Targeted al-Qaeda Imam killed by drone airstrike

Khashef, Yemen – The government carried out a significant contract killing marking a milestone in the borderless war on terror in the pre-dawn hours today.

U.S. forces killed an Imam believed to have influenced at least 3 of the 9/11 highjackers as well as Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan and the Christmas Day Detroit airline underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab in a drone aircraft strike on a convoy in which he was believed to be riding.

CIA operatives targeted Anwar al-Awlaki after President Barack Husein Obama signed an order for his death in April, 2010.

A dual citizen of both the U.S. and Yemen, Mr. al-Awlaki's father retained the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights to represent his son in a lawsuit which sought to remove the sanction ordered by the President, but a federal judge dismissed the suit.

A spokesman for the ACLU, Jameel Jaffer, said, “...the United States is not at war in Yemen, and the government doesn't have a blank check to kill terrorism suspects wherever they are in the world. Among the arguments we'll be making is that, outside actual war zones, the authority to use lethal force is narrowly circumscribed, and preserving the rule of law depends on keeping this authority narrow.”

Major Hasan and other terrorists who have carried out lethal strikes against Americans on U.S. soil were known to have attended Mr. al-Awlaki's on-line lectures, diatribes filled with hateful talk about carrying a war to American shores over Islamic jihadist ideology.