The ACLU filed suit in federal court yesterday seeking to force the White House to turn over records related to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the US citizen assassinated in a drone attack in Yemen last year.

The New York Times sued the Justice Department over their reticence to turn over a memo from the Office of Legal Counsel detailing the argument for how the US government can legally assassinate an American citizen.

The US military is the greatest military force the world has ever known. But that means that when commanded by civilian leaders with little regard for the rule of law, it can also become the most dangerous terrorist state the world has ever known.

The fact is that the entire US program of extra-judicial assassinations by drone requires a bit more study and debate, but this is especially true when the targets are US citizens. In that case, the Constitution comes into play, and the right of due process of the law. But we never really had such a debate when Anwar al-Awlaki was targeted for death by the US government, and now that the assassination has been carried out, it’s too late:

Leon Panetta kicks off his new job as Secretary of Defense with a trip to Afghanistan. On the plane over there this morning, he told reporters that we just need to kill 10 or 20 leaders of al Qaeda and we will “strategically defeat” al Qaeda. (h/t Spencer)

When Anwar al-Awlaki’s family sued for due process, the government invoked state secrets, even as Crazy Pete Hoekstra and a stream of anonymous sources have leaked details of the drone targeting of him for over a year. One of the things Robert Gates specifically invoked state secrets over is whether or not we’re engaged in military operations in Yemen. Another is details of our counterterrorism work with Yemen.

Lucky for Obama, batting .333 is still a great average.

In a remarkable article in Thursday’s New York Times, we find a very interesting analysis of some of the forces at play in Yemen, where the United States has decided that its largest al Qaeda threat now resides. According to the Times article, Yemenis take reports of al Qaeda presence with a sizable dose of skepticism, ascribing much of the internal violence as a mixture of secessionist movements and the “business” of terrorism, where groups first foment violence and then take government money in return for making it stop.

Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born cleric thought to be involved in the Foot Hood shooting and the failed Christmas Day bombing, was brought into the Pentagon for a luncheon several months after the 9/11 attacks. Interestingly, this was part of a Defense Department program to convince Muslims that the Afghanistan war was focused on Al Qaeda and not Muslims.

Anwar al-Awlaki is very quickly becoming our next surrogate bogeyman in the war on terror (the one designed to distract from the continued freedom of the people who actually targeted us on 9/11). And along with that, the government seems intent on hanging a whole lot more terrorist designations on people — including American citizens — without ever showing the evidence that al-Awlaki himself was operational.