NEW YORK — Various media organizations have said that “it’s like…So. Hard.” to wade into the murky legal and journalistic waters that surround the Obama administration’s multi-continent drone strike program conducted on suspected terrorists, and that they would prefer to discuss the more cut-and-dry moralism of abusing detainees. Asked by discerning citizens if they would please devote more coverage to assassinations being carried out in America’s name, the outlets have responded that they “Don’t. WANNA!”
Last month, the White House declined to send a witness to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the secret program relating to President Barack Obama’s “kill list” from which drone targets are chosen. A growing number of Republicans and Democrats have expressed concern about where the president’s derives his unilateral authority to conduct assassinations, as well as the oversight involved in terminating people who have never been convicted or tried of any crime, including more than one American citizen.
“Killing someone before they get the chance to try to kill us seems to make sense, right?” said Salon.com legal reporter Michael Heiser. “Who has the constitutional power to determine who deserves that, when neither judge nor jury is ever involved? What am I–some kind of legal reporter? You know what IS wrong though: waterboarding.”
Pointing out that the U.S. Constitution expressly forbids torture, several members of the press have said that that’s where their time would be better spent: exposing and seeking to prevent mental and physical abuse of suspects in custody. Stress positions and sleep deprivation, they say, exist in a clear ethical absolute, while flying killbots do not.
“I am an American citizen and no one will torture if I have anything to say about it,” said Chicago Tribune editor Amanda Letts. “Now if one of my fellow American citizens wanders over to Yemen, gets mixed up with the wrong people and gets splattered all over a dirt road, who am I to judge?”
