FYI - From Michael Scheuer/Non-Intervention.com.

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-ADY "A Regular Guy On The Issues"

Use the Constitution to prevent war with Syria

By mike | Published: August 22, 2013

Syria is getting to be an old and boring story, but it still is a deadly come-hither trap in which America may yet be bloodily ensnared by its bipartisan interventionists.

By now the story is familiar. A government in Damascus that is officially recognized by all the Great Powers, the UN, and other major international organizations is attacked by domestic dissidents who are supported and militarily powered by al-Qaeda and other mujahedin, and funded by the Saudi, Emirati, and Qatari regimes. The “International Community,” as usual, sides with any set of miscreants that can utter the word “democracy” and thereby ensures the currently ongoing bloodbath in Syria. President Obama, his party, and the Republicans also side with al-Qaeda and the Islamists against Asaad in a piece of thinking that is perfectly logical when you accept that none of that crowd cares about preserving America’s security and financial viability, or about how many American lives they waste.

Now, we have fresh reports that the Asaad regime has used chemical weapons against areas belonging to the Syrian government’s Islamist enemies and that we have — perhaps? maybe ? probably? certainly? — crossed Obama’s much-vaunted red line for sending the U.S. military to teach Asaad a lesson about how to be a good citizen of the world, or at least to be more kind to Syrian citizens than Obama ever intends to be toward U.S. citizens.

Obama is, of course, consulting with his interventionist brains trust — starting with the towering intellects of Biden, Kerry, Brennan, and Susan Rice — and the president will certainly order those senile Republican champions of all war, all the time, McCain and Graham, to demand a U.S. military assault on Asaad’s government.

Amidst the developing momentum for the U.S. to enter another war that will strengthen al-Qaeda and its allies — like the one Obama fought in Libya and the anti-democratic one in Egypt he authorized this month — perhaps it is worth reviewing three salient and crystal clear facts:

–1st : The United States has no genuine national-security interests in Syria. If all Syrians turn up dead tomorrow morning it would have precisely no impact on security of the United States. Syrians share this characteristic with those living in most areas of the world outside North America, which is the main reason that America would fight very few wars if it ever begins to elect adults to the presidency and the Congress.

–2nd: Unless America is attacked first, no U.S. president has the constitutional authority to take America to war without a formal declaration of war by Congress. Asaad surely is not going to stage an amphibious invasion of America, although a month-long visit from Syria’s Republican Guard could do nothing but good for the now-occupied Political/Hollywood summer-vacation cesspools in the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard. Therefore, the Senate and House leaders ought to tell Ol’ Red-Line Barack that there will be dollars and American lives for a Syrian war only if (a) he formally asks for a declaration of war and (b) the Congress believes his justification for a war and votes in favor of taking 330 million Americans into an unnecessary war against the Syrian Superpower.

–3rd : Today’s status quo in Syria benefits U.S. national-security interests without Washington having to take any action at all:

–a.) The Syrian army, Lebanese Hizaballah guerrillas, and Iran’s soldiers are killing large numbers of America’s enemies among al-Qaeda, its allies, and their supporters. Iran and Syria also are spending themselves further into bankruptcy.

–b.) At the same time, Al-Qaeda and its allies — America’s enemies — are killing large numbers of the Syrian army, Lebanese Hizballah guerrillas, and Iran’s soldiers, all of whom Washington describes as America’s true-blue enemies.

–c.) And much of this mayhem is being at least partially facilitated by the money and expensive equipment being sent to each side by other of America’s enemies — Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, for example.

For all of these realistic, common sense, beneficial-to-America, and — dare I say? — America First reasons, as well as for the even more important constitutional reasons cited above, Senate and House leaders ought to lay down the constitutional law — that is, no Congressional declaration, no war — to the supposed constitutional lawyer Obama and thereby make him obey the law for the first time in his presidency.

The President's Secret Kill List.

FYI - From Judge Andrew Napolitano and Reason.com.  As someone who has spent the last 12 years in the military and a veteran of the war in Iraq, I find this very, very troubling!!!

-ADY "A Regular Guy On The Issues"

Obama's Secret Kill List

The essence of our values is the rule of law, not the rule of presidents.

Andrew Napolitano | May 31, 2012

The leader of the government regularly sits down with his senior generals and spies and advisers and reviews a list of the people they want him to authorize their agents to kill. They do this every Tuesday morning when the leader is in town. The leader once condemned any practice even close to this, but now relishes the killing because he has convinced himself that it is a sane and sterile way to keep his country safe and himself in power. The leader, who is running for re-election, even invited his campaign manager to join the group that decides whom to kill.

This is not from a work of fiction, and it is not describing a series of events in the Kremlin or Beijing or Pyongyang. It is a fair summary of a 6,000-word investigative report in The New York Times earlier this week about the White House of Barack Obama. Two Times journalists, Jo Becker and Scott Shane, painstakingly and chillingly reported that the former lecturer in constitutional law and liberal senator who railed against torture and Gitmo now weekly reviews a secret kill list, personally decides who should be killed and then dispatches killers all over the world -- and some of his killers have killed Americans.

We have known for some time that President Obama is waging a private war. By that I mean he is using the CIA on his own -- and not the military after congressional authorization -- to fire drones at thousands of persons in foreign lands, usually while they are riding in a car or a truck. He has done this both with the consent and over the objection of the governments of the countries in which he has killed. He doesn't want to talk about this, but he doesn't deny it. How chilling is it that David Axelrod -- the president's campaign manager -- has periodically seen the secret kill list? Might this be to keep the killings politically correct?

Can the president legally do this? In a word: No.

The president cannot lawfully order the killing of anyone, except according to the Constitution and federal law. Under the Constitution, he can only order killing using the military when the U.S. has been attacked, or when an attack is so imminent and certain that delay would cost innocent American lives, or in pursuit of a congressional declaration of war. Under federal law, he can only order killing using civilians when a person has been sentenced lawfully to death by a federal court and the jury verdict and the death sentence have been upheld on appeal. If he uses the military to kill, federal law requires public reports of its use to Congress and congressional approval after 180 days.

The U.S. has not declared war since World War II. If the president knows that an attack on our shores is imminent, he'd be hard-pressed to argue convincingly that a guy in a truck in a desert 10,000 miles from here -- no matter his intentions -- poses a threat to the U.S. so imminent and certain that he needs to be killed on the spot in order to save the lives of Americans who would surely die during the time it would take to declare war on the country that harbors him, or during the time it would take to arrest him. Under no circumstances may he use civilian agents for non-judicial killing. Surely, CIA agents can use deadly force to protect themselves, but they may not use it offensively. Federal laws against murder apply to the president and to all federal agents and personnel, wherever they go on the planet.

Since 9/11, the United States government has set up national security systems that function not under the Constitution, not under the Geneva Conventions, not under the rule of law, not under the rules of war, not under federal law, but under a new secret system crafted by the Bush administration and personally directed by Obama, the same Obama who condemned these rules as senator and then extended them as president. In the name of fighting demons in pick-up trucks and wars that Congress has never declared, the government shreds our rights, taps our cellphones, reads our emails, kills innocents abroad, strip searches 87-year-old grandmothers in wheelchairs and 3-year-old babies in their mothers' arms, and offers secrecy when the law requires accountability.

Obama has argued that his careful consideration of each person he orders killed and the narrow use of deadly force are an adequate and constitutional substitute for due process. The Constitution provides for no such thing. He has also argued that the use of drones to do his killing is humane since they are "surgical" and only kill their targets. We know that is incorrect. And he has argued that these killings are consistent with our values. What is he talking about? The essence of our values is the rule of law, not the rule of presidents.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written six books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is "It Is Dangerous To Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom." 

Reason needs

More Terror Suspects Trying To Fly To The United States!

FYI...Some good food for thought

-Aaron


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National security team fails to inspire confidence

Officials’ handling of Christmas Day attack looks like amateur hour.

Ever since the botched Christmas Day plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, the Obama administration's national security officials have struggled to assure the public that they know exactly what they're doing.

So far, they're achieving the opposite, and they're needlessly adding some jitters in the process:

-- CIA Director Leon Panetta and other top officials agreed last week that an attack by al-Qaeda is likely in the next three to six months. The warning is bound to frighten the public, with no obvious benefit beyond the ability to say "I told you so."

-- Top administration officials revealed last week that bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was again cooperating with authorities. Great. But the news pretty much negates earlier claims that no intelligence was lost when Abdulmutallab was prematurely read his rights.

-- In Senate testimony, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair had a "Duh!" moment as he hit his forehead and acknowledged that authorities fumbled the initial questioning of Abdulmutallab by failing to call in the high-value interrogation group, which was created to question terrorism suspects. Refreshingly candid, yes, but not a statement that inspires confidence. Especially when the same day, at another Senate hearing, FBI Director Robert Mueller testified that the high-value unit was still in its "formation stages" and that "there was no time" to get it to Detroit.

All of this follows the string of blunders that allowed Abdulmutallab to carry explosives onto a U.S.- bound plane in the first place. The chaos that followed his arrest now looks just as bad.

According to news accounts, Abdulmutallab was questioned by, and cooperated with, the FBI for a grand total of 50 minutes before going into surgery. When he emerged, he became combative, asked for a lawyer and was read his rights. (At the time, remember, no one knew whether other bombers had been dispatched simultaneously.)

A decision of such magnitude should have involved the top brass in intelligence and law enforcement. But Blair, Mueller and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have all testified they were not consulted. Mueller said the decision to read the suspect his Miranda rights was made by agents in the field.

In television appearances on Sunday, John Brennan, the White House deputy national security adviser, chafed at the criticism the intelligence community is getting. He said it was demoralizing and urged cheerleading instead. But cheerleading doesn't get problems fixed, and it's undeniable that there are plenty to address.

Some problems, such as the post-arrest misjudgments, are of the Obama administration's making. Others, such as the intelligence failures preceding the incident, are institutional. There is, however, a common denominator: slipshod coordination leading to bad judgment.

If Panetta is right about another attack, there's not much time for national security officials to get their act together.