In the August issue, Tom Junod examines an entirely new application of power on the part of the president — the targeted killing of individuals deemed to be threats to the country. So far, thousands have been killed, most prominent among them Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki. The decisions to target are made and the lethal missions are carried out without any public accountability, even when those targeted are Americans and even when, on one occasion, one of those Americans was a teenager. Over the course of this week, Junod considers five of the larger implications of his story on The Politics Blog. —Eds.

In Monday's post about the Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama, I described the killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old American citizen who, though the son of a man accused of many crimes — the son of Anwar al-Awlaki — was never accused of any crimes himself. I described how he was killed by an American drone strike in Yemen, while in the company of other teenage boys, including a second cousin. I described how the Obama administration has never so much as really acknowledged the killing, despite the twin facts of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki's citizenship and innocence, and I called for Congress to pass a law that would not outlaw lethal operations against American citizens but that would outlaw lethal operations against American citizens taking place in total secrecy.

I also admitted that such a law would never be introduced, debated, or passed — that in asking for even a minimum of disclosure concerning the death of an American citizen killed by America, I was indulging a fond, rather sentimental fantasy. Of course such a law could never be passed by Congress, although the Obama administration has been at pains to demonstrate that the power it claims — the power to kills our enemies where it finds them — is derived from the explicit authorization of Congress, rather than from the commander-in-chief clause of the Constitution.

"The Bush administration believed that it was actually illegal for Congress to pass any law restricting it in the area of national security," a former lawyer for the Obama administration told me. "But if Congress outlawed drone strikes, the Obama administration would stop them tomorrow."

That Congress has the power to restrict the Lethal Presidency — and to hold it publicly accountable — does not mean that Congress will ever do so. Indeed, what is striking about the Lethal Presidency is that everything that would seem to limit its reach and its scope — from the precision of its technology to the elevated ideals of its decision-makers — actually expands them. Congressional oversight is no different.

This is not to say that there isn't oversight. I talked to Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georigia, and he said that there is nothing that he does as a Senator that consumes more of his time and attention than the briefings and hearings he attends, and the reports he reads, as ranking Republican member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. "I wouldn't say that it puts us in a watchdog position," Chambliss said of targeting American citizens. "There's reason to be more vigilant." And I talked to Michael Leiter, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, and he said that Congress is doing the job it's been responsible for doing ever since the Church Committee finished its work over 30 years ago — and that we, as a country, need to have greater faith in Congress and in the efficacy of its oversight.

So why don't we?

Well, one reason is that the Congressional oversight of secret programs is carried out in secret — "if we're doing our jobs," one Senate staffer told me, "no one should even know that we exist" — and there have been no public hearings or investigations of an administration that has killed thousands of people through lethal operations, many of them terrorists or Taliban fighters and many of them as innocent of malign intention as Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. Saxby Chambliss might know the details of the CIA's strike against Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, and so might the staffers I spoke to, but we don't, and we never will, unless the American Civil Liberties Union wins its FOIA lawsuit against the CIA.

And the reason for that is summed up rather neatly by Senator Lindsay Graham, who as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee is charged with the oversight of the lethal operations carried out by Joint Special Operations Command: "Who wants to be the congressman or senator holding the hearing as to whether the president should be aggressively going after terrorists? Nobody. And that's why Congress has been AWOL in this whole area."

In truth, the Lethal Presidency is a burgeoning manifestation of the executive branch that finds no adequate counterweight in either Congress or in the courts. It repeatedly asks for our trust, and gives assurances that it is using its awesome powers judiciously and wisely. Has it earned our trust? We don't know. We are told that we can't know. But we give it what it asks for, because it seems to keep us safe, and besides, it leaves us barely any choice.

MORE ON THE LETHAL PRESIDENCY OF BARACK OBAMA:

• PART 1: The Administration Killed a 16-Year-Old and Didn't Say Anything About It

• PART 3: Secrets and World Ties: Obama's Killer Contradiction

• PART 4: What Happens When Assassination Replaces Torture?

• PART 5: Obama's Real Killing Problem... Is Our Problem, Too

• FROM THE MAGAZINE: The Full Story

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