Executive assassination ring (Sy Hersh discusses)

[katty]

more: http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_seymour_hersh_describes_executive_assassination_ring

EXCERPT:

At a “Great Conversations” event at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an “executive assassination ring.”

Hersh spoke with great confidence about these findings from his current reporting, which he hasn’t written about yet.

In an email exchange afterward, Hersh said that his statements were “an honest response to a question” from the event’s moderator, U of M Political Scientist Larry Jacobs and “not something I wanted to dwell about in public.”

Hersh didn’t take back the statements, which he said arise from reporting he is doing for a book, but 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.”

[acmavm]

1. Shit on a stick....

<snip>"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"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.

"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.

<snip>

P.S. How many of these threads we gonna have?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x432275

[pscot]

2. If you commit what we normally call murder,

that makes you a murderer. I don't think the law makes allowances for good intentions.

[ThomCat]

3. Now, if only our government could find the will and courage

to investigate and prosecute, we might actually get somewhere. But even if Cheney could have been assassinating children personally, I still don't think Obama will do anything about it. It's all just vague talk to appease people.

[MasonJar]

4. If these continuous allegations of expedient and officious criminality

do not convince Obama to act, what will become of us?