Bill Sanctions State Assassinations

• Spotlight on Congress

Liberty Lobby would be unable to find a greater congressman than Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) without getting a hammer and saw and custom-building a lawmaker. Barr has a 100 percent rating with Liberty Ledger, the Institution's congressional scorecard.

But Barr is making a mistake in sponsoring legislation that would again authorize the federal government to kill foreign heads of state.

Barr's bill, H.R.19, would cancel three presidential executive orders that preclude the CIA, FBI or any agency of the federal government from killing anybody in a foreign country the United states perceives as a threat. They would be authorized under Barr's bill to "remove" such people.

Barr's bill does make one valid point: now the United States kills many people in a mostly futile effort to kill a particular person -- as in the 21 who died when Muammar Qaddafi's compound was bombed by President Reagan.

"Present strategy allows the military forces to bomb large targets hoping to eliminate a terrorist leader, but prevents our country from designing a limited action which would specifically accomplish that purpose," Barr said.

Barr's point on massive military strikes is well-taken Liberty Lobby, publisher of The SPOTLIGHT, has opposed spilling the life's blood of our young men, the heart's blood of our women and draining the treasury in futile foreign interventions for decades. Liberty Lobby warned against involvement in Indochina that cost 60,000 American lives in Vietnam, invoking the deathbed advice Gen. Douglas MacArthur gave President John Kennedy.

But we respectfully entreat Rep. Barr: please drop your bill that would allow political assassinations. It is morally wrong. America should not be a party to further lowering international standards of behavior.