Saturday, July 18, 2009

Cheney's Assassination Squads Not Unique But Rather As American As Apple Pie

Let's begin with a little humor

Bill Maher - America Isn't #1-July 11, 2009




American Hypocrisy Maintaining an empire by brute force
Jeremy Scahill -Death Squads and targeted Assassinations an American tradition?
Obama's escalation of Afghan War Sheer Folly???
Liz Cheney and American exceptionalism-whatever America does is blessed by God
British soldiers also abused and tortured Iraqi POWs
US threatens to wipe out villages if they do not return captured American soldier- can you say SS ???

"But, the truth is that a real investigation -- one that actually seeks to get to the broader truths of these matters -- would require investigating the current assassination program under Obama and the roots of the program that preceded the day when George W Bush took power. That means looking at the Clinton White House and further back. It means looking at both Democratic and Republican assassination teams. The sad fact is that nobody on Capitol Hill has demonstrated in any way that they have the political courage to do that."
Jeremy Scahill, July 15, 2009

"I don't think it is complicated at all. I mean, oversight is oversight. If there are allegations that people in public office committed crimes, than we have an absolute obligation to investigate and find out if it is true," Edwards said. "I think it is Congress' job. You could have an independent investigation I suppose. But Congress has to keep control of it. It is Congress' obligation under the Constitution to do the oversight."
Former Rep. Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.)

"...It's not without irony that Cheney can write "the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind." Iranians dealt with the same kind of state terrorism under the Shah and his secret police, only this time trained and funded by the US. Yet Cheney fails to mention this inconvenient little fact."
Matthew Harwood at Guardian.co.uk, July 15,2009

With all the Faux outrage over Cheney's Hit Squads Jeremy Scahill reminds us that America has been involved in such dirty tactics for decades. Targeting enemy leaders or those perceived as a threat for assassination goes back at least to Vietnam and to El Salvador and the Contras sneaking into Nicaragua to kill individuals who were characterized as a threat. The US also used hit squads or Death Squads in other Latin American countries. And he points out that Clinton used such tactics as Obama is also now doing either by hit squads or targeted assassinations by Drones or by conventional bombing of villages where they claim there are enemy combatants.

"The Democrats' Selective Amnesia on Assassination: Clinton Did It and Obama Does It Too" by Jeremy Scahill at Huffington Post , July 15, 2009

Partisan politics often require selective amnesia. Over the past decade, we have seen this amnesia take hold when it comes to many of President Bush's most vile policies. And we are now seeing a pretty severe case overtake several leading Democrats. It makes for good speechifying to act as though all criminality began with Bush and -- particularly these days -- Cheney, but that is extreme intellectual dishonesty. The fact is that many of Bush's worst policies (now being highlighted by leading Democrats) were based in some form or another in a Clinton-initiated policy or were supported by the Democrats in Congress with their votes. To name a few: the USA PATRIOT Act, the invasion of Iraq, the attack against Afghanistan, the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, the widespread use of mercenaries and other private contractors in US war zones and warrant-less wire-tapping.

...In fact, this program has been part of official U.S. policy -- under Democratic and Republican administrations -- for decades.

By way of background, there is technically a U.S. ban on assassination that dates back to President Ford in 1976. "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination," states Executive Order 11905. That was then updated by President Carter who dropped the term "political" simply prohibiting "assassination." The current Executive Order, 12333, was signed by president Reagan in 1981 and has remained on the books through every administration since. What is brutally ironic about Reagan signing this ban was that he authorized repeated assassinations, notably the 1986 attempt on Col. Moammar Gadhafi, which failed to kill Gadhafi but instead killed his infant daughter. But in that brutal apparent contradiction is the truth: the U.S. does not have a ban on assassinations as long as government lawyers can figure out some legal acrobats for the president to use in sidelining the ban. Every president from Reagan to Obama has reserved the right to assassinate "terrorists" by claiming it as a military operation or a preemptive strike.

...In short, the Bush team expanded and streamlined the longstanding U.S. government assassination program.

...Newsweek magazine reported on how, in 1995, U.S. Special Forces facilitated the assassination of a Libyan "terrorist" in Bosnia, saying, "American authorities justified the assassination under a little-known 1993 'lethal finding' signed by President Bill Clinton that gave permission to target terrorists." A former senior Clinton official speaking shortly after 9/11 called on the Bush administration not to escalate the U.S. assassination program, saying "We have a war on drugs, too, but we don't kill drug lords." But then, with no apparent sense of contradiction, the official added, "we have proxies who do."

Clinton-era officials' attempt to hide behind "proxies" is a stunning trampling of the assassination ban as it currently exists. Not only does it ban U.S. government personnel from engaging in or conspiring to engage in "assassination," it also bans "Indirect Participation," stating: "No agency of the Intelligence Community shall participate in or request any person to undertake activities forbidden by this Order."

The truth is, under Clinton, it wasn't just proxies authorized to do the assassinations.

...Eventually, however, Clinton did authorize what amounted to assassination squads to hunt down and kill bin Laden and other "al Qaeda leaders." That happened officially in 1998 with Clinton's signing of a Memorandum of Notification authorizing the CIA to carry out covert assassinations. George W Bush was not the president and Dick Cheney was not the vice president. Of course, current CIA Director Leon Panetta was Clinton's chief of staff from 1994 to 1997 and would have been party to years worth of discussion on this issue when Clinton was president.


and Jeremy Scahill concludes his article with a statement which helps explain the reluctance of Obama & the Democrats to do a thorough investigation into these covert programs because former Democratic President Clinton could be indicted along with members of his administration and Democrats who are in the Congress and the Senate now.GORD.

Obviously, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees should investigate the assassination policy under the Bush administration. Cheney's role is central to that. Prosecutors should also be authorized to do the same. If there is a nefarious program that the public is unaware of and was unlawfully concealed, it should be brought out into the light. But, the truth is that a real investigation -- one that actually seeks to get to the broader truths of these matters -- would require investigating the current assassination program under Obama and the roots of the program that preceded the day when George W Bush took power. That means looking at the Clinton White House and further back. It means looking at both Democratic and Republican assassination teams. The sad fact is that nobody on Capitol Hill has demonstrated in any way that they have the political courage to do that.



Cheney's daughter and the myth of American exceptionalism


Liz Cheney inherits the family business by Matthew Harwood at Guardian.co.uk, July 15,2009

Dick Cheney has long criticised Obama for admitting America's foreign policy failures. Now his daughter is getting in on the act

Once again the Cheney attack dog is on the prowl for Barack Obama. It's just not the Cheney you're thinking of. On Monday, in the Wall Street Journal, just two days after the New York Times reported that Dick Cheney concealed a secret CIA counterterrorism programme from Congress during the Bush administration, his daughter, Liz, assailed Obama on his recent speeches on US international relations.

...It's not without irony that Cheney can write "the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind." Iranians dealt with the same kind of state terrorism under the Shah and his secret police, only this time trained and funded by the US. Yet Cheney fails to mention this inconvenient little fact.

Obama also annoyed Cheney because he didn't stand up to Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega after he "listened to an extended anti-American screed". While it's certainly hard to defend Ortega the man, the Sandinista movement he led did eventually overthrow the US-installed dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1978, and initiated many necessary social welfare policies, such as literacy and healthcare programmes and agrarian reform. In response, the US funded the Contras, which carried out a systematic, terrorist war against the Sandinista revolution, while mining Nicaraguan harbours. These offences led the International Court of Justice to rule against the US and order it to pay reparations to Nicaragua.

...It should never cease to amaze how conservatives like Cheney continue to view the cold war theologically, with US as the anointed messiah of civilisation facing the satanic forces of the Soviet Union. Both imperial nations put up impressive body counts in defence of their antithetical ideologies. And yet, the US didn't learn the value of nuance in foreign affairs with the same good/evil narrative pervading the "war on terror", driven by the same cognitive dissonance that allows engaging in acts we find rightly morally reprehensible when other regimes or terrorist groups do it. Hopefully this is beginning to change.

When you take a close look at Liz Cheney's grievance against Obama after seeing it in its proper context, it's easy to understand her definition of American exceptionalism: The US and its clients can torture, but others can't. The US can willingly violate the norms of war, but others can't. The US can subvert democracy wherever it wants, but others can't.

The rationale is as easy as it circular: Since the US stands for democracy, anything it does is in the best long-term interest of democracy. Why? Because the US says so. Let's borrow a term from Lenin and call it "democratic centralism", but on a global scale.


Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan may only lead to a bigger disaster for America and its NATO allies. As for the people of Afghanistan or Pakistan and the Pashtun and other peoples indigenous to the area they don't really count for much in the overall US strategy in its ongoing perpetual War on Terror.It is odd how Americans seem to think there were no terrorists before 9/11. For example if the British had reacted to the IRA terrorists in a similar fashion to the Americans they would have destroyed Belfast & other towns and cities with aerial bombardment and dropped a few tons Napalm on the Irish civilians just to teach them a lesson. Or for another example as in the case of the domestic terrorists Tim McVeigh why didn't the CIA or FBI or US army arrest and hold in indefinite detention all of McVeigh's relatives, friends , acquaintances or just napalm his home town or neighborhood if they were to use the logic the Americans have been using in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Afghanistan: Marines' Mission Doomed to Failure" By Sonali Kolhatkar "New America Media" July 17,2009 via Information Clearing House

-- The United States’ new offensive into Afghanistan’s troubled Helmand province provides a test case for achieving President Obama’s stated goal: “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

It is the first major push of its kind, relying on a massive ground presence of thousands of Marines rather than air strikes, which American strategists acknowledge have killed far too many civilians over the past two years. But while Operation Khanjar realizes Washington’s increased desire to divert more “resources” into Afghanistan, it is unclear what, if anything, can be accomplished by this kind of brute force.

At the launch of the offensive, U.S. General Stanley McChrystal gave only the following explanation: that his intention is to “clear, hold and build” in Taliban strongholds like Helmand.

But what exactly does “clear” mean? If it means to kill, the U.S. Marines will have to distinguish between Taliban and non-Taliban Afghans to avoid more civilian casualties. This is a near-impossible task. The Taliban do not wear a uniform or carry membership cards. They carry weapons, but so do Afghan civilians, who do so to protect their families. In an effort to lower the embarrassing count of civilians killed (often greater than the numbers killed by the Taliban), McChrystal has ordered troops to cut short any pursuit of Taliban fighters if civilians are at risk.

...The Taliban’s greatest advantage is their ability to move through a population increasingly sick of “death-by-occupation,” leaving the U.S. troops with only two options: risk letting the Taliban escape, or kill the Taliban even if it means killing civilians in the process and violating the new rules. Both scenarios lead to a Taliban victory.

Perhaps by “clear,” McChrystal means capture. But that raises more difficult questions: Where will they put the prisoners, and what sort of justice will be offered? Will the United States turn Bagram into a greater gulag than Guantanamo? Will they turn over those who survive their torture and interrogation to secret military tribunals? In releasing 90 percent of those imprisoned at Guantanamo without charge, the United States has already proved inept at distinguishing al Qaeda and Taliban members from ordinary civilians over the past eight years. Imprisoning and torturing innocent civilians has the same obvious effect as killing them: increased hostility and resentment toward the occupation.

...The likelihood of American success in Afghanistan is at best dim and, at worst, heading inevitably toward a lose-lose situation. Given the impossibility of surgically identifying and killing a moving and elusive target, there are only two possible outcomes: killing a lot of civilians, or pushing the insurgency to the rest of the country, or both. After the Iraq debacle, are Americans ready for yet another unpopular occupation, protracted war and thousands of U.S. casualties?


More on winning hearts and Minds in Afghanistan.Another PR fiasco for US military in Afghanistan.

(Sounds like the Gestapo or SS warning villagers they will be killed if they do not turn over captured soldier- how extreme have the Americans become in their desperate attempts to win their ill-conceived war. The more villagers they kill the stronger the insurgency will get. Once again as in Iraq as in Vietnam the Americans and their NATO allies treat all Afghans as the enemy. And those they ally themselves with are no better than al Qaeda or the Taliban.) GORD.

Afghanistan Villages Threatened By US Military Over Kidnapped Soldier" By Huffington Post July 17, 2009

In the aftermath of a US soldier's abduction by Afghan Taliban forces, the US military is disbursing leaflets in two towns near particularly dangerous areas, which threaten villagers with the prospect of being "targeted" or "hunted" if they do not return the soldier safe and sound, CBS News reports. The leaflet has a picture of a languid looking US soldier hanging his head on one side, and reads "If you do not free the American soldier, then..."; when the card is flipped over, there is a picture of soldiers breaking down the door of small stone hut and a caption that reads, "...then you will be targeted."

The leaflet is one of two kinds that were scattered about the villages. The other is reported to be far less threatening and simply asks for any information anyone may have on the soldier's whereabouts, according to the CBS report.



And new revelations on the abuse and torture of prisoners in Iraq by British forces. Did they pick up some bad habits from the Americans or was this just part of the British written or unwritten policy in the Iraq War.And once again only a few low ranking soldiers will be scapegoated and referred to as "a few bad apples". This is how supposedly superior culture treats those of a supposedly inferior culture.

.Video Shows British Army Officer Screaming at Hooded Iraqi Civilians By Daily Mail Reporter at Daily Mail, July 16,2009 via Information Clearing House

-- Shocking images of the abuse of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers were shown for the first time yesterday at the start of a public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa.

Detainees say troops made them scream in pain in an 'orchestrated choir' and dance like Michael Jackson.

The men were scalded with boiling water, urinated on, kicked, punched and hooded while in British military custody, the hearing chaired by retired Court of Appeal judge Sir William Gage was told.




"Former GOP Congressman Demands Bush Investigations" by Sam Stein at Huffington Post, July 17, 2009


A former Republican member of House of Representatives demanded on Thursday that Congress launch an investigation into possible crimes committed under Bush administration.

Former Rep. Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.) argued, in a brief interview with the Huffington Post, that his one-time GOP colleagues in Congress were skirting their constitutional obligations by refusing to probe the Bush administration.

"I don't think it is complicated at all. I mean, oversight is oversight. If there are allegations that people in public office committed crimes, than we have an absolute obligation to investigate and find out if it is true," Edwards said. "I think it is Congress' job. You could have an independent investigation I suppose. But Congress has to keep control of it. It is Congress' obligation under the Constitution to do the oversight."

---------------------------------
also see:

and Israeli IDF training US Special Forces in assassinations:

"Israel Trains US Assassination Squads in Iraq" By Julian Borger in Washington" by the Guardian/UK Dec.9, 2003 via Information Clearing House

US special forces teams are already behind the lines inside Syria attempting to kill foreign jihadists before they cross the border, and a group focused on the "neutralisation" of guerrilla leaders is being set up, according to sources familiar with the operations.

"This is basically an assassination programme. That is what is being conceptualised here. This is a hunter-killer team," said a former senior US intelligence official, who added that he feared the new tactics and enhanced cooperation with Israel would only inflame a volatile situation in the Middle East.

"It is bonkers, insane. Here we are - we're already being compared to Sharon in the Arab world, and we've just confirmed it by bringing in the Israelis and setting up assassination teams."

also see article which I discussed at length in my last post:
"Bush's Hit Teams" by Robert Parry Consortium News, July 15, 2009

and so it goes,
GORD.

No comments: