Let us pretend for a minute. There is a gruesome murder of several innocents in a house in Anywhere, America.

After a long search, a man named Bob is named as a prime suspect in the case. He is a resident of Anywhere and is on the run. He is put on a “most wanted” list and the search for Bob in every feasible hiding place begins.

Then suddenly, based on evidence gathered over the months, the Anywhere Police Department employs a brand new weapon.

It is a sophisticated remotely controlled drone and uses an AGM-114 “Hellfire” anti-tank rocket to annihilate the car in which our man, Bob the suspect, and his five comrades are traveling.

The six occupants of the car are obliterated and their bloody pieces are strewn about the scene of the attack.

Bob was a suspect. He was charged with a crime but never saw a court.

Depending whether the state in which we find Anywhere carries capital punishment as a penalty, Bob may have been sentenced to death or life in prison were he to be found guilty in court beyond a reasonable doubt. However, this was not the case.

Bob was a suspect in the murder of innocent people but had not been tried for the alleged crimes.

He, and the five people who happened to be with him, were assassinated in cold blood by the police department.

Is this fictional the product of a fantastic imagination?

No, it is what happened in place called Yemen on Tuesday.

Our famed Central Intelligence Agency took what are often military matters into its own hands and sent an AGM-114 “Hellfire” missile crashing into Qaed Senyan al-Harthi’s car.

Al-Harthi was suspected to be an operative of the al-Qaeda network, and believed to have involvement in the bombing of the American warship, U.S.S. Cole off the coast of Yemen in Oct. 2000.

The missile that brought Al-Harthi and his companions to a bloody death was a AGM-114 “Hellfire” missile made by Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

The missile was fired by an un-piloted drone called a Predator. The drones, built by General Atomics of San Diego, Ca., are part of the CIA’s new arsenal for carrying out spy and death missions.

According to the Christian Science Monitor’s reports, Al-Harthi has eluded Yemeni authorities by allegedly killing the soldiers sent by the government to kill him.

At that point, the U.S. was asked to step in and special operations CIA operatives were sent to Yemen. The assassination is the fruit of the intelligence work done by those new forces.

Aside from this issue of killing someone never convicted of a crime (in violation of the core constitutional value of innocence until guilt is proven), many other problems plague our policy.

What if the intelligence information is wrong?

We thought we had Osama bin Laden last February in eastern Afghanistan. We pulverized a car with a Predator/AGM 114 “Hellfire” combination, believing that the very tall man inside was the al Qaeda leader.

It turned out to be Afghan peasants in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We said oops and went on our way.

Then again in May we thought we were assassinating Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a leader of rebel troops opposed to the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan. We didn’t manage to kill him, but we did blow to bits a few of his followers instead.

Oops.

Where are the apologies and compensation to their families?

Where are the investigations, court martial and/or trials of those who committed the murder of these people?

While it’s only an assumption, it’s my estimation that such an “accident” would not go uninvestigated here in the United States.

If we are to continue peddling our form of “democracy” around the world, should we not follow our own values when operating in other countries?

Our most heartless home-grown suspects are guaranteed a fair trial in the United States.

Are people accused of crimes against the U.S. not guaranteed a trial before the world at the Hague?

Setting aside the incredible ethical issues of assassinating our suspects irrespective of international law, the hypocrisy of our policy is odious.

The United States hopes to impose a Bush-ian form of morality and governance on the world, and it seems that assassinating mere suspects is a common trend — one that flies in the face of our core constitutional values and one that makes embarrassing our condemnation of other international law abuses.

Omar Tesdell

is a junior in journalism

and mass communication from Slater. He is the online editor of the Daily.