Keep the decision entirely in military circles, and you’ll ensure that it’s military necessity not politics that determines who’s targeted…

There’s been an HVT list in every single war we’ve fought… The only reason this one gets attention, is that some folks think they can make political hay with it, and the fact that some of the HVTs are being targeted outside places we have troops on the ground…

That said, whether you like it or not, country of origin matters. Not because it should matter … it didn’t matter whether the enemy was Chinese, Russian, Cambodian, Laotian, or Vietnamese … but because the Left find it a convenient way to push their anti-war goals.

That said, the most convenient rebuttal would be a clarification of the circumstances under which a CLN is issued… but for that you’d need to nuke the brain-eater under the State Department from orbit and rebuild….

Mew

* Certificate of Loss of Nationality

It does dictate a process for a citizen accused by anyone (including government) of committing a capital crime. I can’t say that I have all the answers for how that should be sorted out vis a vis extradition in hostile territories, but “let the President plan their targeted assassinations as he sees fit and God will sort them out” strikes me as such an unserious answer, that I must once again wonder at how one could so quickly miss the implications of same. An “are-they-bad-enough-bad guys” criterion is both incredibly vague, and subject to no one’s discretion but the President — it solves no problems. One might as well just say, I trust my betters to handle the issue, for that is essentially what your position boils down to.

I don’t see the objection to requiring warrants for every wiretap, since we cannot know who’s actually holding the phone. This isn’t, by the way, “tying the hands of the CIA”. It’s asking them to behave like they give a rat’s left nut about the rights of those they’re protecting.

Mew

That’s my issue…

Personally, I’d rather the HVT list be in the hands of the theater commander (CETNCOM), rather than POTUS…

It’s not supposed to be a political consideration, and we shouldn’t be concerning ourselves with anything beyond ‘are they bad-enough-bad-guys to make it worth a $70k missile shot to kill them’….

Al-Awaki? Definitely. Functional-equivalent of a full-Colonel…. Instrumental in multiple attack attempts… No, I don’t care where he was born….

The standard I envision is:

Citizen-at-home, or citizen overseas for the purpose of legal action? Warrant.

Non-citizen anywhere, or Citizen overseas for military/intelegence purposes? No warrant needed.

Probably the best way to determine it, is to just leave the exclusionary rule as it is for criminal prosecutions… And allow the intelligence services to do their thing for situations that don’t end in a courtroom… Information-sharing between agencies would be OK, but there would be no prosecutions brought based on ‘warrantless wiretaps’ (that evidence would be inadmissible in court) or the ‘fruit’ thereof…

/jus kidding

Mew

As an added bonus, we’re not allowed to know who’s on the list or whether they really have joined Al-Qaeda. Top-secret national security type stuff, doncha know.

To sum it up, we’ll be killing citizens who we don’t know about who may have connections to Al-Qaeda, all without Constitutional sanction or democratic oversight, or any knowledge of what’s being done at all. But not to worry, the President will be handling this from top to bottom, and we’ve always had men of unimpeachable character occupying that office.

We need a standard that requires warrants for all wiretaps used to bring charges against US citizens…

But doesn’t require a warrant for military/intelligence activities that will not result in criminal prosecution…

So, in your hypothetical, if your brother was being wiretapped on suspicion of, let’s say, insider trading… Then no, he doesn’t give up his rights…;

If he joins AQ and starts levying war against the USA… Well, sorry, those folks don’t get to hide under ‘US Citizenship’… Send in the air strike (and if you have to wire-tap the guy to confirm targeting info, it’s obvious that a warrant is irrelevant in deciding weather to blow someone up or not)….