Press release from the national office of World Can’t Wait
The May 27 issue of the New York Review of Books, appearing on newsstands tomorrow, will run a statement signed by hundreds criticizing Barack Obama for continuing civilian deaths in the global war on terror begun by the Bush administration.
The statement, published as a paid ad, opens by challenging the president’s plan to assassinate a Muslim cleric now living in Yemen , a U.S. citizen.
“In the past few weeks, it has become common knowledge that Barack Obama has openly ordered the assassination of an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, because he is suspected of participating in plots by Al Qaeda. Al-Awlaki denies these charges. No matter. Without trial or other judicial proceeding, the administration has simply put him on the to-be-killed list.”
Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University of New Orleans, and a signer of the statement wrote Monday, “Murdering anyone in the US is a criminal act that is prosecuted regularly in courts across this country. Why should secret cold-blooded murder by government forces outside the U.S. be treated any differently?”
The statement goes on to say, “Such measures by Bush were widely considered by liberals and progressives to be outrages and were roundly, and correctly, protested. But those acts which may have been construed (wishfully or not) as anomalies under the Bush regime, have now been consecrated into “standard operating procedure” by Obama, who claims, as did Bush, executive privilege and state secrecy in defending the crime of aggressive war.”
Among the signers are Edward Asner, Noam Chomsky, James Cromwell, Daniel Ellsberg, Donald Freed, former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel, Chris Hedges, Kathy Kelly, Ray McGovern, Tom Morello, Michael Ratner, Rev. Dr. George F. Regas, Mark Ruffalo, Cindy Sheehan, Sunsara Taylor, and Cornel West.