Jeremy Scahill on Obama's War Machine, American Assassinations & Journalism
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By Sierra Adamson talks to Jeremy Scahill
We Are Change
Saturday, Nov 17, 2012
Sierra Adamson talks to Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater and writer for The Nation, about some of the under-reported issues such as drone strikes in the Middle East, Obama's kill list/Disposition Matrix, NDAA, use of the Espionage Act against whistle-blowers. Jeremy talks about the assassination of the 16 year old American citizen, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki*, who was killed by a drone strike authorized by President Obama and the response Robert Gibbs* recently gave us when we questioned him on it. He discusses the left's disregard of their anti-war principles in favor of being loyal to leaders in their own party and the war propaganda that is fed to Americans through mass media.
Robert Lane Gibbs is a senior campaign adviser for US President Barack Obama. Previously, he was the 28th White House Press Secretary. Gibbs was the communications director for then-U.S. Senator Obama and his 2008 presidential campaign.
Robert Gibbs was born in Auburn, Alabama and now lives in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife, Mary Catherine Gibbs and their son. When Obama chose him as his communications chief he referred to Gibbs as his "one-person Southern focus group" and welcomed him to be part of his close-knit team that included strategist David Axelrod, campaign director David Plouffe, and research director Devorah Adler. When the corporate media questioned Obama's religious past, Gibbs said that claims that Obama is a Muslim were "malicious, irresponsible charges."
In the video above, reporter Sierra Adamson interviewed Gibbs about the President Obama's "targeted killing" of 16-year-old American citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. She asked Gibbs how Obama's "kill list" can be justified:
ADAMSON: ...It's an American citizen that is being targeted without due process, without trial. And, he's underage. He's a minor.
GIBBS: I would suggest that you should have a far more responsible father if they are truly concerned about the well being of their children. I don't think becoming an al Qaeda jihadist terrorist is the best way to go about doing your business.
Here are excerpts from Tom Junod's description of 16 year old Abdulrahman, his father and Obama:
"He was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, who was also born in America, who was also an American citizen, and who was killed by drone two weeks before his son was, along with another American citizen named Samir Khan... When he (Anwar) was killed, on September 30, 2011, President Obama made a speech about it; a few months later, when the Obama administraton's public-relations campaign about its embrace of what has come to be called "targeted killing" reached its climax in a front-page story in the New York Times that presented the President of the United States as the last word in deciding who lives and who dies, he was quoted as saying that the decision to put Anwar al-Awlaki on the kill list -- and then to kill him -- was "an easy one." But Abdulrahman al-Awlaki wasn't on an American kill list.
"... He was a boy who hadn't seen his father in two years, since his father had gone into hiding. He was a boy who knew his father was on an American kill list and who snuck out of his family's home in the early morning hours of September 4, 2011, to try to find him. He was a boy who was still searching for his father when his father was killed, and who, on the night he himself was killed, was saying goodbye to the second cousin with whom he'd lived while on his search, and the friends he'd made. He was a boy among boys, then; a boy among boys eating dinner by an open fire along the side of a road when an American drone came out of the sky and fired the missiles that killed them all."
Junod further comments:
"In fact, what is most striking about the death of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki is both the lack of outrage and the lack of information about it — or, to be more exact, the lack of outrage over the lack of information. I spent the better part of this past spring researching and writing a story for the August issue of Esquire entitled "The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama," which explores how President Obama's expansive embrace of the power to kill individuals identified as America's enemies has transformed not only his presidency but probably all American presidencies to follow."
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