Emma,

Thank you for your comment and excuse me for not responding for so long; first I was too busy to post at all, then I really wasn't equipped to respond (I'm just not into the kind of conversation on this that's occurring on Cleveland's thread, for one thing, and I've not gotten to the stage where I can really express my own thoughts on it well, for another.)

So just some of my random thoughts---

I admit I didn't read everything I posted carefully either, some I skimmed, I just wanted to collate all the opinions I was running across where I could find them. I don't think much about a lot of liberal bloggers on it, they just seem to be such simplistic emotional, knee-jerk arguments, not willing to confront the Christopher Hitchens argument he posed in an essay before his death: that those who disagree have to say what they would do instead.

I found Robert Chesney's piece at Lawfare, Holder on Targeted Strikes: The Key Passages, with Commentary to be most helpful in going to back to, in that it goes over what Holder actually said. (Not some bloggers third hand interpretations or hyperbole about what all this means, but what he said.)

I'm glad I waited and didn't comment sooner. Because closest to what I personally think is pretty well said in the NYT editorial for this last Sunday's paper: The Power to Kill. They say it much better than I could, they've spent more time on it and they also have a FOIA request in on the Awlaki memo. I also think they've got the right perspective in the editorial that doesn't get into hyperbole and doesn't veer off into non-applicable thoughts. (And even they let things percolate quite a few days before they ventured an opinion on what he said.)

One thing I keep coming back to, one thing that really puzzles me, is that Obama really was a Constitutional Law Professor, no joke and no exaggeration. So this is not a case of Bush just okaying a Yoo memo without understanding it! And the guy has some experience in explaining this kind of stuff to a class of law students. So how come he can't come up with a few words now himself  on the issue for the citizens of the country for which he now works? I think Bill Clinton would have found some words.

The Times' editorial board is correct in stressing for one thing the transparency issue. You don't have to talk about intel about those on a kill list to say something general about how this is being approached. Without them telling me more than Holder has now, I suspect that they just didn't feel it politically possible to set up the kind of review system they would have preferred, and needed to act without one because of politics. That's sad, that's chicken.  But I am just guessing there, guessing because they won't be transparent.

Another thing that affects my own perspective on it is that I do follow the news of terrorism trials, and have since before 9/11. They're going on all the time. One good example, a recent one: AP here and Reuters here of a sort of Awlaki wannabe (and was in contact with Awlaki) handled in the courts under Obama's watch, an American citizen, arrested in Kosovo in 2009, just got sentenced to 27 years. I think the hyperbole of them giving up on the courts in the terrorism fight isn't true and takes one away from the real thorny issues here; the kill list is something created for exceptional cases in a situation of an unconventional war. The problem is that they are not being transparent enough about what those exceptions are (though Chesney's article does point out how Holder's speech did address that somewhat, with a list,) and haven't set up a proper system for review.

P.S. As for the kill list itself, I am a relativist, with opinions developed since my Vietnam war protesting days --along the lines of: why do countries always go to war to the effect of thousands and thousands of lives lost and other lives destroyed ,when a targeted assassination of a few might solve the problem? Does that have to do with that military industrial complex and the positive economic effects of war?  Suffice it to say I am not as anti-drone as many here. I'm not the least interested in arguing about that, though.

I just ran across this "somewhat related" by accident: David Ignatius did his March 2 column basically praising the House Intelligence Committee as the only working bipartisan place in Congress, including oversight being much better than it was in the last Congress:

The House intelligence committee: A rare example of bipartisanship
By David Ignatius, Washington Post, March 2

The House intelligence committee used to be one of the meanest snake pits in Congress, a place where members were so busy sniping at each other that they failed to provide effective oversight of the intelligence community. It was a model of what was wrong with Washington.

Amazingly enough, the committee has found its way out of the wilderness under a new chairman and ranking Democrat, Reps. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, and C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, who is from Maryland’s 2nd District. With their leadership, the House has approved intelligence-authorization bills by lopsided, bipartisan margins the past two fiscal years, after many years when the committee was too divided to pass such legislation.

“Rogers and Ruppersberger have made bipartisanship work,” says Gen. Mike Hayden, a former CIA director who struggled with the old, dysfunctional system. Back then, he recalls, “the committee was just wild — incredibly contentious and highly politicized. They have worked hard to get it back to business.”

So what produced this little miracle of bipartisanship? That’s the interesting part of the story. [....]

Rogers and Ruppersberger wanted less partisan sniping — but also, more aggressive oversight. In this monitoring role, the House committee pushed the CIA to be more aggressive in hunting down shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles in Libya. Rogers was so insistent that the agency brought to Washington a big hammer that had been used to smash the missiles and presented it to the chairman.

One example of improved oversight is that a committee staff member works full time to review covert action plans, and the whole committee meets once a quarter for a closed hearing on this most sensitive topic. An example of pushback on covert action is that the committee warned the administration away from a plan to arm the Libyan rebels [....]