The article as appeared before going down:
1rst year of the Obama Administration comes to a close, many questions remain about the mysteries of the so-called“dark side” of the “war on terror”. No investigation by this administration of the Bush/Cheney administration exists, even though during his campaign the investigation was promised by Obama. Therefore some of the most serious questions to face this nation remain unsolved. Some wonder if some sort of a deal was struck by Bush and Obama in the Oval Office of the White House during the transition. Al Qaeda’s 9/11 terror attacks, after all, were on the Bush/Cheney watch the day everything changed, and began the trillion dollar war on terror. As reported in the U.S. Border Fire Report at www.usborderfirereport.com, at the University of Minnesota before his death, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh told his audience that an ongoing covert military operation that he called an “executive assassination ring” was operating out of the highest levels of the U.S. Government
REUTERS/Fadi Al-Assaad Journalist Seymour Hersh rt. speaking
RS/Fadi Al-Assaad Journalist Seymour Hersh rt. speaking in Doha at an Al Jazeera forum on the media in 2007. Hersh spoke with great confidence about these findings from his current reporting. And promised he would write about it and give more details. Mr. Hersh died shortly after those remarks and never was able to follow up on his promise. 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.” The evening of great conversation, featuring Walter Mondale and Hersh, moderated by Jacobs and titled “America’s Constitutional Crisis,” looked to be a mostly historical review of events that have tested our Constitution, by a journalist and a high government official who had experience with many of the crises. And it was mostly historical, and a great conversation, in which Hersh and Mondale talked about the patterns by which presidents seem to get intoxicated by executive power, frustrated by the limitations on that power from Congress and
mitations 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. Despite a few references to the Founding Fathers, the history was mostly recent, starting with the Vietnam War with much of it arising from the George W. Bush administration, which both men roundly denounced. At the end of one answer by Hersh about how these things tend to happen, Jacobs asked: “And do they continue to happen to this day?” Replied Hersh:“Yuh. 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. That does happen.“Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command — JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office.
ys, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. …“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 [William H.] 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 cal 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
rs 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 attention 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.” Hersh, the best-known investigative reporter of his generation wrote about those kinds of issues for The New Yorker. He wrote often about JSOC. Under the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressiona interference.”(“Finding” refers to a special document that a president must issue, although not make public, to authorize covert CIA actions.) Michael Kane reports that the Secret Service was the supreme command on 9/11, and that Bush was not in the role of Commander in Chief at critical times on 9/11. The acting Commander in Chief as the 9/11 plot unfolded was Dick Cheney. Crossing the Rubicon: Simplifying the case against Dick Cheney. According to Op/Ed News the noose is slowly closing on Dick Cheney’s ultimate deception which is his role in expediting or allowing the attacks against America on 9/11 and then utilizing torture to obtain so-called confessions to bolster the questionable 9/11 Commission findings. As the Daily Kos reported “Don’t be fooled, Dick and Liz aren’t fighting for the GOP nor for the Bush administration, they are fighting to keep Dick out of jail. Liz Cheney even, herself, admitted on CNN Anderson Cooper 360 that her father’s recent Media Tour was motivated by the fear to be prosecuted… Since Dubya is mum, I won’t be surprised that he threw Cheney under the bus a long time ago with the help of his Poppy.” http://
s Poppy.” http:// www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/25/735177/-If- Waterboarding-works,-what-about-Cheney- George W Bush, likely signed off on the 9/11 plot but was purposely kept somewhat out of the loop by Cheney ~ which explains his unconscious My Pet Goat Moment when informed of the attack ~ he was awaiting directions from Cheney. Dick Cheney was in the bunker on 9-11 directing several “war games” and lied to 9-11 Omission Commission about the timing of his 9/11 activities and Donald Rumsfeld, a close friend of Cheney, was at Pentagon on 9-11 ~ and once slipped and said“when that missile hit the Pentagon” But there are scores of other possible suspects in this conspiracy as seen in this graphic article ~ 9/11 Who Really Did It http://www.whodidit.org/cocon.html It certainly appears that those who are now going to be tried in New York who have already confessed to master minding the 9/ 11 attacks were also tortured ~ making their confessions highly suspect if not completely invalid along with the findings of the 9/11 Commission report So the obvious question is ~ Why is President Obama not pushing the torture investigations? The obvious answer is that Obama knows that any extensive torture investigation will lead to the so-called 9/11 confessions (which were obtained under torture) and open up a Pandora’s Box ~ which will virtually implicate the entire Cheney/Bush administration. However, this is a fire that won’t go out as witnessed by John Hatch’s May 22nd article in ICH entitled Torture and 9/11. Excerpt: “The Iraq invasion was conceived long before 9/11 which was simply used as a pretext for achieving ‘full spectrum domination’ of land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace as outlined in The Project for a New American Century, of which Dick Cheney was a founding member, and President Bush a willing dupe. The goal was nothing short of attempted world domination, and Iraq and Afghanistan were pawns on a list which included Syria and Iran. PNAC spoke longingly of a ‘new Pearl Harbor event’ as a catalyst to galvanize fearful American
American Century, of which Dick Cheney was a founding member, and President Bush a willing dupe. The goal was nothing short of attempted world domination, and Iraq and Afghanistan were pawns on a list which included Syria and Iran. PNAC spoke longingly of a ‘new Pearl Harbor event’ as a catalyst to galvanize fearful American opinion to allow the former to have its way, which is exactly what happened after 9/11 (and don’t forget that mailed weaponized Lawrence Livermore anthrax, that ‘bonus terror that hurried the Patriot Act unread through Congress and that was since so conveniently blamed on a dead guy)… An investigation would reveal (indeed we already know) that torture was employed to establish a false link between Saddam and al Qaeda in order to make a preconceived invasion more acceptable to the American people. Since everything the people were told turned out to be lies, questions would inevitably arise regarding the ‘catalyst’ itself, the new Pearl Harbor 9/11 event that was so useful to PNAC and the Bush Administration… “ Hatch concludes with this observation ~ “This, I submit is what officials in the Obama Administration fear the most. An investigation of torture would inevitably lead to questions about what 9/11 was really about. We know with certainty that the official version of events is a pack of lies; what if America had to confront the fact that 9/11 really was an inside job? (The recent finding of nano-thermite in WTC dust is just one more compelling argument.) Such a finding would so undermine Americans’ core beliefs as to have profoundly unpredictable consequences. It would mean that no American is safe from its own terrorist government. It would mean that government is not only corrupt to its very foundations, but also that it is a force of malevolence toward its citizens. It would mean that there is nothing in which to place one’s political faith. It would mean that the same forces that killed 3000 Americans on that day (and many subsequently) still operate behind the scenes in Washington, and ‘change’ is only cosmetic. It would prove that over the last two terms, democracy was a cruel illusion in America (and some would say since November 22, 1963). It
ince November 22, 1963). It would mean that for the patriotic American citizen, at last there’s nothing left to lose… That’s what they (Obama Administration) are rightly afraid of … That’s why they want to allow the Bush putsch to get away with murder… and avoid looking further into the abyss.. “ Did former Vice-President Cheney know the full, clinical details of the Bush Administration’s interrogation and detention program for terror suspects? Did he have a supervisory role? Well here are 10 questions asked today by the New Yorker magazine, questions that must be answered if America is to lean the truth. How much did President Bush know about the alleged abuse? Cheney has said that the former President “knew a great dea about the program” and “basically authorized it.” Did he know, for instance, that one suspect was waterboarded a hundred and eighty-three times? Did he know that another died in C.I.A. custody after having been left to freeze overnight? If he did know, what was his reaction? The C.I.A. destroyed ninety-two videotapes of interrogation sessions. What exactly was on the tapes, and why were they destroyed? Are there written transcripts describing what was on the tapes? Did the tapes document potential evidence of a crime? If so, did their destruction constitute obstruction of justice? And if so, which officials authorized the tapes’ destruction? Have all the former C.I.A. prisoners been accounted for? Some seem not to have been sent to Guantánamo when the C.I.A.’s black-site prisons were closed, in 2006. Instead, it appears they may have been sent to other countries, including Egypt, Jordan, and Libya. If so, who were these prisoners, and where are they now? Who provided the “muscle” in the C.I.A. interrogation and detention program? Were the notional global “hit squads” authorized, or made operational? Were their activities fully briefed to Congress? Were they staffed by C.I.A. officers, Special Operations officers, private contractors, or others? If there
al? Were their activities fully briefed to Congress? Were they staffed by C.I.A. officers, Special Operations officers, private contractors, or others? If there were abuses, will anyone face any consequences? Vice-President Cheney and other defenders of “enhanced interrogation” techniques have insisted that coercion produced intelligence and saved lives. Many other experts have argued that the same information or better could have been obtained by less controversial methods. Will the public ever be able to access the record, in order to judge this on its own? A small handful of politically appointed lawyers during the Bush years approved many forms of prisoner abuse that would previously have been judged criminal. Those lawyers have fanned out to teach, practice law, and, in one case, sit on the federal bench. Will there be professional consequences for any of these lawyers? A report on them by the Justice Department has been pending release for the entire last year. Why has it been so delayed? Several contract psychologists designed and helped to implement the C.I.A.’s program of “enhanced” interrogation techniques. Will these psychologists face professiona consequences? They have indicated they would like to tell their story—will they?
Who forged the “yellowcake” Niger documents that helped spur the U.S. into the war in Iraq? Who are the chief financiers of terror, and do any of them have state sponsors? Where is Osama bin Laden?
Reprinted verbatim.
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