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The assassination by a US drone strike of al-Qaeda leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, has reignited debate over the legality of targeted executions. Al Awlaki, who was a US citizen, was killed in Yemen on Friday, about 90 miles east of the capital Sanaa, reportedly while getting into a car surrounded by five other people. Al Awlaki has long been an enemy of the US government, blamed for radicalizing American Muslims through his prolific use of You Tube and other internet outlets. Most notably he was blamed for influencing the military doctor who committed the 2009 Fort Hood shooting rampage. In 2010 the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights sued the US Treasury, and later lost, for freezing Al Awlaki’s assets and placing him on a hit list. The organizations claimed it was unconstitutional to order lethal force against a US citizen in a foreign country without an attempt to capture him alive and provide a trial in an court of law. Before his death, government officials called the cleric a, “recruiter and motivator” for al-Qaeda. On Friday President Obama hailed Al Awlaki’s death as a “significant milestone,” and “a major blow to al-Qaeda’s most active operational affiliate.” However on the same day a USA Today article quoted a terrorism analyst who predicted that al-Qaeda “[w]ill be just as capable the day after his death than before. He’s not particularly high up the hierarchy.” Writing for the Progressive Magazine Matthew Rothschild not only called the assassination unconstitutional, but also, “[a] new low, and terrible precedent, for the abuse of Presidential powers.”

GUEST: Matthew Rothchild, editor of The Progressive magazine, host of “Progressive Radio,” a syndicated half-hour weekly interview program and of “Progressive Point of View,” a two-minute daily radio commentary.

Read Matthew Rothschild’s writing at www.progressive.org.

Read Rothschild’s article about Al Awlaki here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/01-9