Dick Cheney Had Benazir Bhutto Killed By A Special Hit Squad - Not!!!!!

or so claims The Nation.

NEW YORK (Online) - Former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on the orders of the special death squad formed by former US vice-president Dick Cheney, which had already killed the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafique Al Hariri and the army chief of that country.

The squad was headed by General Stanley McChrystal, the newly-appointed commander of US army in Afghanistan. It was disclosed by reputed US journalist Seymour Hersh while talking to an Arab TV in an interview.

Wow! There apparently is no limit to the evil that is Dick Cheney. Not only that but he apparently was assassinating Americans too in order to secure his base of power: I initially misread the following passage it was talking about foreign opponents and I thought it was talking about domestic opponents.

Hersh said former US vice-president Cheney was the chief of the Joint Special Operation Command and he clear the way for the US by exterminating opponents through the unit and the CIA. General Stanley was the in-charge of the unit.

and of course the Jews were deeply involved, I mean after all whats a conspiracy without a Jewish mastermind:

Seymour also said that Rafiq Al Hariri and the Lebanese army chief were murdered for not safeguarding the US interests and refusing US setting up military bases in Lebanon. Ariel Sharon, the then prime minister of Israel, was also a key man in the plot.

Or maybe, and I am just spitballing here, this is a giant crock of shit dreamed up by some anti-semitic Pakistani conspiracy theorist trying to smear America nad drum up support for the taliban / al-Qaeda. Just saying is all.

I am looking for a transcript of the Seymour Hersch interview where this was supposedly revealed.

The American Spectator has more as does Down With Tyranny. This has also been picked up by an Indian website. I have no way to gauge it's readership, but with our luck it is probably the most popular and trusted website in India.

I know the current administration is no fan of Dick Cheney but this has the potential to hurt American interests deeply. President Obama should have someone out there denying this immediately. Seymour Hersh has already done so in the Daily Times of Pakistan:

The award-winning journalist described as “complete madness” the reports that the squad headed by General Stanley McChrystal – the new commander of US army in Afghanistan – had also killed former Lebanese prime minister Rafique Al Hariri and a Lebanese army chief. “Vice president Cheney does not have a death squad. I have no idea who killed Mr Hariri or Mrs Bhutto,” Hersh said. “I have never said that I did have such information. I most certainly did not say anything remotely to that effect during an interview with an Arab media outlet.” He said Gen McChrystal had run a special forces unit that engaged in “high value target activity”, but “while I have been critical of some of that unit’s activities in the pages of the New Yorker and in interviews, I have never suggested that he was involved in political assassinations or death squads on behalf of Mr Cheney, as the published stories state.”

Update: This has hit DAWN which is a mainstream Pakistani newspaper now. The content is essentially the same as The Nation and Thaidian above but doesn't include the Hersch's denial. This has the potential to be big trouble.

BTW Kurulounge is the #1 Google search result for this. Woo Hoo!

Benazir Bhutto, Dick Cheney, Pakistan

So I Guess Transparency IS Only Good When It Benefits the Obama Agenda. Cheney's Request For Document Release Denied

The Obama administration has turned down former Vice President Dick Cheney’s request for the declassification of two CIA reports on the effectiveness of the Agency’s detainee program, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned. A letter dated May 7, 2009, from the CIA’s Information and Privacy Coordinator, Delores M. Nelson, rejected Cheney’s request because the documents he has requested are involved in a Freedom of Information Act court battle.

...

White House officials have told reporters and members of Congress that the Cheney memos do not bolster the case for enhanced interrogation, as Cheney has suggested. But they have nonetheless refused to release them. President Obama has the legal authority to declassify the documents “with the wave of his hand,” according to one expert.

source

Curious given that Cheney is beating the Obama administration up over the fact that these memos supposedly show that the enhanced interrogation program was effective. It seems to me that the way to go here is to release them and let the public decide. It's not like we are trying to hide the fact that the interrogations took place. That cat is out of the bag. The only reason I see not to release them is that they bolster Cheney's claims.

politics, cheney

NY Times - Obama's Intelligence Chief says "Banned Techniques Yielded ‘High Value Information"

WASHINGTON – President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists.

“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.

Hmmm, the same thing Dick Cheney said over the weekend and the White House castigated him for it. Of the same information was actually in the memos if anyone in the media had actually bothered to read them.

It also might have helped if the memo that Admiral Blair had released to the media last week had contained that information but it was "inadvertently" (Ha!) left out:

Admiral Blair’s assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

...

A spokeswoman for Admiral Blair said the lines were cut in the normal editing process of shortening an internal memo into a media statement emphasizing his concern that the public understand the context of the decisions made in the past and the fact that they followed legal orders.

It doesn't really matter I guess, the administration got what they wanted four days of attacks on the Bush administration and now President Obama can safely signal an intent to prosecute people who's political policies he disagrees with.

politics, war, war on terror

Enhanced Interrogations Worked

Writing in the Washington Post Mark Thiessen contends, contrary to what the Obama administration would have us believe, that the enhanced interrogations authorized by the Bush administration were effective in preventing additional terrorist attacks after September 11th.

President Obama declared that the techniques used to question captured terrorists "did not make us safer." This is patently false. The proof is in the memos Obama made public -- in sections that have gone virtually unreported in the media.

...

Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques "led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' 'to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into' a building in Los Angeles." KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. The memo explains that "information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the 'Second Wave.' " In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.

More examples at the main article. Worth considering.

politics, war, war on terror

Waterboarding

The Other McCain continues the waterboarding discussion. In a nutshell he finds it justified. So do I with the following caveats:

1. There is a difference between police work and intelligence gathering. I would never approve of this type of technique for use by any police agency. The popular hypothetical is the concealed WMD and the prisoner knows the location. Fine then turn him over to the CIA and let them handle it, afterwords make the prisoner disappear. This is not a police matter it's a national security matter.

2. Even when used in national security cases there has to be limits. One of the defining definitions of torture in US law is that it causes long term mental or physical harm. In the recent NY Times article it is claimed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times continuing, at superiors insistence, even after interrogators believed he had revealed everything he knew.

While I have a lot of difficulty feeling any pity for KSM this type of use, if true, would cross the line in my mind. The long term application is likely to cause both long term physical and mental problems and the fact that the on scene experts were recommending against it makes it seem unnecessary.

2a. Techniques of this type should always be a last resort and should require written justification. As soon as possible the chain of command should be briefed on their use. Except in the most exigent of circumstance they should never be undertaken without written approval. Not only does requiring justification and approval make it less likely that the techniques will be abused but it protects the agent who has to perform them. There should also be an internal review process so that results can be collated and tracked. If one interrogator is continually recommending enhanced interrogation with results that don't justify it he can be removed.

So there is the basis of my policy for harsh enhanced interrogation techniques.

Politics, war on Terror

I wish I could say I am surprised and disappointed but I can't - Judge rules deatainees held in Afghanistan can challenge detention in US courts

Reporting from Washington -- In the evolving law surrounding rights of combatants detained by the U.S. military, a federal judge ruled today that prisoners in "the war on terror" can use courts in the United States to challenge their detention at a military base in Afghanistan.

U.S. District Judge John Bates today rejected an attempt by the U.S. to deny access to American courts for three foreign detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

source

The judge declared that the cases of detainees in Afghanistan are essentially identical to those of the detainees in Gitmo and therefore the stupid decision the Supreme Court made regarding those detainees applies in Afghanistan.

Wow - I bet no one saw that coming, huh? Oh wait everyone with half a brain did, but I guess people were holding out hope that idiots like Judge John Bates would exercise a little common sense.


Here are the memorandums

War, Legal, Afghanistan

Director of National Intelligence - Some Gitmo Detainees May Be Released In US

They will also be given "assistance" to return to society.

• 39 weeks unemployment
• Job Retraining
• Al-Qaeda has a health plan so I assume they will be eligible for COBRA.

Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, anticipates that many of those released will seek employment in crowded shopping malls and schools where their future suicide bombings will be most devastating.

source

Is it wrong for me to point out what an insanely bad idea this is? It's only been two weeks since it was reported that a recently killed Taliban commander was a Gitmo detainee and overall 60 some have returned to terrorism after being released. Supposedly those that will be released in the US will have been cleared of terrorism charges and pose no threat but I'm sorry I don't buy it.

War , al-Qaeda, Taliban, Guantanamo Bay

Missile Strikes Against Al-Qaeda Are Extremely Effective. Look For Obama To Call A Halt

Reporting from Washington -- An intense, six-month campaign of Predator strikes in Pakistan has taken such a toll on Al Qaeda that militants have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust, U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials say.

The pace of the Predator attacks has accelerated dramatically since August, when the Bush administration made a previously undisclosed decision to abandon the practice of obtaining permission from the Pakistani government before launching missiles from the unmanned aircraft.

...

U.S. intelligence officials said they see clear signs that the Predator strikes are sowing distrust within Al Qaeda. "They have started hunting down people who they think are responsible" for security breaches, the senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said, discussing intelligence assessments on condition of anonymity. "People are showing up dead or disappearing."

...

The success of the Predator campaign has prompted some counter-terrorism officials to speak of a post-Al Qaeda era in which its regional affiliates -- in North Africa and elsewhere -- are all that remain after the center collapses.

"You can imagine a horizon in which Al Qaeda proper no longer exists," said Juan Zarate, former counter-terrorism advisor to Bush. "If you were to continue on this pace, and get No. 1 and No. 2, Al Qaeda is dead. You can't resuscitate that organization as we know it without its senior leadership."

source

Good news! And for the record I made up the bit about Obama canceling the program, although with some of his recent moves it wouldn't surprise me. Closing Gitmo, ceasing the use of the enemy combatant designation, his homeland security secretary referring to terrorism as a man caused disaster, all of these show a lack of seriousness about terrorism that is disturbing and ceasing a successful program would be par for the course he has played so far.