From the NYT article:
Of which Hersh said:
Skimming the article, it also doesn’t say that there is no Congressional oversight.
-XT
Dude if you can’t see the difference between a commando team tasked to kill leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and a “executive assassination ring”, then it’s hopeless. :rolleyes:
It’s perfectly legal under US law for us to kill dudes we are at war with, and we are at war with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. In fact the USA even has UN support for this (to a certain extent).
I understand that fine.
My question is why would such a group be under the direction of the Vice President? Are they unable to be directed by the CIA or military?
Well, as far as I can tell this is all pure speculation at this point. However, plausibly it might have been under the VP’s office because that’s the way Cheney wanted it. He was a major player in the previous administration, having far more power and pull than any other VP I can think of off the top of my head. He also had a large power base before becoming VP. So, it might have been done that way simply because Bush and Cheney wanted it set up that way.
Or, it could all be a complete (or partial) load of horseshit, the same kind of vewy scawy wolf crying we’ve been hearing for the past 8 years. That’s why my own BS detector goes off at even a whiff of this type of thing these days…after years of this shit it’s hard to sort out the paranoia from the reality at this point, and hard to determine when there really IS a wolf at the door, or just another lefty jumping at shadows. That’s why I generally take a wait and see approach on this kind of thing…because, while lefties can be complete moon bats, nothing would actually surprise me that Cheney et al would or could have done.
-XT
It comes under the Executive Branch, and everyone knew that GWB couldn’t run something like that.
As Vice President, Cheney was part of the *legislative *branch. 
It well may be a load of horseshit, but I’d like to disagree with your “crying wolf” premise. There may have been a few paranoid jumping lefties, but what strikes me about the past 8 years was how many of the crazy statements about the Bush/Cheney administration turned out to be TRUE! It’s not crying wolf when there actually is one outside the door.
One example of many - When I first heard rumours that the US had been setting up covert secret prisons in third countries to send suspects to… I scoffed. I laughed. I said “no way!”
I can just see Q giving Cheney a weapons lecture…
“Now, pay attention, double-O shit-for-brains, this is important! Here you have a standard American shotgun, loaded with birdshot. It is ineffective at short range, and quite useless beyond that, though it may be adequate for an elderly Texas lawyer at about three yards. Still carrying that silly little Beretta, are you?..”
Sure, many of them turned out to be true. Usually not the one’s that originally came out there, but one’s that sort of exploded on the scene unexpectedly. It’s hard to know if the wolf is outside the door when you have been told 20 other times that wolves were there. YMMV, but my rough guess is there were something like 20 loony lefty hand wringers for every actual Bush et al evil deed.
-XT
There are 3 million loony lefty hand wringers? Wow!
My mileage absolutely does vary, and I am in complete and total disagreement with your 20:1 ratio. The Bush/Cheney administration was a watershed for me, in that assertions that I normally would have written off a crazy started to be confirmed in alarming numbers.
It’s worth zero in terms of shedding more light on this other than what was in the OP. The NYT article has nothing to do with this subject. For the time being, until we get more sources, I’m not convinced any more than I was when he kept predicting an invasion of Iran.
Okay, I’ll bite. What are a few of your favorite examples of “loony left” ideas about Bush that did not turn out to be true?
Well, he didn’t cancel the 2008 election.
I heard a whole lot more from the “loony right” about how Clinton was going to cancel the 2000 election than about Bush and 2008. But I would never say there’s no such thing as a loony leftist.
Hm…my favorites? Well, BG brought up the ‘cancel elections’ one. Another was that he was going to overturn RvW and outlaw abortion. Another favorite was the perennial favorite that we were just on the verge of invading <insert country of choice, though mainly Iran> (ETA: obviously this was after we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq).
There were loony lefty threads on some new shocking thing he was just about to do nearly weekly on this board. It made it difficult to decide what to take serious, and it totally distracted when he ACTUALLY did something horrendous (which, sadly, happened quite a lot). But when you are hearing people crying wolf constantly it’s hard to know when you are about to actually get bit on the ass…
-XT
Good point! Just because he has done crazy and destructive things, continues to do crazy and destructive things, that doesn’t mean we can assume he’s *just about *to do something crazy and destructive.
Although I don’t think there’s enough evidence to know if this is true or not, it would not surprise me in the least if it turned out to be true (more or less). And I’m not sure it would be all that different from what we’ve done under other administrations. How much does Congress get to know about the detailed dirty work done by various covert ops? Not saying it should be that way, but I always figured it was.
I’m glad we are in agreement then…
-XT