I'm ready to impeach Obama

I thought that might get your attention.

Let's talk about Anwar al-Awlaki.

For those of you who are only now getting up to speed:  al-Awlaki is an imam.  He's also a US citizen -- born in New Mexico.  Got an engineering degree at Colorado State and a graduate degree in education from San Diego State.  Did I mention that he is a US citizen?  And not a naturalized one but one who was born here, spent the first 7 years of his life here and then returned to get his college education here.  And stayed after that to serve as an imam in Fort Collins, Colorado, at the Al-Ribat al-Islami mosque in San Diego (1996-2000), at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Washington, D.C. (from 2001), and as Muslim chaplain at George Washington University.


Imagine that in the previous paragraph instead of "imam" is says "minister" and instead of "mosque" it says "church."  Or "rabbi" and "synagogue" if you like.

In 1999 the FBI opened an investigation into Mr. al-Awlaki.  It seems that in 1997 and 1998 he was vice-president of the Charitable Society for Social Welfare, a San Diego-based Muslim charity, believed by the FBI to be a front for funneling money to terrorists -- just exactly like those funded by our close allies, the Saudi royal family.  That's the same Saudi royal family that does so much business with our own royal family, the Bushes.  Anyway.  In addition to being vice-president of an Islamic charity that the FBI believed to be a front for terrorism, he was also visited in SD by Ziyad Khaleel, a Qaeda operative who purchased a battery for Osama bin Laden's satellite phone.  Read that last phrase carefully.  He was visited by bin Laden's gofer.  He was also visited by a guy who knew Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheik, who is serving a life sentence for plotting to blow up New York landmarks.  Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi also attended his mosque in San Diego.  They are two of the 9-11 hijackers. 

In October 2002, while al-Awlaki was on a visit to Yemen, where his family lives, a Denver federal judge issued an arrest warrant for for him on charges of passport fraud.  But, for reasons that are concealed behind the cloak of homeland security classification, the warrant was voided the next day by the federal prosecutors office.  However, that same day, he was picked up at JFK by the FBI and questioned.  It seems that the issuance of the warrant had put his name of the terrorist watch list.  He was questioned and released.

The 9-11 Commission investigated al-Awlaki and concluded that his contacts with all these terrorist folks was just a result of the size of the Muslim community in the US -- it's small, everybody knows everybody.

Then al-Awlaki moved to Britain and began to move in the radical Islam circles in that country.  When several of the individuals with whom he was associated were named in Parliament as dangerously militant and anti-Semitic and connected with Hammas, al-Awlaki left Britain (early 2004) and moved his wife and children to Yemen.  He went to work as a teacher at San'a's Iman University, an institution founded and maintained by Abdul-Majid az-Zindani, designated a terrorist by the U.S. Treasury and a sanctioned affiliate of Al-Qaeda by the U.N.  This is one of those madrassas we heard so much about back when we were worried about terrorists.

In August 2006, al-Awlaki was arrested by the Yemeni authorities.  al-Awlaki has said that during the 18 months he was imprisoned, he was questioned by the FBI.  Has stated that he believes the US pressured the Yemenis into arresting him in the first place.  In December 2007, he was released and disappeared into his ancestral homelands in Yemen.

But he had, in his career become an internet phenomenon.  His sermons and lectures on tape, on YouTube, on CD are extremely popular with younger, more radicalized Muslims.  In them he says things like "No scholar with a grain of Islamic knowledge can defy the clear cut proofs that Muslims today have the right—rather the duty—to fight against American tyranny" and "I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself, just as it is binding on every other able Muslim.”  And he stays in e-mail contact with associates all over the world.  Associates like Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex., in November 2009.  Associates like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian kid who tried to blow up the airplane in Detroit on Christmas.  And Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American who tried to detonate a car bomb in Times Square on 1 May.  All three of these ne'er-do-wells have claimed to have been inspired and/or instructed by al-Awlaki.

So.  On 6 April 2010 an anonymous US intelligence official told Reuters, “The danger Awlaki poses to this country is no longer confined to words,” and “The United States works, exactly as the American people expect, to overcome threats to their security."  Al-Awlaki has been placed on the list of targets for attack by Predator drones.

Just like that.  The president says, "This man needs killin'."  Let's assume for a moment that everything above is the truth.  Let's assume that al-Awlaki is a al Qaida operative and that he helped Hasan and Abdulmutallab and Shahzad by direct or indirect means, through material or inspiration.  Let's assume that he worked to get money for Muslim terrorists.  Let's make all that a given.

How in the God's name does that make it okay to murder him?  Al-Awlaki is a US-born, US citizen, protected under the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution; he cannot be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”  Cannot be deprived of life without due process of law.  That means a trial, boys and girls.  Our current administration believes that it has the right (no one disputes that it has the power) to execute an American citizen in the Middle East on the basis of intelligence reports, with absolutely no judicial review -- none.

So.  What's to stop President Obama from deciding to put me on his death list?  The fact that I'm not Muslim?  The fact that I live in Little Rock?  The fact that it's unconstitutional and immoral?  I don't think any of those would be considered deal breakers.  I'm ready for a president of the US who takes that oath of office seriously.  Y'know? the part where he says that he will "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States"?

Anwar al-Awlaki can only be legally condemned to death by a court of law.  That's kinda a part of the definition of "legal."  So I call on the United States House of Representatives to, forthwith, proffer charges of high crimes against President Obama on the grounds that he has ordered the execution of a United States citizen, something even Dear and Glorious Leader didn't do in his 8 years of unconstitutional outlawery.