Cheney's hit squad concealed from Congress

Like Threadstone? Any unidentified men suffering from amnesia being picked up by a fishing boat recently?

The mistake? They needed an actor.

From the article:

"The plans remained vague and were never carried out, the officials said, and Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, canceled the program last month."

Not too surprising given Cheney's public statements after 911 that the US would do anything, including secret ops, to put down Al Queda.

I don't know if people would have been freaking out so much if it was just a program for selective assasinations of enemy leaders. A program such as this seems par for the course for the CIA. This means that either we're talking about a whole different deal or this freaked these people due to its sheer scale. For an assassination program to cause this much hoopla it must have been doing Phoenix scale numbers.

yt remember there is no conspiracy people really are that stupid. Nothing will come of this, simply because it will implicate top level Dems in Congress also.

Thing is, this is just like those war crimes of the Bush Administration: If you start now, the shitstorm this will create will lead to vengeance, and will just drag the already bad political discourse between Dems and Reps down yet another notch.

Because frankly, the moment you do that, you have the entire hardline Rep party slinging mud.

If you consider this from the viewpoint of strict political calculus, there is no benefit to pursuing this.

Democrats open themselves to charges of being "Weak Kneed" on the War Against Terror (TM)

Republicans look like Terrorists themselves

America looks bad to people around the world,due to crimes that were committed years ago by a former Administration.

Obama has made it known that he prefers to move on vs/ revisit the recent past.

I question all if the above by the way, but I'm saying that elected and appointed officals are looking at this now through cost/benefit lenses.

As I understand it, the reason why Cheney never told Congress was because the program was a huge failure. Shocking, I know!

Outside of politics, this does not impact Democrats negatively. The law is fairly compelling in this regard. Now, how hard Holder goes after this might have some political effects for good and bad, but I suspect that Congress' need to retain oversight is a much stronger legal argument, which is what wins in the end.

Too bad they only work inland. Real men on the ground would at least have been more successful than those awesome Predator drone attacks.

"LOOK! Ak-47s shooting in the air! Lots of people chanting!"
"FIRE!"
-50 dead, another wedding ruined.

Yeah those drones must kill all the fun of being a special forces soldier these days. Sad to see these men being replaced by fat nerds with joysticks.

*Anxiously awaiting a vicious attack by Cobretti

This whole conversation assumes a nation where war crimes have an effect on the outcomes of elections. The last President opened gulags where prisoners were tortured to death and got reelected.

Edit: Since i posted this, Jeremy Scahill has posted an article on the bipartisan history of assassination and the pretend "shocked, shocked!" attitude of the Washington Left when the Right does it on Huffington Post.

But it was not operational, so they had no reason to report to congress.

You know what I find amazing? This whole thing runs in a circle.

You ask a republican why its okay to assassinate evil guys? Cause the Dems did it , too !
You ask a democrat whats their justification? We gotta do something, the reps are making us so we dont lose face.

Wake up, the USA has a foreign policy of illegal wars, torture, assassination, covert and overt usage of mercenaries to get around legal issues that probably wouldnt matter anyway, pillaging of illegally invaded countries through rebuilding contracts and all sorts of other crap.
We know it, everyone knows it, but apparently for some reason a couple US citizens still want to believe that is not the case, that the behaviour of the USA on the global state is something like a backwater banana republic for almost a decade now.

Who cares if it was Bush and Cheney? I dont see them facing consequences. Who cares if you elected Obama? He isnt doing anything to take back the patriot act, he doesnt do jack about happened and he is, by and large, taking the advantages given by the ruthless politics of Bush and keeping them alive.

I think this whole "shocked, shocked !" attitude isnt just a thing of Washington, its a thing of many US citizens who really dont want to accept what the USA is, but rather pretend to still believe it has something to do with moral high ground.

You know when you can start changing things again in politics? When people stop talking about it in a constant back and forth, and not virtually every career depends on leaving skeletons in the basement buried.

As Rheokhu correctly states, it has been proven that these things dont even affect election results, so I suppose the majority are in favor of it, anyway.

I'll take 2 of whatever she's having.