By Madison Ruppert

Editor of End the Lie

Do not pretend it is as simple as the Obama administration, the intelligence community is large, cancerous and dangerous. It must be investigated and all who are complicit in these breaches of the Constitution must be arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. (Photo Credit: CIA.gov)

The killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, suspected of having links to al Qaeda but never charged with any crime, signaled a new era in the U.S.’s “war on terror” in which even American citizens were fair game for extrajudicial executions.

This execution, carried out by a CIA controlled drone in Yemen without any due process whatsoever, pales in comparison to a revelation so significant, even the mainstream media was forced to cover it.

What was this revelation? Only the fact that a secret group of U.S. officials has the power, without any laws giving them said power, to sentence anyone on earth to death without any semblance of due process or justice.

As evidenced by the killing of al-Awlaki and another American Samir Khan (the editor of the English-language al Qaeda magazine, Inspire), this includes American citizens who have never been so much as charged, let alone convicted of any crime whatsoever.

I don’t know about you, but I find it a bit frightening that you or I could be on a literal kill list for any reason or no reason at all.

However, I must implore you to fight against the instinctual fears raised by such knowledge as it is clear that these types of moves on behalf of the American government serve to stifle dissent and criticism and we cannot allow that to happen.

Let us also not fall for the ridiculous politicized rhetoric that attributes the death panel solely to Obama, who has proven himself to be nothing more than a puppet serving those who put him in power.

One can witness this spin in the somewhat laughable conservative publication The Washington Times which was established by the founder of the Unification Church (often regarded as a cult also known as “Moonies”), Sun Myung Moon.

In a deceptive move, they entitle an article “Obama’s secret death panel” when in reality it is a National Security Council (NSC)-run death panel.

Similarly, AntiWar.com calls it “Obama’s death panel” which fails to recognize how deep these systems go in our government.

I am in no way defending Obama, he indeed is implicated in these death panels and should be prosecuted for his role.

That being said, by pretending it is Obama’s death panel, we are duped into thinking it would change if Obama was removed from power. This is nothing short of ignorant.

Would removing Obama suddenly change our national security policy and over a decade of breaches of the Geneva Conventions in the name of the “war on terror”?

No, it would not. I refuse to pretend that it is as simple as one administration or one leader. All one must do is look at the continuity of agenda between the Bush and Obama administrations to see proof of the fact that it is not just the Obama administration or Obama himself.

That is not to say that Obama is not responsible for the extrajudicial execution of an American citizen, indeed he is and should be held accountable and prosecuted for his role.

Reuters  revealed this in an article published today in which anonymous officials reported that Obama was not required to personally approve the addition of an individual to the list.

Yet in total contradiction to this claim, one official claimed that Obama would be notified of the principal individuals on the panel’s decision, thereby directly implicating him in the murder of an American.

The same, again anonymous, individual claimed that if Obama objected, the panel’s decision would be nullified.

Then, a former official claimed that one of the rationalizations behind making the senior officials directly responsible for putting Americans on the kill list was to “’protect’ the president.”

As the AntiWar.com article  aptly points out, this protection is from the possibility of legal action against Obama “on the off chance our Constitution is restored and the criminals presently in charge are held accountable for their actions.”

Unfortunately, this “off chance” is quite distant evidenced by the regular flouting of the Constitution carried out by all branches of our corrupt government.

While it is easy to call them “Obama’s death panels” it would be more accurate to call it “the culmination years of direct attacks on the Constitutional rights of Americans that just happens to be occurring under the joke of the administration that is the Obama administration.”

It is not only Obama that should be arrested and prosecuted for his role in this murder, it is also every single individual in the government who knew about this panel without doing anything about it.

This includes every single source cited by Reuters and others. By staying silent, they were complicit in the murder of an American and others around the world and are guilty of nothing short of treason and are likely accomplices to murder.

If you know your friend is guilty of murder or is planning a murder and you stay silent about it, only to anonymously reveal small aspects of the plan after the fact, are you not somewhat responsible for allowing it to happen?

The disgusting part is that these officials, or the hypothetical friend of the murderer, hide behind legal theories to justify these actions. In order to do so, one must toss aside everything that America is supposed to stand for, including the hypocritical accusations of human rights violations against foreign nations.

One of these legal justifications for extrajudicial execution of American citizens was that Congress permitted such actions by authorizing military force to be used against any and all militants post-September 11^th, 2001.

They claim that it is allowed under international law if a nation is defending itself, yet it is a bit of a stretch to say that we are still under siege at the hands of al Qaeda more than a decade after September 11^th, 2001.

This is especially true when one examines the report of the Homeland Security Policy Institute which claimed that our biggest danger was no longer foreign terrorists like al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) but instead militants of the homegrown variety.

Reuters is also reporting that foreign militants can be added to the kill list without the approval of senior NSC officials. This indicates that Obama is only implicated in the murder of American citizens, further weakening the claim that it is “Obama’s death panel”.

Al-Awlaki was claimed to be not just a radical cleric with an internet presence, but apparently he “began to participate directly in plots against American targets” according to officials cited by Reuters.

Yet, the Obama administration has yet to publish any of the classified evidence proving al-Awlaki was involved in terrorist attacks in an operational role.

Officials cited by Reuters admitted that the intelligence which allegedly showed al-Awlaki having a hands-on role in attacks was not quite iron-clad, in fact, it “was patchy.”

The fact that Americans can be sentenced to death, in secret, with “patchy” evidence which has still yet to be made public should be quite disturbing to anyone who values a free and open society based on the rule of law.

We should not fall for the partisan political spin that attempts to paint the Obama administration as solely responsible for these activities and instead point our fingers at the cancerous intelligence community and the continual support for their illegal activities coming from the White House, nomatter who is currently occupying it.

We must hold Obama and his cronies to account, but we must not stop there, we must dig deep into the intelligence community in order to find and prosecute every single individual who had a hand in these policies and their implementation.

Without doing so, a new puppet will enter the White House and the entire fiasco will happen all over again with the media pointing their fingers at the puppet and not the marionettes and stage hands that operate behind the scenes.

This includes the CIA, the NSC, the NSA, the FBI, the Department of Justice, Department of Defense, Congress, the Senate and every single agency or individual that covers up or supports these operations.

Without a thorough house cleaning, these types of astoundingly un-American breaches of the Constitution, the rule of law and the basis of a free and open society will continue unabated.

One must not even delve into the highly suspicious connections between Anwar al-Awlaki, the intelligence community and the American government to see a real conspiracy that is a threat to every single American, not to mention individuals worldwide.

That is not to say that al-Awlaki’s connections should not be investigated – they can and need to be – but for the skeptics out there, we can show a real criminal conspiracy occurring behind closed doors in the halls of power in the United States of America right now.

This is a criminal conspiracy so vast and shocking, even the mainstream media is covering it, although they will perpetually stop short of calling for the criminals responsible to be held to account, or for our government’s complicity in al Qaeda operations to be investigated.

I, for one, will not stop at merely exposing these hideous truths; I insist that we must hold not only Obama responsible but every single individual who stayed silent or assisted in the development and implementation of these policies.

If we want America to start heading in the direction of justice and freedom, we can’t pretend it is just the White House that is behind this, it is a vast conspiracy beyond what many can comprehend, yet it is real and it is here to stay unless we do something about it.

Call your representatives and inform them that they are traitors who will be held to account for their role in these types of operations. Call the White House to tell them that they are supporting a traitorous administration that would happily murder them if it served their purposes. Do not allow our government to force you into a reflexive position of fear and helplessness. Stand up for your rights and the rights of all peoples in the world to live a happy and healthy life without fear of being murdered by a corrupt imperialistic regime.

I hope the Occupy Wall Street movement can start implementing these demands for social justice along with economic justice as America will be no better if we get control over the banks and Wall Street but not the rogue intelligence community and the support in place throughout Washington.