Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Chomsky on "The Revenge Killing of Osama bin Laden"

Lighting strikes in the distance beyond the compound where Osama bin Laden was reportedly killed in Abottabad, Pakistan, May 4, 2011. (Photo: Warrick Page / The New York Times)

Noam Chomsky (truthout):
Pakistani and international law require inquiry “whenever violent death occurs from government or police action,” Robertson points out. Obama undercut that possibility with a “hasty ‘burial at sea’ without a post mortem, as the law requires.”

“It was not always thus,” Robertson usefully reminds us, ``When the time came to consider the fate of men much more steeped in wickedness than Osama bin Laden – namely the Nazi leadership – the British government wanted them hanged within six hours of capture.

“President Truman demurred, citing the conclusion of Justice Robert Jackson (chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trial) that summary execution ‘would not sit easily on the American conscience or be remembered by our children with pride ... the only course is to determine the innocence or guilt of the accused after a hearing as dispassionate as the times will permit and upon a record that will leave our reasons and motives clear.”’ MORE...

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