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This guy's son was a bad enough dude that he got put on a terrorist kill list. I think we should at least consider that we might have an unreliable narrator.

This guy's son was a bad enough dude that he got put on a terrorist kill list. I think we should at least consider that we might have an unreliable narrator. Edit: what I said was that folks should, like with any article, do some investigating before they jump to conclusions. I merely stated that the close ties to known terrorists provides more motivation for this. But yall are obviously just looking for any opportunity to get all righteous, so keep down voting and not even reading what I said.

kevingadd 13y ago
I'm sorry but that's just wrong. Nothing fucking justifies killing a 16-year-old American citizen, accused of no crime, without due process. NOTHING.
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  >killing a 16-year-old American citizen, accused of no crime, without due process. step 1. killing non-Americans outside, accused of no crime, without due process - ok step 2. killing Americans outside, accused of no crime, without due process - so-so, the public seems to be getting used to it step 3. ... (hint : not a profit)
- insuffi 13y ago
  Does anything justify killing a 16-year-old non-american citizen without due process? Just saying. This post is largely about how people in the war-driven countries are perceived by Americans as just abstract figures, instead of real people, thus, making it easy for them to be pro-war. EDIT: To the comment below: You know exactly what I meant when I said it - the us vs. them mentality. Case in point: Latvian hacker about to be extradited to the US for allegedly committing computer crimes. Guess what? U.S. has not supplied a single item of evidence about anything - they just know that he did it. This, as we can see, spills over to other departments of the u.s. government - fighting terrorism, national security, etc. Seems like they just come up with random crap to do for the fun of it.
  - briancaw2 13y ago
    Yes. For example, a 16 year old Nazi soldier pointing a gun at you.
    - randomchars 13y ago
      That's a horrible analogy. In that case there's an imminent danger.
      - briancaw2 13y ago
        There's no analogy. You asked "Does anything justify killing a 16-year-old non-american citizen without due process?" I'm giving a case of when yes, something would justify that. The point here is that there are cases when bad people have intent to do harm and need to be stopped in ways faster than a court of law can individually approve. Whether this is one of those cases is the real question.
nwh 13y ago
I wouldn't call Edward Snowden a "bad enough dude", but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he is on the US governments "kill list" either. You are confused; assuming that being put on a list has any reason or due process.
eksith 13y ago
You're assuming he was a "bad enough dude" with no evidence to support that assertion. The burden of proof is always on the accuser. If he was accused of being worthy of death, let's see some documentation to support that. At present there are no answers, no explanations, no reasons given besides his death and the fact he and his father were on a hit list.
- bwaldrep 13y ago
  No explanations given by the author. Here is some general background on the father: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki Edit: Note I am not defending the killing of the grandson by any means. However, I did notice that the father was tried in a court in Yemen, and the judge ordered him to be apprehended "dead or alive." http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2010/11/08/Cleric-says-American-devils-must-die/UPI-61991289245343 http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2010/11/08/Cleric-say... I was just surprised that people are so suspicious of any claim that the father was anything other than an ordinary citizen minding his own business, yet accept the narrative presented in the original article at face value. eksith asked for evidence that the father was a "bad dude." I provided some. It is perfectly fine to argue that this isn't justification for death, but that wasn't briancaw's point. This merely seems to indicate that the narrator might not be providing the most balanced perspective.
  - kevingadd 13y ago
    Yeah, a real dangerous dude. All his alleged crimes basically involve talking to people; no wonder we sent some drones over there to wipe him and all his relatives out. Note that there's not even any concrete factual accusations of him being involved with planning actual attacks, just 'he spoke to', 'was associated with', 'allegedly involved in'. You really think something that flimsy is worth murdering dozens of people with a drone? I would certainly hope that if a few disgruntled people alleged that you were involved in crimes, you'd actually get a fair trial instead of a remote control execution. But maybe that's just not the world we live in.
    - 13y ago
Ygg2 13y ago
Right. Because as we know American admininstration is a infalible agency that only puts horrible, horrible terrorist on its hit list. Like Snowden. Or Santa Claus.
- briancaw2 13y ago
  All I'm saying is that some guy who's son was a bad guy (look at his wiki page, I won't enumerate offenses) writes an Op-Ed in NyTimes and everyone starts taking his word as scripture. I'm not saying killing his grandson was right or wrong, I'm just saying a skimming of the facts he presents followed by a scathing anti-American rant is uncalled for.
  - Ygg2 13y ago
    I'm not disputing that guy was shady, but I see they don't have much evidence against him but he got on a kill list/killed. Do all people on kill list have so little evidence against them?
  - sergiosgc 13y ago
    The important facts do not need independence on the part of the author: 1. His grandson was American, so the US military establishment assassinated an American outside the courts 2. The attack was performed in a third country, which is an act of war. Not fuzzy war-on-terror or other nonsense. War, classic version. Just reverse sides and imagine US' reaction on drone attacks on its soil affecting civilians.
grey-area 13y ago
This woman's son was a bad enough dude that he got put on a terrorist kill list. Who checks who goes on this list? Which public court checked the facts and pronounced him and his family guilty? What of the right of the accused to a fair trial, no matter which country they come from? If you're going to flagrantly violate international law and assassinate suspects and their families without trial, what confidence can we have that other laws won't be broken? What confidence can we have that this list was created and maintained in good faith and with due process when it is maintained in secret and the execution is so careless? The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen....The attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., said only that Abdulrahman was not “specifically targeted,” raising more questions than he answered. This drone strike was apparently on a restaurant - I find it mind-boggling that you'd try to defend such actions by saying he was on a secret list. What about the other people in the restaurant at the time, and the innocent members of his family? Does the Obama administration consider the family of people on a kill-list fair game now? And the people who eat close to them in a restaurant too? Regardless of whether this narrator is reliable or the victim a 'bad dude', I don't find it acceptable that the government can kill whoever they want without trial, and without public evidence. If they do this in restaurants in Yemen, why not restaurants inside the states too?
cenhyperion 13y ago
Cool, can I get a link to the public court ruling that decided that he was a terrorist and to give him the death sentence?
gcb0 13y ago
Regardless if he's a bad guy or not, give me the budget those drones work with, and i can devise something that does not kill a dozen innocent, decent, civilians for every bad guy you terminate. this is criminal. period.
belorn 13y ago
Thats a horrible argument, and a circular one at that. If we had a brutal police beating leading to the death of a 16 year old child, do we argue that the grandparent must be unreliable because a other family member to the child was also killed by the police? after all, that family member must have done something to anger the police...
- briancaw2 13y ago
  I'm not willing to go so far to say that parents should be held accountable for their children's actions. I am very confident that it's ok to question the validity of statements made by the parent of a well known, high ranking terrorist.
peterkelly 13y ago
Guilt by association. Sometimes, you know, people adopt very different ideologies and personal goals than other members of their family. Criminals and terrorists should be punished. Not their (innocent) parents or children.
- briancaw2 13y ago
  Questioning the validity of an OpEd by association. I'm ok with that.
- bigiain 13y ago
  Hmmm… Guilt by association. The six degrees of Kevin Bacon. The NSA archiving and cross-indexing all email metadata that traverses internet backbone unencrypted or lands in a PRISM partner's mail system. How many social graph edges do you suppose you need to be away from Anwar al-Awlaki to be able to safely eat at open air restaurants in Yemen? (Bonus question: How connected is "the global social graph", and does there exists a number of edges that connects everybody on the internet?)
Volpe 13y ago
So if I decide to put someone on a kill list, there is no burden of proof on me to explain why, by killing that someone my action is righteous, legal and moral? I'm pretty sure the US constitution disagrees with that premise, and should protect any US citizen from such a situation.
- briancaw2 13y ago
  Do me the favor of putting my statement and yours side by side. Show the claim I made (that we should scrutinize the validity of the OpEd) vs what you refuted.
  - Volpe 13y ago
    > This guy's son was a bad enough dude that he got put on a terrorist kill list. That's exactly what I responded to. I ignored your conclusion, because of your invalid premise.
    - briancaw2 13y ago
      I think we're nitpicking here. I think that the probability of someone not being impartial given their son was on a kill list is greater than someone who's son wasn't...etc. Anyway, I 100% agree that "there is a burden of proof on me to explain why, by killing that someone my action is righteous, legal and moral"
- bigiain 13y ago
  You're familiar with Senator Edward Kennedy's inclusion on the no-fly list? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug... Personally - I'd like to see _much_ more transparency and accountability in the compilation and justification for most sorts of "government lists", and I fear the people in charge of "the kill list" which manages to kill people who are '… not “specifically targeted,”' have proven to be inadequately discriminating at the task…
  - 13y ago
locusm 13y ago
Who holds authority over this list? Isnt this a complete failure of the "Separation of powers" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers
sveme 13y ago
Wait a second. The whole article is not about the son, it is about his grandson. No where in the article it is said that his grandson was a terrorist or has been associated with terrorism (even then, it would not have been right), quite the opposite. Summary: stop with the red herring of talking about the known associations of his son with terrorism - we are talking about his innocent grandson.
madaxe 13y ago
Hey guys, Briancaw2 is a terrorist! Lynch him!!! See how that works? Just because your government said it does not make it automatically true.
jurassic 13y ago
> This guy's son was a bad enough dude that he got put on a terrorist kill list. There is no oversight in this process, and even if there were that provides no justice for the innocent people at the cafe where the grandson was killed. This whole story disgusts me.

kevingadd 13y ago

I'm sorry but that's just wrong. Nothing fucking justifies killing a 16-year-old American citizen, accused of no crime, without due process. NOTHING.

VladRussian2 13y ago
>killing a 16-year-old American citizen, accused of no crime, without due process. step 1. killing non-Americans outside, accused of no crime, without due process - ok step 2. killing Americans outside, accused of no crime, without due process - so-so, the public seems to be getting used to it step 3. ... (hint : not a profit)
insuffi 13y ago
Does anything justify killing a 16-year-old non-american citizen without due process? Just saying. This post is largely about how people in the war-driven countries are perceived by Americans as just abstract figures, instead of real people, thus, making it easy for them to be pro-war. EDIT: To the comment below: You know exactly what I meant when I said it - the us vs. them mentality. Case in point: Latvian hacker about to be extradited to the US for allegedly committing computer crimes. Guess what? U.S. has not supplied a single item of evidence about anything - they just know that he did it. This, as we can see, spills over to other departments of the u.s. government - fighting terrorism, national security, etc. Seems like they just come up with random crap to do for the fun of it.
- briancaw2 13y ago
  Yes. For example, a 16 year old Nazi soldier pointing a gun at you.
  - randomchars 13y ago
    That's a horrible analogy. In that case there's an imminent danger.
    - briancaw2 13y ago
      There's no analogy. You asked "Does anything justify killing a 16-year-old non-american citizen without due process?" I'm giving a case of when yes, something would justify that. The point here is that there are cases when bad people have intent to do harm and need to be stopped in ways faster than a court of law can individually approve. Whether this is one of those cases is the real question.

nwh 13y ago

I wouldn't call Edward Snowden a "bad enough dude", but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he is on the US governments "kill list" either. You are confused; assuming that being put on a list has any reason or due process.

eksith 13y ago

You're assuming he was a "bad enough dude" with no evidence to support that assertion. The burden of proof is always on the accuser. If he was accused of being worthy of death, let's see some documentation to support that. At present there are no answers, no explanations, no reasons given besides his death and the fact he and his father were on a hit list.

bwaldrep 13y ago
No explanations given by the author. Here is some general background on the father: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki Edit: Note I am not defending the killing of the grandson by any means. However, I did notice that the father was tried in a court in Yemen, and the judge ordered him to be apprehended "dead or alive." http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2010/11/08/Cleric-says-American-devils-must-die/UPI-61991289245343 http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2010/11/08/Cleric-say... I was just surprised that people are so suspicious of any claim that the father was anything other than an ordinary citizen minding his own business, yet accept the narrative presented in the original article at face value. eksith asked for evidence that the father was a "bad dude." I provided some. It is perfectly fine to argue that this isn't justification for death, but that wasn't briancaw's point. This merely seems to indicate that the narrator might not be providing the most balanced perspective.
- kevingadd 13y ago
  Yeah, a real dangerous dude. All his alleged crimes basically involve talking to people; no wonder we sent some drones over there to wipe him and all his relatives out. Note that there's not even any concrete factual accusations of him being involved with planning actual attacks, just 'he spoke to', 'was associated with', 'allegedly involved in'. You really think something that flimsy is worth murdering dozens of people with a drone? I would certainly hope that if a few disgruntled people alleged that you were involved in crimes, you'd actually get a fair trial instead of a remote control execution. But maybe that's just not the world we live in.
  - 13y ago

Ygg2 13y ago

Right. Because as we know American admininstration is a infalible agency that only puts horrible, horrible terrorist on its hit list. Like Snowden. Or Santa Claus.

briancaw2 13y ago
All I'm saying is that some guy who's son was a bad guy (look at his wiki page, I won't enumerate offenses) writes an Op-Ed in NyTimes and everyone starts taking his word as scripture. I'm not saying killing his grandson was right or wrong, I'm just saying a skimming of the facts he presents followed by a scathing anti-American rant is uncalled for.
- Ygg2 13y ago
  I'm not disputing that guy was shady, but I see they don't have much evidence against him but he got on a kill list/killed. Do all people on kill list have so little evidence against them?
- sergiosgc 13y ago
  The important facts do not need independence on the part of the author: 1. His grandson was American, so the US military establishment assassinated an American outside the courts 2. The attack was performed in a third country, which is an act of war. Not fuzzy war-on-terror or other nonsense. War, classic version. Just reverse sides and imagine US' reaction on drone attacks on its soil affecting civilians.

grey-area 13y ago

This woman's son was a bad enough dude that he got put on a terrorist kill list. Who checks who goes on this list? Which public court checked the facts and pronounced him and his family guilty? What of the right of the accused to a fair trial, no matter which country they come from? If you're going to flagrantly violate international law and assassinate suspects and their families without trial, what confidence can we have that other laws won't be broken? What confidence can we have that this list was created and maintained in good faith and with due process when it is maintained in secret and the execution is so careless? The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen....The attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., said only that Abdulrahman was not “specifically targeted,” raising more questions than he answered. This drone strike was apparently on a restaurant - I find it mind-boggling that you'd try to defend such actions by saying he was on a secret list. What about the other people in the restaurant at the time, and the innocent members of his family? Does the Obama administration consider the family of people on a kill-list fair game now? And the people who eat close to them in a restaurant too? Regardless of whether this narrator is reliable or the victim a 'bad dude', I don't find it acceptable that the government can kill whoever they want without trial, and without public evidence. If they do this in restaurants in Yemen, why not restaurants inside the states too?

cenhyperion 13y ago

Cool, can I get a link to the public court ruling that decided that he was a terrorist and to give him the death sentence?

gcb0 13y ago

Regardless if he's a bad guy or not, give me the budget those drones work with, and i can devise something that does not kill a dozen innocent, decent, civilians for every bad guy you terminate. this is criminal. period.

belorn 13y ago

Thats a horrible argument, and a circular one at that. If we had a brutal police beating leading to the death of a 16 year old child, do we argue that the grandparent must be unreliable because a other family member to the child was also killed by the police? after all, that family member must have done something to anger the police...

briancaw2 13y ago
I'm not willing to go so far to say that parents should be held accountable for their children's actions. I am very confident that it's ok to question the validity of statements made by the parent of a well known, high ranking terrorist.

peterkelly 13y ago

Guilt by association. Sometimes, you know, people adopt very different ideologies and personal goals than other members of their family. Criminals and terrorists should be punished. Not their (innocent) parents or children.

briancaw2 13y ago
Questioning the validity of an OpEd by association. I'm ok with that.
bigiain 13y ago
Hmmm… Guilt by association. The six degrees of Kevin Bacon. The NSA archiving and cross-indexing all email metadata that traverses internet backbone unencrypted or lands in a PRISM partner's mail system. How many social graph edges do you suppose you need to be away from Anwar al-Awlaki to be able to safely eat at open air restaurants in Yemen? (Bonus question: How connected is "the global social graph", and does there exists a number of edges that connects everybody on the internet?)

Volpe 13y ago

So if I decide to put someone on a kill list, there is no burden of proof on me to explain why, by killing that someone my action is righteous, legal and moral? I'm pretty sure the US constitution disagrees with that premise, and should protect any US citizen from such a situation.

briancaw2 13y ago
Do me the favor of putting my statement and yours side by side. Show the claim I made (that we should scrutinize the validity of the OpEd) vs what you refuted.
- Volpe 13y ago
  > This guy's son was a bad enough dude that he got put on a terrorist kill list. That's exactly what I responded to. I ignored your conclusion, because of your invalid premise.
  - briancaw2 13y ago
    I think we're nitpicking here. I think that the probability of someone not being impartial given their son was on a kill list is greater than someone who's son wasn't...etc. Anyway, I 100% agree that "there is a burden of proof on me to explain why, by killing that someone my action is righteous, legal and moral"
bigiain 13y ago
You're familiar with Senator Edward Kennedy's inclusion on the no-fly list? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug... Personally - I'd like to see _much_ more transparency and accountability in the compilation and justification for most sorts of "government lists", and I fear the people in charge of "the kill list" which manages to kill people who are '… not “specifically targeted,”' have proven to be inadequately discriminating at the task…
- 13y ago

locusm 13y ago

Who holds authority over this list? Isnt this a complete failure of the "Separation of powers" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers

sveme 13y ago

Wait a second. The whole article is not about the son, it is about his grandson. No where in the article it is said that his grandson was a terrorist or has been associated with terrorism (even then, it would not have been right), quite the opposite. Summary: stop with the red herring of talking about the known associations of his son with terrorism - we are talking about his innocent grandson.

madaxe 13y ago

Hey guys, Briancaw2 is a terrorist! Lynch him!!! See how that works? Just because your government said it does not make it automatically true.

jurassic 13y ago

> This guy's son was a bad enough dude that he got put on a terrorist kill list. There is no oversight in this process, and even if there were that provides no justice for the innocent people at the cafe where the grandson was killed. This whole story disgusts me.