groby_b 13y ago
    If you'd get your news from other sources but boingboing, you'd be aware that we actually don't know if he was targeted or collateral damage. Once again, I'm not debating the morality of the drone program, or the ludicrousness of writing off killings as "collateral damage". I debate the deliberate use of misinformation to score a point. We all need to stop distorting the truth to suit our purpose, so we can see what's actually happening - which is bad enough and doesn't require conspiracy theories.
dfc 13y ago
Was Breitbart a prominent journalist? I had to look his name up I did not recognize it. After comparing their respective wikipedia pages[1][2] it does not seem that they were equally prominent but I could be missing something. I am all for connecting the dots and considering ALL POSSIBILITIES but it seems that after a certain point you need to eliminate some of the possibilities when they do not match up with reality. The RT story about the coroner and arsenic seems to be fringe conspiracy theory material that does not stand up well to scrutiny. It seems that the coroner mentioned in the RT story was not involved in Breitbart's autopsy: "Those theories were quickly debunked by both the L.A. police and Deputy Chief Coroner Ed Winter, who told The Daily Beast at the time that Cormier had nothing to do with Breitbart’s autopsy"[3] "L.A. County Coroner's Assistant Chief Ed Winter tells LA Weekly that Cormier did not conduct Breitbart's autopsy. "Only doctors" ever worked on Breitbart, says Winter, because foul play was not suspected from the beginning."[4] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_%28journalist%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_%28journalist... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Breitbart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Breitbart [3] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/30/no-answers-in-death-of-technician-linked-to-andrew-breitbart.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/30/no-answers-... [4] http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/04/andrew_breitbart_coroner_poisoned_to_death.php http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/04/andrew_breitbart_...

res0nat0r 13y ago

Meh. Breitbart died of an enlarged heart and also had a major heart attack a few months prior.

groby_b 13y ago

Uh, no. Breitbart was a lot of things, but certainly not a journalist of nearly the same caliber. And given that he claimed to work on "big stories" pretty much all the time, we can take that out of the equation, too. And your disingenuous argument trying to tie drone attacks into that is an utter disservice to truth. To quote from the fine article: "could target a citizen if he was a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda involved in plots against the country and if his capture was not feasible." Whatever your position on this is, you need to stretch mightily to make this into "the government is indiscriminately killing people it doesn't like". So please remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And try to bring at least the tiniest bit of evidence to a post that's rather light on them.

mrschwabe 13y ago
So please remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Thank-you, I will remember that. I will also remember that, on occasion, extraordinary crimes happen in secret. And that there exist criminals in this world who have successfully suppressed, destroyed, or hidden evidence of their crimes; and as a result have not - and may not ever be - brought to justice. Note that I wasn't making any claims - just pointing out some relevant information to consider.
lazyjones 13y ago
> "could target a citizen if he was a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda involved in plots against the country and if his capture was not feasible." They have already assassinated a 16 year old US citizen who was not a senior Al Qaeda leader and who wasn't "collateral damage" either: http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/awlakis.html http://boingboing.net/2011/10/21/awlakis.html
- groby_b 13y ago
  If you'd get your news from other sources but boingboing, you'd be aware that we actually don't know if he was targeted or collateral damage. Once again, I'm not debating the morality of the drone program, or the ludicrousness of writing off killings as "collateral damage". I debate the deliberate use of misinformation to score a point. We all need to stop distorting the truth to suit our purpose, so we can see what's actually happening - which is bad enough and doesn't require conspiracy theories.

dfc 13y ago

Was Breitbart a prominent journalist? I had to look his name up I did not recognize it. After comparing their respective wikipedia pages[1][2] it does not seem that they were equally prominent but I could be missing something. I am all for connecting the dots and considering ALL POSSIBILITIES but it seems that after a certain point you need to eliminate some of the possibilities when they do not match up with reality. The RT story about the coroner and arsenic seems to be fringe conspiracy theory material that does not stand up well to scrutiny. It seems that the coroner mentioned in the RT story was not involved in Breitbart's autopsy: "Those theories were quickly debunked by both the L.A. police and Deputy Chief Coroner Ed Winter, who told The Daily Beast at the time that Cormier had nothing to do with Breitbart’s autopsy"[3] "L.A. County Coroner's Assistant Chief Ed Winter tells LA Weekly that Cormier did not conduct Breitbart's autopsy. "Only doctors" ever worked on Breitbart, says Winter, because foul play was not suspected from the beginning."[4] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_%28journalist%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_%28journalist... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Breitbart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Breitbart [3] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/30/no-answers-in-death-of-technician-linked-to-andrew-breitbart.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/30/no-answers-... [4] http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/04/andrew_breitbart_coroner_poisoned_to_death.php http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/04/andrew_breitbart_...