Star Chamber?

This is coolbert:

Thanks to the Sydney Morning Herald we have the latest regarding that drone strike in Yemen. It appears NOW that the vaunted "bomb expert" Al Asiri was not a casualty of the drone and Hellfire missile attack?

"Saudi bomber 'not dead'"

"Al-Qaeda's top bomb maker in Yemen did not die in a drone strike on a convoy, a top Yemeni official says."

"US intelligence officials had said it appeared that bomb maker Ibrahim al-Asiri was among the dead. However, Yemeni officials have released a list of two others whose bodies had been identified and noted that Asiri was not one of them."

These drone strikes and the killing of native born Americans as you can well might expect has stirred up some controversy in SOME quarters. Felt to be a denial of due process, the taking of life and limb, against the basic tenets and safeguards of the U.S. Constitution. Even for those waging jihad [war] against the U.S. and against Americans everywhere, natural born citizens it is felt in SOME quarters are nonetheless entitled to guaranteed rights, a trial by a jury of their peers, an access to confront their accusers in a court of law, an access to the evidence as presented against them, etc. NONE of this done for the two dead American jihadists!

Exactly what legal process is at work here I am not sure of. OR is anyone else but for a few perhaps? Some sort of secret court beyond what we already know about is at work here? Similar to the Star Chamber from the days of yore in England?

From the wiki entry we can refresh our memory as to what the Star Chamber was and did:

"The Star Chamber (Latin: Camera stellata) was an English court of law that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster until 1641. It was made up of Privy Counsellors, as well as common-law judges and supplemented the activities of the common-law and equity courts in both civil and criminal matters. The court was set up to ensure the fair enforcement of laws against prominent people, those so powerful that ordinary courts could never convict them of their crimes. Court sessions were held in secret, with no indictments, no right of appeal, no juries, and no witnesses. Evidence was presented in writing"

The very term "Star Chamber" is pejorative of itself, with a very bad connotation? Was not necessarily a "kangaroo court" that in all cases found the accused guilty? There were safeguards in place and it was not merely a vehicle of the king and his court to rid themselves of meddlesome persons?

The decision to give the "go signal" - - the firing of the Hellfire missile with disastrous and fatal consequences was perhaps based upon no more that legal briefs and opinions as issued by government lawyers? I cannot say.

This too may be a case of extraordinary times requiring extraordinary measures? Those persons in power make a conscious decision to allow posterity to decide the rightness or wrongness of their actions? Perhaps so!

coolbert.