noteworthy wrote:
Glenn Greenwald:

For anyone who supports the general Obama "war on terror" approach or specifically his claimed power to target even US citizens for execution without charges, it's impossible to object to Graham's arguments on principled or theoretical grounds. Once you endorse the "whole-globe-is-a-battlefield" theory, then there's no principled way to exclude US soil.

FWIW, I think thats BS. The Obama admin has not claimed the right to execute people on US soil without charges. The legal rationale for targeted killings is as follows:

(1) An informed, high level-official of the U.S. government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States.

(2) Capture is infeasible, and the United States continues to monitor whether capture becomes feasible; and

(3) the operation would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles.

Capture would not be infeasible on US soil.

Activists have been engaging in a straw man burning exercise with regard to targeted killings by ignoring the constraints that have been placed on them and then arguing that these kinds of actions should be constrained somehow. The purpose is to encourage more people to become activists, rather than to have a serious discussion about the actual policy regarding targeted killings.

RE: Think Of It As A Data Set