{"id":106350,"date":"2014-01-17T15:26:53","date_gmt":"2014-01-17T15:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=106350"},"modified":"2014-01-17T15:26:53","modified_gmt":"2014-01-17T15:26:53","slug":"pentagon-nsa-officials-say-want-snowden-extrajudicially-assassinated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/pentagon-nsa-officials-say-want-snowden-extrajudicially-assassinated\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon & NSA Officials say They Want Snowden Extrajudicially Assassinated"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Sirota\u00a0<\/strong>
\nRINF Alternative News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

President Obama\u00a0claims<\/a>\u00a0the right to extrajudicially execute American citizens, keeps a so-called \u201ckill list,\u201d and has bragged he\u2019s\u00a0\u201creally good at killing people<\/a>.\u201d This isn\u2019t bluster. Obama has backed this up with action, having\u00a0killed<\/a>\u00a0U.S. citizens \u2013 including a\u00a016-year-old boy<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 without charging, much less convicting, any of them with a single crime.<\/p>\n

The implications are profound (and profoundly disturbing), and raise questions about Americans\u2019 constitutional right to due process, the most basic constraints on presidential power, and our treatment of whistleblowers. Indeed, how can anyone expect those who witness executive-branch crimes to blow the whistle when the head of the executive branch asserts the right to instantly execute anyone he pleases at any time?<\/p>\n

All of this may sound theoretical, academic, or even fantastical, straight out of a dystopian sci-fi flick. But it isn\u2019t. It is very real. After all, only a few months ago, the\u00a0chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee<\/a>\u00a0publicly offered to help extrajudicially assassinate NSAwhistleblower<\/a>\u00a0Edward Snowden. And now, according to a harrowing new report that just hit the Internet, top NSA and Pentagon officials are doing much the same, even after\u00a0court rulings<\/a>\u00a0and<\/a>\u00a0disclosures<\/a>\u00a0have\u00a0concluded<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0Snowden is a whistleblower who exposed serious government crimes.<\/p>\n

In an article headlined\u00a0\u201cAmerica\u2019s Spies Want Edward Snowden\u00a0Dead,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Buzzfeed\u2019s Benny Johnson reports:<\/p>\n

\u2018In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an American,\u00a0I personally would go and kill him myself<\/strong>,\u2019 a current NSA analyst told BuzzFeed. \u2018A lot of people share this sentiment.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I would love to put a bullet in his head<\/strong>,\u2019 one Pentagon official, a former special forces officer, said bluntly\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2018His name is cursed every day over here,\u2019 a defense contractor told BuzzFeed, speaking from an overseas Intelligence collections base. \u2018Most everyone I talk to says he needs to be tried and hung, forget the trial and just hang him<\/strong>.\u2019<\/p>\n

One Army intelligence officer even offered BuzzFeed a chillingly detailed fantasy.<\/p>\n

\u2018I think if we had the chance, we would end it very quickly<\/strong>,\u2019 he said. \u2018Just casually walking on the streets of Moscow, coming back from buying his groceries. Going back to his flat and he is casually poked by a passerby. He thinks nothing of it at the time starts to feel a little woozy and thinks it\u2019s a parasite from the local water. He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he dies in the shower.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Buzzfeed characterizes this as government officials merely \u201cseeth(ing) in very personal terms.\u201d However, with a top legislative branch leader offering to assist in the very extrajudicial assassination now being promoted by NSA and Pentagon officials, and with the executive branch categorically asserting the right to order such an extrajudicial assassination of a U.S. citizen, this is more than mere \u201cseething.\u201d These are outright threats.<\/p>\n

Think about it: As President Obama would no doubt acknowledge, the NSA and Pentagon are not independent agencies. As president he oversees and runs them. That is, they are overseen and run by the same Obama administration that has asserted the right to execute American citizens without indictment, trial or conviction. While these may just be officials speaking off the cuff, their language \u00a0(\u201cMost everyone I talk to\u201d\/\u201dA lot of people share this sentiment\u201d) makes clear that their sentiment represents a pervasive culture\u00a0throughout<\/em>\u00a0the government \u2013 again, the same government that not-so-coincidentally asserts the right to kill people in exactly the way they discuss.<\/p>\n

It all leads back to that same harrowing question: how can Americans who witness executive-branch crimes feel comfortable or even physically safe blowing the whistle on said crimes?<\/p>\n

The answer in the Obama era is: they can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

David Sirota is a best-selling author whose new book “Back to Our Future<\/a>” is now available. He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and is a contributing writer at\u00a0Salon.com<\/a>. E-mail him atds@davidsirota.com<\/a>, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at\u00a0www.davidsirota.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Sirota\u00a0 RINF Alternative News President Obama\u00a0claims\u00a0the right to extrajudicially execute American citizens, keeps a so-called \u201ckill list,\u201d and has bragged he\u2019s\u00a0\u201creally good at killing people.\u201d This isn\u2019t bluster. Obama has backed this up with action, having\u00a0killed\u00a0U.S. citizens \u2013 including a\u00a016-year-old boy\u00a0\u2014 without charging, much less convicting, any of them with a single crime. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-106350","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}