Cheney's Secret CIA Program: Worse Than Foreign Assassinations?

[Echo In Light]

Cheney's Secret CIA Program
Worse Than Foreign Assassinations?
By Digby

July 14, 2009 Pretty much every news outlet has confirmed that the secret CIA program held from Congress by Dick Cheney concerned targeted assassinations of Al Qaeda members abroad, basically the "executive assassination ring" discussed by Sy Hersh earlier this year.

<snip>

But something's not right here. Targeted assassinations of heads of state are illegal, President Ford signed that in 1975. But Peter Bergen explains that we have had assassination policies on Al Qaeda since before 9-11 and after.

Peter Bergen, a senior security analyst at the New America Foundation, said that the secret operation must have gone further than that to have created such a backlash in Congress: "If it's an assassination programme of al-Qaida leaders that is hardly surprising. Clinton had an assassination programme against bin Laden. There have been 27 drone missile strikes against al-Qaida alone this year."
It could be the case that Congress is merely upset about not being properly informed, also a crime under the National Security Act of 1947, and not the contents of the program. But two things stick out. It's completely unclear why this action, out of all the others, would be hid by the Bush Administration from Congress. Most terror policies were justified under the concept that we were at war with Al Qaeda, and the executive has broad discretion to carry out the policies he sees fit to protect the nation. I don't agree with the expansiveness of that view, but this kind of assassination ring would fall squarely inside that construct, no? Why would the Bush White House not be afraid to argue that we can torture suspects in the war on terror but terrified to explain that we can take out Al Qaeda safe houses with targeted strikes, the way that the Clinton Administration clearly did in the past? Why would it be so radioactive that Leon Panetta couldn't hear about it for six months after being made CIA Director?

The second thing that bothers me about this is the lightning quickness with which the program has been explained to the press, mostly through unnamed sources. You'd almost think that some members of the Bush Administration wanted to convince the public that their secret program only dealt with killing bad guys. And when I say some members, I mean Dick Cheney.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23048.htm

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Sanctions in NATO countries is my best guess at this point in time. nt

[conscious evolution]

2. They are lying

I have said it more then once lately-They bragged about killing so called high value targets.
Cheneys pogrom has nothing to do with taking out bad guys.The only 'bad' guys they were killing were people who could expose them or stop them.
People like Paul Wellstone
John Warner
Benazir Bhutto
That guy in Florida who was blowing the whistle on the electronic voting machine rigging
The guy in Ohio who was blowing the whistle
Ken Lay
That guy in England who committed 'suicide'.
And these are the ones we know about.
How many have been murdered that we do not know about?

[Iggo]

4. The DC Madame. (n/t)

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

6. "If taken into custody..."

"If taken into custody, my physical safety and most probably my very life would be jeopardized," she wrote. "Rape, beating, maiming, disfigurement and more than likely murder disguised in the form of just another jailhouse accident or suicide would await me."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/04/01/MNGMROV27G1.DTL&type=printable

[Iggo]

3. They shut it down so fast.

Domestic?

[kentuck]

5. Benazhir Bhutto?

But she was on our side, you say?

She was assassinated.

No reason for the CIA to assist in her assassination?

Really?

[Echo In Light]

7. Bump