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The Second Circuit has just compelled the release of a memo, prepared by then Acting Assistant Attorney General David J. Barron (who now sits on the First Circuit Court of Appeals) that purports to outline the legal rationale for President Obama’s summary execution of American citizens on foreign soil. 

 

Unfortunately, the transparent legal and logical absurdity of the memo is the only form of transparency we are likely to obtain from the Administration.

 

The memo argues that the central legal issue governing Obama’s extra-territorial drone killings (and in principal other such killings) centers around proper construction of 18 U.S.C. §1119(b). That piece of law provides that “[a] person who, being a national of the United States, kills or attempts to kill a national of the United States while such national is outside the United States but within the jurisdiction of another country shall be punished as provided under sections 1111, 1112, and 1113.”

 

The statutory issue in regard to Obama’s drone killings of extra-territorial American citizens flows from the fact that the §1119(b) language indicates that those who perform such killings (which includes presidents who authorize such killings, which is why the memo was drafted) are to be punished, if at all, in accordance with sections 1111, 1112, and 1113. 

 

Therefore, the operative question is whether either of 1111, or 1112, or 1113 applies to Obama.  If any of these sections applies to Obama, prosecution for his summary executions is lawfully required, regardless of whether one supports his summary killings or not.  This is because, once again, the express language of §1119(b) covers killings of U.S. nationals on foreign soil by persons who are nationals of the United States, and Obama is the latter sort of person, is he not?

 

read more at American Thinker:

 

http://americanthinker.com/2014/06/the_drone_kill_memo_obamas_murderous_logic.html