The latest tempest brewing in the DC tea cup is apparently about a half-baked CIA plan to kill senior al Qaeda operatives as and where they were found:
Amid the high alert following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a small CIA unit examined the potential for targeted assassinations of al Qaeda operatives, according to the three former officials. The Ford administration had banned assassinations in the response to investigations into intelligence abuses in the 1970s. Some officials who advocated the approach were seeking to build teams of CIA and military Special Forces commandos to emulate what the Israelis did after the Munich Olympics terrorist attacks, said another former intelligence official.
“It was straight out of the movies,” one of the former intelligence officials said. “It was like: Let’s kill them all.”
Sounds to me like a good start.
It says something about us that while New York still smoldered senior Bush administration officials felt that such a scheme needed to be kept hidden from Congress. It says something else about us that with bad economic news continuing on all fronts and a trillion unexamined dollars added ineffectually to the debt ledger, that Congress feels the need to throw on the mantle of victimhood.
There’s apparently no limit to how far Speaker Pelosi’s friends on the Hill are willing to go to salvage her reputation. The intentions are transparent enough. The Reyes letter was addressed to Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on Intelligence. Mr. Hoekstra yesterday said the media received the missive before he did. And two days after the Panetta testimony last month, six Democratic Members of the committee called on the CIA Director to “correct” his statement in May that the CIA doesn’t lie to Congress. He didn’t. The six are allies of Speaker Pelosi. Her public standing — and poll numbers — have been battered since her run-in with Mr. Panetta and the facts this spring.
This is politics at its grubbiest: If the news of the day isn’t running your way, change the subject.
How often can the Dems dip into this same well? Whenever they come under fire for their bad ideas, they simply yell BUSH! TORTURE! CIA! and get their base all riled up. Will Bush Derangement Syndrome ever end?
With Holder moving towards a TRUTH Commission, it will only get worse. Pelosi and her pals are clearly building a case where they can prove that the CIA lied, under Bush/Cheney direction, and that those two miscreants should be hauled before justice. Now don’t go messing in the pot with stories and facts about previous briefings to Pelosi on waterboarding, or ill-gotten contracts for her husband, or 787 billion that was promised to fix the economy this year, but now “we all knew it would take at least two or more years since we made assumptions based on erroneous data”, or 90% of drug war related weapons in mexico come from US dealers. Inconvenient truths and facts should not get in the way of a great opportunity to crucify/tar/feather Bush & Cheney and all their associated zealots. You’d think the real question would be “why didn’t Bush/Cheney have a program to immediately go out and track them down and eliminate?”
It would seem to me that we are and were in a “state of war”, declared or not,with Al Qaeda and killing the senior leaders would and should not be considered “assassination” in the context of the ban.
That some of our most powerful elected officials seem distraught over the concept of killing our sworn enemies speaks volumes of their ignorance and IMHO fitness, or lack thereof, for the offices they hold.
I wonder if and member of Al Qaeda would exhibit the same reluctance to pull the trigger or dispatch the suicide bomber if given the opportunity to eliminate any of our elected officials if given the chance? But the overwhelming lust for power and disregard for the consequences blinds Pelosi and her ilk from any rational consideration of the facts as it would conflict with their naive and irresponsible world view. Is this the best we can do?
An interesting alternative history novel would be to transplant the current Dem thinking about national security into the heads of a majority party in Congress in 1940-1945. Imagine the military leadership put on trial for the ambush of Admiral Yamamoto, or the B-25 raid on Tokyo.
Yep, would have really helped the war effort.
After all, if the Japanese and German leadship only saw how much the US really wanted peace, and valued the rule of law over thuggery and imperialist hegemony, they certainly would have withdrawn their forces back to their original borders and gone back to making sushi and wienerschnitzel. … Riiiight…
George V.
With the cesspool on the Potomac, it’s not hard to see why some states would like to secede from the union. Remember all those idiots who ran around with signs and slogans “Not in my name!” to indicate disagreement with the war on terror?
Well Ms. Pelosi whatever the heck you’ and the rest of the pissants on the Potomac are doing, it’s not in my name.
Al Quida would never try it OldT6Flyer, something about professional courtesy.
All Cheney was trying to do was have a “shovel ready” program in place. I can support that one.
It seems to me that leadership decapitation is both moral (why shoot the soldier following orders?) and an advantage of democracies over other forms of government(our “B” team of cabinet/congresscritters that can assume the presidency is a whole lot bigger team than some little council of ayatollahs).
The only reason I can think of not to do so is that our wanna-be commanders in chief are cowards. Are there other reasons?
More blatant hypocrisy exposed. Cheney uses presidential finding to investigate potential to apply “direct action” to really bad guys. Bad Dick.
The One uses Pred launched Hellfires to apply same to same. Beatification is in his future.
Forget the beatification — he’s already got a candy bar named after him. Couldn’t miss it in the airport today…
- SJS
I’m shocked, SHOCKED, I tell ya, that such things could have ever, EVER even REMOTELY been going on in the Cheney household…
I think the real plan was to send out hit teams to assasinate US Citizens suspected of being linked to Al Qaida. Which I wouldnt put past them and which I think we will find out was the real plan. Because else it doesnt sound very sansational. I just know it wouldnt get put out in the media if it was true. Im equally worried about when the real facts on the electronic eavesdropping that is going on is revealed. And when the people responsible are put to trial.
One expects to see such goings-on in a third-world country–this prosecution of previous administration officials for policy differences–*not* in the USA. What we see here are the first shots fired in a new political war. As the old saying went, the Dems ought to be careful what they wish for, special prosecutors and such, for they just might get them, especially if this nation is attacked by a WMD on Obama’s watch.
Should such a catastrophe happen–especially late in his term–the Repubs, *and* the populace in general, will be out for blood, including his, Holder’s, Clinton’s, Panetta’s, and, not least, Pelosi’s and Reid’s (and a few dozen other blowhards-in-chief from the committee of 535).
It will not be a pretty sight, not at all.