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Executive Assassination Ring: Seymour Hersh on Cheney's Crimes

As one million (!) names top the US terror watch list,  Seymour Hersh previews some US state terror he claims happened under Cheney’s authorization in comments made at a University of Minnesota address (official audio) on March 10 and also covered here:

Mondale-Hersh-Jacobs Colloquy (1h:48m)MP3

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 [Ed.: I think this is the article] 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.

14 comments on “Executive Assassination Ring: Seymour Hersh on Cheney's Crimes

  1. Pingback: America, you have been governed by criminals. « Aelag’s Blog

  2. aelag
    12 March, 2009

    So these guys are not murderers? What are they members of the Salvation Army?
    They may not have started out as murderers, hardly anybody ever does, yet this is what they became.
    Please no excuses, this is what’s wrong with America and a large part of the West.
    It’s always somebody else’s fault.
    We never want to accept responsibility for our actions.
    UNLAWFUL ORDERS CAN AND SHOULD BE DISOBEYED!
    Remember Nuremberg?
    Please don’t forget a very unfashionable word CONSCIENCE.

  3. Pingback: SALVATION ARMY « Aelag’s Blog

  4. 99
    12 March, 2009

    You’ve got the wrong length of the audio up there. [thanks, 99, I just corrected it. We changed to a different audio and forgot to update the time length. Thanks for the heads up]. At about, 1:03 or so you will start hearing Hersh talk about them asking Congress for “defensive lethal authority” in their planned effort to “snatch” Iranian nuclear scientists. You should listen to that section carefully. Hersh believes they were going to force Iranian scientists to give false testimony about Iranian nukes… kill them if they wouldn’t do it. He HOPES the Obama administration has stopped that.

  5. 99
    12 March, 2009

    The actual length of the mp3 is 1:48:37 and well worth downloading and listening to a few times, because much is revealed there. A lot of it comes in ways that don’t sound like revelations at all.

    People should never forget that Seymour Hersh knows a heck of a lot more about what’s really going on in the US government, and even as he’s chosen to ignore certain realities and to rah-rah about things certain of us find distasteful, I give him a pass on these since it is vital for him to adopt these tactics in order to keep getting the kind of information he gets out of VERY high level officials.

    He’s one of the greatest assets for the recovery of decency in this world that we have, and we have to try to think of the pressures under which he must operate in order to get the truth out to us.

    I repeat: he knows more about what’s really going on than almost anyone in America, and any opportunity you have to hear him speak is worth all your time. He often tells more while speaking than he ever can in print, and it’s worth everything to get that stuff. In this world where truth is so indistinguishable from the multifarious lies, where the entirety of the media is so tainted with propaganda and manipulation, someone like Hersh is a diamond… a diamond the size and weight of Gibraltar… something you can hold on to.

    I personally deplore how he won’t address the 9/11 thing except in the accepted official story way, and KNOW he’s no dolt and knows there’s everything wrong with that, but if he took any other approach, ALL his sources would clam up on him.

    So. I give him a pass. People should think what it’s like to be in his position. He’s done SO much good over the course of his life.

  6. aelag
    12 March, 2009

    Please do not associate my country with Mr. Seymour, not even in jest.
    Some simple questions? Where does Mr. Seymour´s allegiance lies??
    Perchance he is a Baldrick with a cunning plan?
    Perchance he is after a pound of flesh?

  7. 99
    12 March, 2009

    His name is Seymour Hersh. He has been the ONLY mainstream media journalist who has consistently and fearlessly published the truth about stuff the rest of the media ignores, does not know about, or substitutes in propaganda in truth’s stead.

    What he is after is the United States actually being what the United States has always supposed to have been: a country full of industrious and fair people who do not go screwing with people across the globe.

    He is responsible for exposing some of the biggest war crimes in American history, responsible for exposing the bullshit about Iranian nukes to thousands upon thousands of people who might otherwise have listened to our government’s, and the Israel Lobby’s filthy lies about it. The man breaks his butt to expose the perfidies at the highest levels of the United States government, SO THEY CAN BE STOPPED.

    Don’t be a jackass about Seymour Hersh until you know more about him.

  8. 99
    12 March, 2009

    And there was more to be reviled about old Fritzy Mondale’s mild contributions to this conversation than anything Hersh ever did in his life.

  9. aelag
    12 March, 2009

    Always ready and willing to be educated, especially by someone as erudite as you.
    Regarding the past behaviour of the US one might do worse than ask your Amerindian and Afro-Americans or perhaps present day immigrants from south of the Border.
    I did not intend to get personal or attack the US but provocation is not a good ally.
    I wasn’t aware you cared so deeply for Mr.Seymour.
    I haven’t been formally introduced to this gentleman, so he is still Mr. Hersh to me.
    Still some free advice “Beware of…….bearing gifts.”
    No personal offence intended.

  10. Righteous Christian American Patriot
    12 March, 2009

    Just who do they think they are kidding?…Everyone in the U.S. knows that 911 was an inside job!!.Bush has killed millions of Innocent Iraqis and sent hundreds of thousands of American soldiers to their death beds all on the account of a lie.Bush deliberately lied.But who’s watching them?.Who polices the presidents,vice presidents,the CIA,the FBI?.God says in Romans 3:23 for all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of god.Does that not include FBI agents,CIA agents,the police,prosecuting attorneys,Court room judges?.Indeed.How many pending lawsuits are in progress against Guantanamo bay?.How about Abu Graib?,how about Phosphorus being used against Iraqis?

  11. Righteous Christian American Patriot
    12 March, 2009

    The longer the U.S. keeps its troops in the Islamic countries, and kills Muslims regardless if it is done accidentally or not that Muslim is not coming back to life and is someone’s daughter,husband, sister, brother,uncle,grandfather,grandmother…I think you get the picture.The more Muslims killed by the U.S. armed forces, the more radicals it will produce that will want to harm the U.S. and will only add sympathy for these Islamic extremists.Dick Cheney who was CEO of Halliburton deliberately lied about the war to increase his stock options.Bush and Cheney have made billions of dollars off the back of American and Iraqi’s lives.And yet Bush speaks of courage and yet his two daughters are invading margarita ville.How do you stop wars? simple, those who are for wars have to fight in them.

  12. aelag
    12 March, 2009

    Ref: 99
    There is a saying in Arabic: A camel cannot see it’s own hump.”
    Yes you did not go screwing around the globe until you wrested Cuba from Spain as you did with the Philippines. Need I go on any further? you did it in California, New Mexico, Texas, etc. etc.
    I will not mention Vietnam or Iran, Lebanon, Palestine or even Chile and central America.
    I must admit you saved the British in WW2 only because the alternative was too awful to contemplate, and promptly took over from them in the Middle and Far East.
    Who are you kidding? Fair and industrious? Industrious no doubt as for the rest, don’t delude yourself, you are as good or as bad as anybody else.
    Get off your high horse.

  13. 99
    12 March, 2009

    I make no excuses for the multifarious perfidies of the United States. I assert that the foundation of it, and the education about it giving to most of its citizens, was about summarized with the terms “fair” and “industrious”… and certainly few of us, that 1% who now have all our money, feel otherwise.

    There are about 25% who are brainwashed to defend any and all actions by our government, no matter how heinous. They’re idiots who have abdicated critical thinking because it gives them migraines. I suspect the same is true in your country.

    I am telling you — and I am “on a high horse” about it — that Seymour Hersh truly IS on the side of decency and humanity the world over and has devoted his entire working life to digging out the big truths about the awful things our government does around the world. I cede that he has taken a pass on 9/11 Truth, which is a shame because he could do more good than a hundred others together if he’d take it up, but the point is: he cannot take it up and keep the contacts that make the rest of his HEROIC work possible. So I’ve given him a pass on that.

    He’s already the most effective and truthful journalist we have, and not even he could prevail against the 9/11 lies, PLUS he needs to publicly spout the military’s and CIA’s excuses for their actions, which are NOT always entirely without merit, which is not the same as excusing the administration’s gross injustices, or, again, he loses his ability to bring us the truth.

    Most of the American public wishes hotly that the heinous crimes done in our name never happened… even feel badly that our standard of life is [soon to be “was”] so good because of them, lose no opportunity to deplore them, yet this never has an impact on our government’s protection of the evil slimebags who perpetrate these crimes. Seymour Hersh DOES.

    For instance, if you listen carefully to this, you will begin to understand that one big reason we have not attacked Iran is because Seymour Hersh made their stinking filthy plans public.

    And he’s doing it again, and more, here! He’s telling everyone, even though he couldn’t get it in print, that the last administration was trying to get in position to force Iranian scientists into making false statements about Iranian nuke capabilities SO WE COULD HAVE AN EXCUSE TO NUKE IRAN FOR ISRAEL. That is shit Satan couldn’t think up.

    Hersh’s exposing of this stuff to the public may very well be what prevented it happening. He even went around with Scott Ritter to make sure everyone they could get to listen knew that the government was spouting OUTRIGHT BULLSHIT about Iran.

    So, yes, I’m angry you want to besmirch someone who, in this ugly, ugly, ugly climate is literally risking his life for the truth, as much as he can get out — to the mainstream, in mainstream publications and speaking venues, in ways the mainstream can accept and digest. Those fuckers who just left office have a long history of suiciding people who get in their way, so I am not exaggerating about what Hersh defies to get us this information.

    Don’t be a disrespectful asshole about Hersh. Bash America all you want, but leave Hersh out of it.

  14. aelag
    13 March, 2009

    Arrogance, ignorance and ill-manners, an explosive combination.
    Good luck.

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This entry was posted on 12 March, 2009 by in Audio, USA and tagged , , , , .

Timely Reminders

"Those who crusade, not for God in themselves, but against the devil in others, never succeed in making the world better, but leave it either as it was, or sometimes perceptibly worse than what it was, before the crusade began. By thinking primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions, to create occasions for evil to manifest itself."
-- Aldous Huxley

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yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there"
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