I thought there was a Congressional Sub-Committee on Intelligence that, by law, had to be kept informed, even if the full Congress didn’t (for security reasons). My understanding is that Congress (or some fraction of it) always has to be informed of any action like that being described.
Assuming Congress (or a Congressional Sub-Committee) WAS informed, I’m unsure how this necessarily makes it ‘right’ or ‘good’ that we assassinated people…I guess I’d need to see the details of what ‘assassinated’ means exactly in terms of what was done, who it was done too, and why.
Um…no idea where you are going with this, chief. My question is…did you read the article you linked too? Besides the smell of bi-partisan infighting, there doesn’t seem a lot of meat there…which is, you know, where we were when the thread was first posted.
If you didn’t pick up on it before, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bush et al DID attempt to circumvent the Congress (and I hope they did, and that it was illegal…maybe then one of my OTHER favorite loony lefty rants would come true, and we’d actually see some trials!)…I don’t see how your cite though get’s us any closer to whether this is something to see, or just a load of partisan horseshit as Dem’s and 'Pub’s snipe at each other and defend or attack the CIA.
Yes, and thanks for posting *the entire thing *here, one paragraph at a time.
[quotBesides the smell of bi-partisan infighting, there doesn’t seem a lot of meat there…which is, you know, where we were when the thread was first posted.
[/quote]
A. You’ve heard of secrecy, I hope, and B. There’s enough in there anyway to suit somebody with an interest in having the government follow the law.
There isn’t much “if” left on this “rant” either, is there? :dubious: How much do you typically need before you can be convinced to stop the dismissive shit?
Ah yes, the old, thoughtless, irresponsible “so what, they all do it, yada yada” argument again. :rolleyes:
I can’t help but think that re-litigating those threads isn’t very helpful to this one, but since we’ve no further information to go on, and nothing to do but idly speculate…
Sinaijon, which of those threads you think is the best example of “ideas about Bush that did not turn out to be true?” Because it looks to me like the balance of them are ideas about Bush that were substantially true (if not exclusive to Bush), or about which we don’t really know if they were true or not.
Perhaps you could pick one that best exemplifies your point.
What was loony about that? I have no doubt Bush/Cheney would have invaded Iran, if it had been politically possible during their Admin, which it never was. There were certainly a lot of noises made and hints dropped.
I think it was more along the lines of figuring that Iran was nuts, and they could provoke something that they could respond to. But its dangerous to peer into such minds and speculate, you peer into the Abyss, it peers back.
It was loony because, as I pointed out to you a couple dozen times, it was impossible and there was no real evidence for it. There was no indication we were building up forces or logistics for such a push…or that we HAD the forces or logistics for such an invasion. It was completely divorced from reality, sans some of your ‘hints dropped’ type stuff, which were equally divorced from reality. It was never going to happen, but you and others maintained fervently that it could happen any day, right up to Bush leaving office.
If you think I posted the whole thing then it’s pretty obvious you didn’t read it all.
Obviously a bit more than you are willing to credulously swallow…
Ah yes, the old ‘I didn’t read what you wrote for comprehension, so I’ll just toss this out and hope it comes close’, yada yada argument again, ehe?
Seymour Hersh is to be taken with a grain of salt. He has been wrong many, many times. His sourcing is anonymous, and sometimes you’re not even sure that there’s a source all, but just wild speculation. In the Huffington Post article, Hersh is quoted as having unnamed sources saying that some kind of program existed, but then he goes on to say that there are ‘several theories’, but he doesn’t say where the theories come from. For all I know, these are his theories and no one else’s.
This is the same Seymour Hersch who in 2006 breathlessly reported that his sources inside the military were informing him that the U.S. was planning to strike Iran very soon. In 2006 he also claimed to have sources in the CIA who told him that Iran did not have a nuclear weapons program.
Hersh wrote a book about John F. Kennedy in which he claimed that Kennedy had had a secret first marriage that was never terminated, making Kennedy a bigamist. He also claimed that Kennedy had a close relationship with mobster Sam Giancana. Arthur Schlesinger Jr, a former aide to Kennedy, said that Hersh was “the most gullible investigative journalist I ever met.”
The thing about Hersh is that he’s willing to run with stories that are very thinly sourced and probably not up to the standards that most other journalists would use - especially when the story fits his own biases. Sometimes that means he breaks a story before everyone else, like he did with the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam or Abu Ghraib. But it also means that at times he runs stories that turn out to be, to put it charitably, ‘counter-factual’.
I’d wait for another source before expending a lot of attention on this story.
Sam, you’ve never forgiven Hersh for being consistently right about Bush’s lies, have you? His record isn’t 100 percent, nobody’s is, but it’s far better than the sources *you *have more customarily offered to us on the subjects he’s addressed. Give that a moment’s thought if you will.
Have you ever applied the term “consider the source” to sources that do support what you want to believe? Schlesinger was a close friend and strong supporter of JFK. But rather than refute the statements of fact in The Dark Side of Camelot, he instead went personal and tried, on a childish level at that, to disparage the abilities of the most accomplished investigative reporter of the half-century. Quite like, to point out the obvious, what you’re trying to do here, but without first-hand information.
But then, as we know, you’re *still *waiting for those Iraqi WMD’s to be unearthed … any day now … *then *we’ll all see … xt, when you’re shown to have no argument, it’s usually best to just keep quiet, ya know? Sheesh.
From your uncommented cite, also offered without comment, since nothing actually seems solid enough to comment on as yet (though obviously some folks have already made up their minds on this…stunning, I know)…
I read this article in the NYT this AM, and what struck me the most was this:
They’ll just say it wasn’t considered “significant” or something like that. I think we can safely assume that whenever Bush or Cheney saw wiggle room in the law, they’d wiggle as much as possible.
This assumes (and maybe correctly, I don’t know) that there is no definition either in the statute, legislative history, or case law for those terms. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that “to the extent consistent with due regard” has been legally defined.
Sure. I just don’t see Cheney going to jail over this, though. Do you? I mean, we can argue the fine points all day, but if nothing ever happens to Cheney, what does it matter?
Maybe it wasn’t significant, and that’s why nobody got around to telling Panetta about it, it was just some throwaway little thing, not important, and that’s why nobody talked about it, because it was so trivial.
Yeah, that might be it! I mean, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions here, or anything. But maybe the reason they’re keeping it secret is because its so insignificant, you know, a little embarrassing? Maybe Cheney planned to ring the US Embassy in Baghdad with daffodils, and they didn’t tell Panetta because he’s known to be firmly committed to aspidistra!
See! It isn’t necessarily something deep, dark and hideous. And such decisions clearly fall under the control of the Vice President, as part of his Constitutional duty to preside over the Senate.
There, that’s all sorted out, then! Nothing to see here, move along, you loony lefty looky-loos…
