Obama- The bad Gift that just keeps on giving

The Washington Post reported in January 2010 that “U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people, among them six of 15 top leaders of a regional al-Qaeda affiliate, according to senior administration officials.

As part of the operations, Obama approved a Dec. 24 strike against a compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting with other regional al-Qaeda leaders. Although he was not the focus of the strike and was not killed, he has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC, military officials said. The officials, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the operations.”

The Post then listed a “correction” that they inaccurately reported Obama approving killing a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki. (Anwar al-Awlaki is the Muslim cleric that was in correspondence with Nadal Hassan, the crazy US Army major that when on a shooting spree at Fort Hood.)

Well, turns out the Post was right after all:

 Obama orders US-born cleric to be shot on sight

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has authorized the killing of a radical Muslim cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen believed to be hiding in Yemen and thought to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the U.S. to participating in them, according to published reports. Al-Awlaki, 38, recently was added to the CIA target list after a special government review of his activities, prompted by his status as a U.S. citizen, U.S. officials told the Los Angeles Times. He is to be captured or killed, the newspaper said.

That the Obama administration might green-light the assassination of an American to combat terror was first signaled by the Director of Intelligence, Admiral (ret) Dennis Blair in February.

"We take direct actions against terrorists," he said at a congressional hearing. "If we think direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that." He did not name Awlaki at the time, however.

While taking this guy out might be a good idea, is it really a good idea to have Presidential authority to declare a US citizen a high value target for execution? Shouldn’t there be some sort of legal proceeding, like a Grand Jury type deliberation ? I mean I think back to January, when his administration issued a revamp of DoD Directive 1404.10.

The new 1404.10 cancels the prior directive of the same designation ("Emergency-Essential (E-E) DoD U.S. Citizen Civilian Employees"), which was issued in 1992 under President Clinton. The 1992 directive specifically deals with overseas deployments of civilian personnel. It does not mention terms like "restoration of order" or "stability operations", prominently featured in the new directive.

The 1992 directive mentions the term "overseas" no fewer than 33 times.

The 2009 directive does not mention the term "overseas" even once.