Presidential Assassinations of U.S. Citizens

There's an article by Glenn Greenwald in Salon with this title. It seems like an over-the-top title, until you get to the three paragraphs below. Make the jump to learn more.

Greenwald bases his article on a Washington Post story by Dana Priest. The story is about US military operations in Yemen. Greenwald notes that, then gets to the real focus of his article. He writes:

But buried in Priest's article is her revelation that American citizens are now being placed on a secret "hit list" of people whom the President has personally authorized to be killed:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. . . .

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, "it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them," a senior administration official said. "They are then part of the enemy."

Now doesn't that just make you warm and fuzzy all over, to know that the CIA or the military can assassinate you in your bed, or while walking down the street, just because your name is on a list? Someone turns you in, some analyst makes the wrong connections, and suddenly your wife is trying to get the body back here for the funeral.
Go read the article. It's a good examination of the issues at stake here, including the fundamental right to trial-by-jury. And Greenwald makes the distinction between actual combat situations and assassinations.
Here it is in a nutshell. See if you aren't troubled by this:

Just think about this for a minute.  Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests."  They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations. ...
The people on this "hit list" are likely to be killed while at home, sleeping in their bed, driving in a car with friends or family, or engaged in a whole array of other activities.  More critically still, the Obama administration -- like the Bush administration before it -- defines the "battlefield" as the entire world.  So the President claims the power to order U.S. citizens killed anywhere in the world, while engaged even in the most benign activities carried out far away from any actual battlefield, based solely on his say-so and with no judicial oversight or other checks.  That's quite a power for an American President to claim for himself.

Yes, I'd say it is.