I know you are talking in the strict legal sense, but in the moral sense, I’d say any administration that ordered military action where it was all but 100 percent certain people would be killed, with known false justifications for such actions, has commited murder.
I’m not saying for sure which administration, if any, did this, because I don’t know for sure who knew what when about any military action, whether it be Saddam’s WMDs or the Gulf Of Tonkin incident. But I’d bet plenty of administrations fit my personal moral definition of murderers. Maybe most of them.
I hear Cheney put out a contract for $100,00 on Libby.
Trouble was, it was a no-bid contract and it went to Halliburton, so it wound up costing $3.7 million, and they thought he said “make sure he sleeps with the lushes”. So they sent him to spend the weekend with Teddy Kennedy.
Actually, I think that if the Bush family is the Corleones then Rove is Tom Hagen, Poppy is Vito, Cheney is Luca Brasi, Jeb is Sonny and W, unfortunately, is Fredo.
No, the Bush style is different. A bevy of high-level folks appear in public to say that there is no problem, and there never was a problem. Then the fall guy resigns “to spend more time with his family.” Three weeks later, president Bush gives him the medal of freedom, and he drops off the radar screen.
Hmm, I came in here thinking this was going to be about metaphorical “assassination”, i.e., the close-knit executive team showing cracks in the effort to reverse negative public opinion. Kind of like the brouhaha in the latter part of the Bush I administration, swapping Baker in for Sununu amid all kinds of squabbling. Does anybody think we might see that kind of open conflict, or will the Administration successfully stick with their “closed-ranks” strategy where anybody who has to be sacrificed is sacrificed quietly, with continued assurances of praise and trust?
I saw that interview, and you’re right. You’re version would be a lot more interesting.
But hey, has anyone noticed Condi’s new hairdo? Not all that new, but she finally changed that crazy do she had for all those years. I give her an solid “A” on that decision, and maybe it means she really IS serious about a political career.
Any number of failed attempts to assassinate Castro. (You may quibble over whether or not failed murder attempts constitute being “engaged in murder.”
Salvador Allende, Chile (A CIA operation, presidential involvement is deniable)
Others? Who knows?
Of course, we have supported any number of brutal authoritarians… Supported with US money, arms, training. But I’m sure you mean direct, active participation in murder, not blood-drenched sock puppets.
Some of you guys just really have this…thing about poor ol’ Teddy. Like he’s some big hairy ass leader of the left wing. It just Teddy, fer chrissake, the Fredo of Kennedy family. He’s like some bloated whale beached on the shoreline of American politics.
But I tell once, I tell you twice, what I tell you three times is true: Teddy’s a better man drunk than GeeDubya is sober. If he were President instead, he could have downed a quart of Scotch a day and still not FUBAR’d as badly in comparison.
OK, so that’s one man’s humble opinion. I suppose it addresses some point somewhere in some debate. I can’t help but wonder what Mary Jo Kopeckne’s would be, like how Kennedy reacts under pressure, f’rinstance. She would know, you know. I’d really like to hear her opinion, since that’s what we’re about now, and just once would do. Just once.
I don’t know if there’s anything Kennedy could have done to save Kopechne…probably not…but we’ve seen exactly how the current Prez reacts under pressure. He sits there in an incurious daze until someone tells him to get off his fucking ass and pretend to be in charge. So when it comes to comparing grace under pressure, it’s a wash at best for W and maybe worse for him since he could have done something besides sit there and Ted Kennedy was probably helpless to save Kopechne.
