Comedy commentator and Daily Show host Jon Stewart has come down hard on the White House’s recent refusal to deal with questions from media and Congress regarding the administration’s policy on killing Americans with drones.
A Department of Justice memo, leaked to media earlier this week, makes the legal claim that drone attacks can be conducted on U.S. citizens if they are deemed an “imminent threat” — if they are affiliated with al Qaeda, for example, Raw Story reports. Mr. Stewart points, however, that “imminent threat” isn’t very well defined.
“So ’imminent threat,’ in other words, imminent or not imminent,” he mocked, on his Wednesday show, according to the media report. “Broadly speaking, imminent in the geological sense. So, wait, we can kill an American who is in al Qaeda or al Qaeda-adjacent if they post an imminent danger, and by ’imminent,’ we mean eventual?”
Mr. Stewart also recalled how Democrats — including Joe Biden — had decried the Bush administration’s failure to release documents pertaining to torture of terrorist suspects, reports Raw Story.
The White House did decide Wednesday evening to give Congress classified information from the Justice Department on policies pertaining to drone use on American citizens.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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