By Naureen Khan
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, who has consistently opposed U.S. military engagement overseas, said Tuesday that the Obama administration's killing of a U.S.-born radical cleric in Yemen was an impeachable offense and that "we have crossed that barrier from republic to dictatorship."
Speaking to an audience at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the libertarian Texas congressman also expressed sympathy for the budding Wall Street protest movement.
He harshly criticized Obama for approving last week's predator drone strike that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a prominent al Qaeda figure linked by U.S. intelligence agencies to two unsuccessful attacks on U.S.-bound airplanes. Samir Kahn, a second American killed in the attack, was the editor of the online al Qaeda magazine "Inspire." Paul suggested the government could begin killing American journalists with impunity.
"Can you imagine being put on a list because you're a threat?" Paul told a crowd of 60 journalists and their guests at a luncheon. "What's going to happen when they come to the media? What if the media becomes a threat? ... This is the way this works. It's incrementalism."
"We have crossed that barrier from republic to dictatorship, to tyranny to empire," he said. "He can now assassinate people without due process? What is going on with this country? But you ask me if it's an impeachable offense, and it is! Just ignoring the Fifth Amendment and assassinating American citizens without due process. They won't even tell us what the rules are! Oh, but he's a threat! Can you imagine being put on a list because you're a threat? What's going to happen when they come to the media? What if the media becomes a threat? Or a professor becomes a threat?"
Paul also said he shares the frustration of the protesters who recently occupied streets in the Wall Street section of New York City, and said he believes the demonstrations are rooted in a host of economic woes, including corporate decisions to relocate American jobs overseas.
"Eventually our jobs will deploy overseas and the pie would shrink, and there would be an aggressive attitude to get a piece of the pie that's no longer there," he said. "I think civil disobedience, if everyone knows exactly what they're doing, is a legitimate effort. It's been done in this country for many grievances and some people end up going to jail for this. ... The solution is to get a healthy economy back."
Ron Paul Says Obama Has Committed an Impeachable Offense
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Rep. Ron Paul expanded on his comments that the killing of a suspected al-Qaeda terrorist is an impeachable offense.
Paul, appearing this afternoon on Fox News with Megyn Kelly, denied that he directly raised the possibility, but said he was merely responding to a question.
He added that the precedent of killing an American citizen without a trial is “very serious.”
ABC affiliate WMUR reports that Paul was asked by a University of New Hampshire student Monday how Paul would hold Obama accountable for the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki.
Paul said impeachment would be a possibility, but there should be an investigation that holds Obama responsible.
Paul’s comments on Monday upped the ante on a series of pointed remarks aimed at President Obama over the killing of al-Awlaki.
Last Friday he called the strike “sad” and added that it’s “not a good way to deal with our problems.”
“If the American people accept this blindly and casually – have a precedent of an American president assassinating people who he thinks are bad. I think it that’s sad,” he said.
Then in an op-ed piece published Sunday in the New York Daily News, Paul said “as president, I would have arrested Awlaki, brought him to the U.S., tried him and pushed for the stiffest punishment allowed by law.”
Paul wrote that he believes in the rule of law and the killing of al-Awlaki is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional acts by President Obama that includes military action in Libya and health care reform.
No comments:
Post a Comment