by Damozel | I'd love to feel skepticism, but after some of the recent revelations, I feel none at all. As Bob Fertik remarks, Hersh is "the legendary investigative reporter who exposed My Lai and Abu Ghraib." And of course, "As the Bush administration was winding down, insiders like Hersh and
others said that what we knew in 2008 about the horrors of the Bush
administration was only the tip of the iceberg, that much more would
come out after 1/20/09." (Attytood)
Is this a preview of coming attractions? The Raw Story reports:
[Hersh also said:] ""After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet."
"It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on," Hersh stated. "Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us."
Hersh further stated:
"It’s complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It’s a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you’ve heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized.
"In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people.
"I’ve had people say to me -- five years ago, I had one say: ‘What do you call it when you interrogate somebody and you leave them bleeding and they don’t get any medical committee and two days later he dies. Is that murder? What happens if I get before a committee.?’
"But they’re not gonna get before a committee.” (Eric Black)
Though -- with all due respect to Mr Hersh -- they are murderers. I mean, we can rule out self-defense.
Bob Fertik asks, is anyone surprised? "[W]e know there is nothing - absolutely nothing - that Dick Cheney wouldn't do."
According to the recently released and formerly secret Justice Department memos, 911 somehow voided the traditional limits on the executive's constitutional powers. Once more I commend to your attention the memos setting forth those arguments.
As Eric Black reports, the real topic of the event at which Hersh made his comments was "the patterns by which presidents seem to get intoxicated by executive power, frustrated by the limitations on that power from Congress and the public, drawn into improper covert actions that exceed their constitutional powers, in the belief that they can get results and will never be found out."
At Emptywheel, Marcy Wheeler muses:
Mind you, I think [Hersh's remark] refers to two different things: the assassination squads (which seems to return us to the way of the 1960s, where we just tried to off foreign leaders we didn't like), and CIA's domestic targeting of those perceived to be enemies of the states (somehow I'm sure this will end up including Quakers).
Speaking as one of those, I find that not funny at all. And have my reasons for thinking it might be true.
Hersh says his information came from the investigation underlying a book he is currently writing. But he also said that "it might be a year or two before he has what he needs on the topic to be “effective...that is, empirical, for even the most skeptical.” (Eric Black) So it will be quite awhile before we get the details.
Will Bunch at Attytood has a good idea for what we do in the meantime:
And points out:
RECENT BUCK NAKED POLITICS POSTINGS
Ex-Congressional Staffer Pleads Guilty to Selling Influence
Why are Republicans Attacking Alan Grayson?
Citigroup Downgrades Wal-Mart Stocks over Possible Workers' Gains, but Ignores Executive Looting
Freeman Withdraws Nomination for National Intelligence Council
Hitachi Among Others to Plead Guilty to Price Fixing re: LCD Monitors
Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart on Jim Cramer
More Violence in Iraq: 33 Die at Iraq Peace Conference (News Update)
75 Year Old Syrian Woman Sentenced to 40 Lashes, Prison, & Deportation in Saudi Arabia
The Nutterdammerung ("Twilight of the Wingnuts: the Opera") Continues: Limbaugh vs. Gingrich
Comments