Cheney's Secret Assassination Program

A lot has been revealed recently about, what appears to be, a secret assassination program that was headed by former Vice President Cheney. Last week, details began to quickly emerge about this program and that Cheney allegedly ordered that it be hidden from members of Congress. Rachel Maddow gives a good summary of how events have unfolded:

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So it looks like Dick Cheney was running a secret assassination ring. This sounds oddly familiar, almost like someone said something about this earlier this year:

At a “Great Conversations” event (MP3) 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.”

[...]

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. 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 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.”

For one, it looks like Seymour Hersh has been proven correct. As we continue to hear stories of wiretapping, torture, and assassination squads one must ask what it is going to take to launch some kind of investigation into criminal activity on at least one of these topics.

Avi Lewis Interviews Newt Gingrich

In 1994, Newt Gingrich managed to rally a "Republican Revolution" in opposition to the Democratic majority and helped to create a new kind of conservatism that opposed the Clinton Presidency and gave energy to the Republican Party. As the Republicans find themselves in a similar situation today, is it any surprise that Newt Gingrich would re-emerge to once again try and frame the debate and try and rescue a party that is struggling? Al Jazeera's Avi Lewis recently sat down with Gingrich on the show Fault Lines to speak with him about a variety of topics. Areas of discussion included welfare, religion, foreign policy, and even Gingrich's extra-marital affair during a time when he was criticizing President Clinton for his dealings with Monica Lewinsky. Below is the interview in two sections:

Bill Moyers Speaks with former Cigna Executive About Health Care

This past Friday on The Bill Moyers Journal, Moyers had a discussion on health care with a former executive of Cigna. Here are two clips from that discussion:

Is There Anything Public in the Debate on Health Care Reform?

Remember during the campaign season when (then) candidate Obama promised a public debate on the future of healthcare? From McClatchy:

Campaigning for president, Barack Obama said repeatedly that any overhaul of the health care system should be negotiated publicly and televised for all to see. Throughout this year's negotiations, however, the big deals have been struck in secret.

With tax increases and limits on what's covered among the possible ways of offsetting perhaps $1 trillion over a decade in expenses, neither the administration nor Congress is willing to give up its right to do the most sensitive talking in private, as it's always been done.

[...]

The notion of televising negotiations behind a health care revamp was so central to Obama's campaign promises of change and openness, however, that it became part of his stump speech as he traveled the country in 2007 and 2008.

He'd describe how televised deliberations would take place around a big table, with seats filled by doctors, nurses, insurers and other interested parties. As president, he'd joke, he'd get the biggest chair.

"Not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN," Obama explained in a Democratic debate in Los Angeles in January 2008, in language similar to many of his campaign stops.

However, the two biggest deals so far - industry agreements to cut drug and hospital costs - were reached in secret.

So with much of the debate happening behind closed doors, is it any surprise that the public option is facing difficulty even getting consideration from Congress? Wouldn't it make sense for our elected representatives to have a public debate on this issue considering that the majority of Americans want the public option to be included in the discussion on health care reform?

Jane Hamsher, founder of Firedoglake, thinks so. She was on MSNBC yesterday discussing health care with Jillian Bandes, a reporter for townhall.com when things got spirited:



Maybe Bandes is right...I mean if we start thinking that health care is a basic human right then what's next - food?

Torturing for all the Right Reasons

Alicia Shepard, Ombudsman for National Public Radio, has continually been appearing on NPR programming to defend NPR's policy of not referring to so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" as torture. There has been an interesting development since I wrote about this issue last week that takes Shepard's defense from sad, to ridiculous.

From Glenn Greenwald:

Finally, I was on an NPR station yesterday in Seattle to discuss NPR's ban on the use of the word "torture" to describe Bush administration interrogation tactics. I originally understood that I would be on with NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard, but alas, it turns out that she agreed only to be on the show before me, so as not to engage or otherwise interact with me, so I was forced to listen to her for 15 minutes and wait until she hung up before being able to speak. The segment can be heard here, beginning at the 14:00 mark (though the quality of the recording is poor in places).

The most noteworthy point was her explicit statement (at 17:50) that "the role of a news organization is to lay out the debate"; rarely is the stenographic model of "journalism" -- "we just repeat what each side says and leave it at that" -- so expressly advocated (and see Jon Stewart's perfect mockery of that view). She also said -- when the host asked about the recent example I cited of NPR's calling what was done to a reporter in Gambia "torture" (at the 20:20 mark) -- that NPR will use the word "torture" to describe what other governments do because they do it merely to sadistically inflict pain on people while the U.S. did it for a noble reason: to obtain information about Terrorist attacks. That's really what she said: that when the U.S. did it (as opposed to Evil countries), it was for a good reason. Leaving aside the factual falsity of her claim about American motives, Shepard actually thinks that "torture" is determined by the motive with which the suffering is inflicted. The connection between the Government's ability to get away with these things and the media's warped view of its role really cannot be overstated.

[...]

I've been going back and forth on whether Shepard's deficiency is primarily one of intellect or whether she's just a hard-core Cheneyite. I'm now convinced -- after her statements yesterday on that show I did with after her -- that it's both.

Anyone who can say that what we do is not "torture" because we do it for the right reasons -- whereas it's "torture" when those other countries do it because they're sadistic and bad -- is someone who is devoid of both basic reasoning skills and good motives.

and as Kevin Drum points out, this is indeed what Shepard said!

For the record, here's what she actually said about NPR's piece on Gambia:

In that case, these were strictly tactics to torture him, to punish him, versus in the United States, and the way that it's used, these are tactics used to get information. The Gambian journalist was in jail for his beliefs.


Wow. She really did say that, didn't she? When other people do it for other reasons, it's torture. When we do it for our reasons, it's not.

You don't usually find people willing to say this quite so baldly. Congratulations, Alicia Shepard.

Astounding isn't it? Shepard's defense of NPR's decision to not use the word "torture" (in describing the tactics approved by the Bush Administration) has descended into the realm of pathetic. To (wrongly) advance the argument or moral superiority when discussing the reasoning behind torture and then using that as justification for why NPR shouldn't call it torture, is absurd on every possible level. Shepard's defense boils down to "we torture for good reasons" and "others torture for bad reasons", therefore, we shouldn't describe our techniques as "torture" when reporting on them. Can it be any clearer why critical journalism is suffering? And this is from National Public Radio.

Peter Bronson has been Fired from the Cincinnati Enquirer

In a turn of events that is all too indicative of the state of newspapers in 2009, the conservative columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer, Peter Bronson, has been fired.

I have written pieces in the past that are critical of items that Bronson has written and more recently I have highlighted Bronson's posting of a known fake image of newly elected Senator Al Franken (initially covered by my fellow writers at the Cincinnati Beacon). There is no indication that Bronson's departure has anything to do with this most recent issue.

While I often disagreed with Bronson's right-wing political column and feel that his approach did not advance the level of political discussion, it is sad to see the Enquirer continue to bleed more jobs - especially at a time when newspaper jobs have been cut all over the country and news coverage has inevitably suffered.

The concerns about our nation's newspapers are real and hopefully there can continue to be a productive discussion about the emergence of new media and the transitioning of traditional media into this new world. It is a time where we need honest discussions that will benefit the public interest and help advance voices that promote honesty, truth, and making decisions that are based on facts.

Bronson's departure ends a rocky week for the right-wing columnist but speak to the larger issue at hand about which there needs to be a continued discussion.

Obama Administration Continues to Argue for Preventive Detention to Guard Against Future Crimes

From today's Wall Street Journal (emphasis mine):

The Obama administration said Tuesday it could continue to imprison non-U.S. citizens indefinitely even if they have been acquitted of terrorism charges by a U.S. military commission.

Jeh Johnson, the Defense Department's chief lawyer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that releasing a detainee who has been tried and found not guilty was a policy decision that officials would make based on their estimate of whether the prisoner posed a future threat.

Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration argues that the legal basis for indefinite detention of aliens it considers dangerous is separate from war-crimes prosecutions. Officials say that the laws of war allow indefinite detention to prevent aliens from committing warlike acts in future, while prosecution by military commission aims to punish them for war crimes committed in the past.

This news is obviously disappointing and works to undercut the Obama Administration's continued statements promoting their adherence to the rule of law. Let's set aside, for a moment, the point that the Military Commissions system is flawed and pretend that it was a model process for bringing detainees to trial. What the Obama Administration is arguing is that even if detainees are acquitted by a Military Commission, they could still be legally detained until it can be determined that said detainee would not pose a danger to the United States. Why do they feel that this is an acceptable policy - because Military Commissions are only set up to punish people for "war crimes committed in the past" and therefore cannot determine who would commit war crimes in the future.

According to this rationale, it would make sense for the Obama Administration to set up an additional Commission whose job it would be to put detainees on trial in order to examine if they should be convicted on "evidence" that they would commit future crimes. This Orwellian argument certainly ranks up there with some of most disturbing arguments put forth by the Bush Administration over the last eight years.

Continuing on in the WSJ article:

Mr. Johnson said such prisoners held without trial would receive "some form of periodic review" that could lead to their release.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a leading Republican on detainee policy, approved. "Some of them will be able to get out of jail because they've rehabilitated themselves and some of them may in fact die in jail," Mr. Graham said. But "I don't want to put people in a dark hole forever" simply "because somebody like Dick Cheney, or you fill in the blank with a politician, said so."

I am glad that Graham approves of vague promises of "some form of periodic review" that may or may not lead to the release of those held without charge. What kind of laws and system of justice is the Obama Administration championing with their vague terminology and in endorsing a detention system that would make the previous administration proud? As Rep. Jerold Nadler (D-NY) said in that same WSJ article:

"What bothers me is that they seem to be saying, 'Some people we have good enough evidence against, so we'll give them a fair trial. Some people the evidence is not so good, so we'll give them a less fair trial. We'll give them just enough due process to ensure a conviction because we know they're guilty. That's not a fair trial, that's a show trial,"

Also interjected into this discussion is the issue of admitting "evidence" that was obtained using coercive techniques. The reliability of this evidence is at the center of the debate surrounding the issue of Military Commissions since statements obtained under coercion are currently admissible. It appears to be the thought of the Obama Administration that if they determine that so-called "evidence" obtained using coercive methods are not reliable and should not be admissible, then a number of convictions would be overturned due to their reliance on unreliable evidence. If these convictions are overturned, then it can be said that these individuals would continue to be detained if the Obama Administration is successful in arguing that they can continue to legally detain prisoners based on the threat of so-called "future crimes". The cancerous effects of torture continue to be felt.

About a month and a half ago, I posted a clip from the Rachel Maddow Show in which she discussed the speech during which President Obama first floated the idea of detaining people for so-called "future crimes". I am posting it again below because I feel that it continues to be relevant to this discussion.




This article is crossposted here.