Well, our noble elected leaders in Washington are at it again—demonstrating that many of them could not lead a bunch of condemned sinners out of Hell.
It all started when the so-called “Torture Memos” came to light, a first example that politicians are genetically incapable of keeping the Nation’s secrets and if given the opportunity to place the Nation’s best interests ahead of their own, they will usually take care of themselves first. The latest fracas started because, a few short months after the World Trade Center/Pentagon attack, Speaker Pelosi was briefed in to some degree on steps that the United States might take if necessary to get timely information to prevent other similar or even more deadly attacks.
Seven years later, when her core constituency (the hate America first crowd) discovered that we might deprive Al Quaeda operatives of sleep (gasp), or put them in solitary so they could not arrange a common story (shudder) or use a physically harmless technique that nonetheless triggers the biological fear of drowning as a last resort means of getting such information (moan), Nancy the Great backtracked like a pro.
Knowing that much of the information that would disprove her allegations was classified, she tried to claim that she was “lied to.” Then, when that was not working so well, she learned that , (or her "supporters") revealed that shortly after September 11, 2001, the president of the United States ordered the CIA to examine the possibility of targeted assassinations of Al Qaeda leaders. The AQ leadership would be fair game anywhere in the world. No actual operations were launched, and there was no legal requirement that the mere existence of a planning group be revealed to a notoriously porous Congress, but Nancy the Great waved her magic wand and, presto, change-o, there was a "lie."
And the useful idiots in Congress are aghast. “You mean, like, shoot them without like, you know, warning them of their (non-existent) Constitutional rights?”
I think most Americans had already assumed that those orders had gone out. I surely did. If someone had asked me that question, my answer would have been, “Yup! Twice, in the head, just to make sure they’re really dead. That’s how we respond treachery and cowardice. Just ask the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
Of course, the problem goes back much further. The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-ID) (“the Church Committee” ) was established in 1975 to look into intelligence activities that might have been connected to the Watergate affair.
Delving into highly classified activities in a televised series of hearings, the Democratic majority of the Committee revealed, among other things, that the United States government had attempted to assassinate or actually succeeded in assassinating foreign leaders, including Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, the Diem brothers of Vietnam, Gen. René Schneider of Chile. They also revealed President John F. Kennedy's plans to use the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro of Cuba.
The evidence with respect to Lumumba is very tenuous—it was the Belgian government that did him in. The rest, with the exception of Schneider, were authorized or openly condoned by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.
I recall watching the hearings. In particular, I was amazed by Senator’s feigned shock that the President of the United States (John F. Kennedy) had repeatedly ordered that Fidel Castro be killed.
Senator church and I were both shocked. Church was just disconsolate that JFK had taken such action. I asked, “If, in 1962 or ’63, the President of the United States said he wanted Castro dead, then why is the sob still breathing?” I guess it’s a frame of reference thing.
At any rate, in response to the Church Committee revelations, President Ford issued an Executive Order banning U.S. sanctioned assassinations of foreign leaders. He was strong-armed into doing so by threats that the Congress would enact those prohibitions into law; an EO can be superseded by the President. Whether any American would have the guts to stand in front of a jury and argue that bin Laden is a “foreign leader” is an open argument, but I am sure that there are some boneheads out there that would try.
But, here we are, once again. Lint-for-brains pols put their interests before ours and warn people who intend to do us harm that they may continue to make such plans with impunity.
2 comments:
Well said. It is striking how everyone wants to give terrorists, the enemies of OUR country, Constitutional rights as well as have pity for them over tactics used to retrieve information from them. Tactics that are far less extreme than what terrorists vow to do and proceed to do to our men and women they capture.
It is disgusting. The libs are weakening the once strongest country in the world.
Excellently presented.
Thank you for your lucid observations.
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