At the Heritage Foundation yesterday, Pentagon general counsel Jeh Johnson got asked about the legal rationale for killing Anwar Awlaqi. Peter Finn reports:
Bipartisan calls have been made for the Obama administration to release its legal analysis justifying the targeting of a U.S. citizen. Johnson said he thinks that “at some point” the administration will have more to say on the subject.
So when the ACLU (for whom my wife works, full disclosure) sues the government to learn precisely this rationale, it's a state secret which cannot be disclosed lest national security be threatened. A couple weeks of pressure after the fact of the kill, and maybe "at some point" it's... no longer a state secret?
I suppose a consistent-enough and uncynical response would be: Ah, but Awlaqi's dead now, so no harm can come from knowing why Obama thought it legally permissible to kill him without due process. Perhaps. But taking the administration at face value, that would involve saying the rationale for killing Awlaki only applied to Awlaki, and not any other American citizen believed to be a member of al-Qaida. And if that's true, then the Obama administration is playing legal Calvinball, making decisions based on individual cases, rather than consistent legal criteria.
These are the dwindling options facing the Obama administration now that it's gone down the road of killing an American citizen without due process and covering up the rationale for doing so under the veil of state secrecy. Welcome to absurdity. I hope you don't stay too long.
Update: Naturally, Marcy was here first.
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