America’s Dilemma: Terrorism at home versus the high moral ground

A young pilot was flying a mission over enemy territory long ago and far away when defense forces badly damaged his plane, forcing him to eject. The ejection was violent, breaking both arms and one leg, and the young pilot landed in water, nearly drowning before enemy soldiers found him, dragged him ashore, crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt, stabbed him with a bayonet, and then hauled him away for interrogation. Badly injured, he was given no medical aid, but instead was put through brutal questioning sessions during which he was beaten.

He spent six weeks in a hospital where he received marginal medical treatment before being sent to another military camp. In a chest cast and being badly emaciated, he was expected not to last a week.

His condition improved slowly as time passed. But while he was ill with dysentery he was again subjected to interrogation and torture that included rope bindings and beatings every two hours, punishment so severe that he tried to kill himself to escape the brutal treatment. Eventually, he reached his breaking point, and cooperated with his captors.

A second story of actual treatment of an enemy involved the capture, interrogation and detainment in military custody that lasted several years. During this time the captive was subjected to sleep deprivation for a period of more than seven days, rectal hydration, forced standing for prolonged periods, and was water boarded five times. Eventually, the captive’s will also broke, and he cooperated with his captors.

While the treatment in the second example would certainly be unpleasant, it is less severe than the experience of the pilot in the first example, inasmuch as the captive’s life was never in danger. Some Americans, however, believe the two equally represent torture.

The pilot in the first example was now-Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., and he was shot down over Viet Nam, captured and tortured by the Viet Cong.

The person in the second example was Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and a foiled attempt likely aimed at the U.S. Capitol building or the White House, claiming the lives of nearly 3,000 innocent people.

Torture is the action of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or to force them to do or say something, and has been practiced through the ages, and has included the most brutal treatment imaginable.

In interrogation sessions, some techniques are clearly torture, and some techniques are clearly not torture. Somewhere in the middle of these extremes, strong interrogation crosses the thin and fuzzy line into torture. Where that point is seems to be a matter of personal preference.

Having released a controversial partisan report on the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques, the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee charges that the CIA’s techniques constitute torture.

The CIA vigorously disputes the Democrat leadership’s report, saying the methods were thoroughly analyzed and approved by legal consultants prior to their implementation, and that Congressional leaders were briefed on them and accepted the program. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., is said to have encouraged the program.

The United States does indeed profess and uphold high-minded ideals, and most Americans oppose torture. And through this $40 million report and comments by individual senators, we are told that torture is always and forever wrong.

But is there never a circumstance where torture is justified?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., thinks not. “In the wake of 9/11, we were desperate to bring those responsible for the brutal attacks to justice. But even that urgency did not justify torture,” states the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The United States must be held to a higher standard than our enemies, yet some of our actions did not clear that bar.”

We learn that al Qaeda has placed a suitcase nuke in a major city set to detonate in a few hours. We have captured a member of the group and Sen. Feinstein questions him. He refuses to tell where the bomb is. “Okay. Thank you. Have a nice day,” she says. “After all, we are a people of principle and high morals, and won’t stoop to forceful interrogation.”

Who and how many American lives have to be at risk before those like Sen. Feinstein, clinging to the high moral ground, resort to forceful interrogation methods to save lives? Her spouse? Her hometown? Her Capital office? Or would she sacrifice American lives just to maintain the idealistic moral high ground?

You do not have to support routine use of torture to believe that in extreme cases, torture is acceptable. Many Americans believe nothing is too awful to use on an enemy in order to save lives.

So the issue is not that the United States can never use techniques generally agreed to be torture against enemies, but instead to clarify under what circumstances the United States will use those techniques, and how those decisions will be made?

Routine or indiscriminate torture is wrong. Any method used against knowledgeable enemies to save lives must be encouraged. Foolishly clinging to the high moral ground will get Americans needlessly killed.

The Clown Car of Cabinet Nominees

Looking at the most recent nominees for Cabinet positions, it seems as if a clown car pulled up to the Capitol where Jack Lew, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, and John Brennan spilled out.


(1) John Brennan for CIA (see original post which contained the following info)

• Does not understand the true nature of jihad and the threat it poses to us.
• Referred to Jerusalem as "Al Quds."
• Believes the 20% recidivism rate from those released from Guantanamo Bay "isn't that bad"
• Said that that “violent extremists” are victims of “political, economic and social forces.”
• ”The FBI gave a guided tour of one of our most sensitive counter-terrorism facilities to a known Hamas operative,” [Frank] Gaffney said. “It is clear that the cluelessness fostered by Mr. Brennan is causing an empowering of the wrong sorts of Muslims in America and endangering the American people.”
• Judicial Watch...obtained documents...revealing that Brennan and Defense Department officials disclosed to Hollywood filmmakers the identity of the SEAL Team Six operator and commander involved in taking out Osama Bin Laden. 

(2) Jack Lew for Treasury.  He possesses the most ridiculous signature know to man, and appears to accept no other way except his own.  According to Senator Jeff Session of Alabama:

“Lew, as the president’s budget director, appeared before Congress and  continued to insist that President Obama’s budget-which Lew had crafted-would  not add to the debt  of the United States,” Sessions said in the statement, calling Lew’s comments  “the most direct and important false assertion during my entire time in Washington.” (source)

(3) Chuck Hagel for Defense.

• It appears that he seeks to eliminate the nuclear arsenal of the United States...unilaterally if necessary.  [Let us not forget what W. Cleon Skousen told us in "The Naked Communist" that "The Communists have created the illusion in free men's minds that 'the way to peace is through disarmament.'  We must not forget that this originated as a Communist slogan." (p. 263)]

   "Hagel continued: “How can we preach to other countries that you can’t have nuclear weapons but we can and our allies can? There is no credibility, there’s no logic to that argument. And we have been losing on that argument.
   “… I think and many people in the United States of America and Russia and in other parts of the world believe it has to go and that it is the elimination, the phasing out of nuclear weapons.”
   Hagel argued that once nuclear weapons are eliminated “we can then, all leaders of all mankind, can start to concentrate more deliberately on the needs of the men and women and the children of their countries.”" (source)

"[S]enators from states with nuclear bases are questioning the defense secretary nominee’s role in the Global Zero commission that advocates eliminating all nuclear weapons and making unilateral strategic arms cuts..." (source)

“As a senator from a state that is home to two legs of the nuclear triad, I am particularly concerned about Senator Hagel’s support for additional, major reductions in U.S. nuclear forces, which I believe puts the United States at a severe disadvantage in a still-dangerous global military environment.” --Sen. John Hoeven (R., N.D.) (source)

• He supports global health re-distribution:

"Hagel co-sponsored the Global Poverty Act, which would have imposed a new “tax” on the U.S. requiring the country to add 0.7 percent of the gross national product to its overall spending on humanitarian aid." (source)

• He does not support unilateral sanctions against Iran, and "[h]e even voted against designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization at a time when they were supplying and supporting attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan." (source)
• He sees moral equivalency in the Israel-Palestinian Conflict as evidenced through statements like “Both Israelis and Palestinians are trapped in a war not of their making.” (source)

 

(4) John Kerry for State.  Swift Boat Veterans.  Need I say more?


Link to video 1 (Swift Boat Veterans for Truth)



Link to video 2 (Young America's Foundation confronts Kerry about his testimony)

--Against All Enemies

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CIA Nominee John Brennan Does Not Understand Jihad

"Brennan endorsed the administration’s determination to delete words like “jihadist” and “war on terror” from its lexicon. 'They are not jihadists, for jihad is a holy struggle, an effort to purify for a legitimate purpose, and there is nothing–absolutely nothing–holy or pure or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children...'"  (source)

I cannot believe this guy has a chance in hell of leading our nation's top spy agency when his failure to understand the true nature of the threat posed by Islam will put us at greater risk.  He does not understand that violent jihad is in fact "legitimate" in the eyes of the Islamic religion, so the violence he is talking about against "innocent" men, women and children is in fact holy, pure, and legitimate in the ideology of Islam.  It sounds like he is reading from talking points provided by CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations), a Muslim Brotherhood front group.

Other concerning information about Brennan (taken from the article that follows):

• He referred to Jerusalem as "Al Quds."
• He believes the 20% recidivism rate from those released from Guantanamo Bay "isn't that bad"
• He said that that “violent extremists” are victims of “political, economic and social forces.”
• ”The FBI gave a guided tour of one of our most sensitive counter-terrorism facilities to a known Hamas operative,” [Frank] Gaffney said. “It is clear that the cluelessness fostered by Mr. Brennan is causing an empowering of the wrong sorts of Muslims in America and endangering the American people.”
• Judicial Watch...obtained documents...revealing that Brennan and Defense Department officials disclosed to Hollywood filmmakers the identity of the SEAL Team Six operator and commander involved in taking out Osama Bin Laden. 

Watch the videos posted at the end.

--Against All Enemies

Jihad Denialist Nominated to Head CIA

Tue, January 8, 2013

by: 

 Arnold Ahlert

• 

U.S. President Barak Obama announces his nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA. (Photo:Reuters)President Obama’s determination to keep his Middle East outreach agenda alive, no matter how at odds with reality, continues. Yesterday, John Brennan, Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, was nominated to head the CIA, replacing scandal-scarred David Petraeus. “John knows what our national security demands,” Obama announced:

“John has an invaluable perspective on the forces, the history, the culture, the politics, economics, the desire for human dignity driving so much of the changes in today’s world…He knows the risks that our intelligence professionals face every day.”

At best, the 25-year CIA veteran’s record is a mixed bag. At worst, he becomes another link in the administration’s efforts to normalize relations with Islamic terrorists.

[...]

In 2009, Brennan came under fire again, as the result of the colossal intelligence failure that allowed terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009, during which he attempted to detonate an underwear bomb. 

[...]

After calls for his resignation, Brennan responded to the criticism in a USA Todayeditorial. “Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda,” he wrote. ”Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill.”

One suspects those on board Flight 253 might disagree. Yet Brennan doubled down, and insisted on treating Abdulmutallab as a criminal, rather than an enemy combatant, contending that it is “naive to think that transferring Abdulmutallab to military custody would have caused an outpouring of information. There is little difference between military and civilian custody, other than an interrogator with a uniform. The suspect gets access to a lawyer, and interrogation rules are nearly identical,” Brennan contended.

Brennan further cemented his soft-on-terror credentials only days later in a February 13, 2010 speech at New York University law school’s Islamic Center. In front of  a largely Muslim audience, he called for trying 9/11 terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court.

During the same speech, Brennan endorsed the administration’s determination to delete words like “jihadist” and “war on terror” from its lexicon. “They are not jihadists, for jihad is a holy struggle, an effort to purify for a legitimate purpose, and there is nothing–absolutely nothing–holy or pure or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children,” Brennan insisted. “We are not waging a war against terrorism because terrorism is but a tactic that will never be defeated, any more than a tactics of war will.”

In another telling moment, Brennan’s first referred to Jerusalem as al-Quds, which is its Arabic name. ”In all my travels the city I have come to love most is al-Quds, Jerusalem, where three great faiths come together,” he said.

During the question and answer period, Brennan contended that a 20 percent recidivism rate for terrorists released from Guantanamo Bay prison “isn’t that bad” when compared to the American penal system. ”People sometimes use that figure, 20 percent, say ‘Oh my goodness, one out of five detainees returned to some type of extremist activity,’” Brennan said. “You know, the American penal system, the recidivism rate is up to something about 50 percent or so, as far as return to crime. Twenty percent isn’t that bad.”

That Brennan could compare one-in-five hardcore terrorists returning to the task of waging war against the West with regular criminals of all kinds, demonstrates either a monumental level of naiveté, or a disingenuousness bordering on delusion.

In another speech given in May 2010 at the Nixon Center, Brennan upped the ante yet again, asserting that that “violent extremists” are victims of “political, economic and social forces.” Reuters reveals additional comments Brennan made, following his return from Lebanon:

“Hezbollah is a very interesting organization,” Brennan told a Washington conference, citing its evolution from “purely a terrorist organization” to a militia to an organization that now has members within the parliament and the cabinet. ”There is certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern to us what they’re doing. And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements,” Brennan said.”

Again, one might be forgiven for wondering what constitutes a “moderate” in an organization that has carried out a series of worldwide terror attacks over the course of decades, yearns for Israel’s annihilation and, prior to 9/11, was responsible for killing more Americans than any other terrorist organization in the world.

Unfortunately, Brennan’s infatuation with outreach is not limited to Hezbollah. In 2010, columnist Patrick Poole revealed that Hamas operative Kifah Mustapha was given a guided tour of the “National Counterterrorism Center and other secure government facilities, including the FBI’s training center at Quantico.”

Mustapha was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land foundation case, during which his colleagues were convicted of funding Hamas, yet another U.S.-designated terrorist organization. Center for Security Policy chief Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration official, demanded Brennan’s resignation as a result. ”The FBI gave a guided tour of one of our most sensitive counter-terrorism facilities to a known Hamas operative,” Gaffney said. “It is clear that the cluelessness fostered by Mr. Brennan is causing an empowering of the wrong sorts of Muslims in America and endangering the American people.”

Brennan penchant for revealing America’s secrets continued in 2012. When the United States thwarted another would-be underwear bomber last May, Brennan inadvertently revealed we had a double-agent working on the case when he briefed former counter-terrorism advisors who subsequently got work as TV commentators.

He told them that the bomber was never a threat because America had “inside control” of the situation. The former advisors reached the inexorable conclusion shortly thereafter.

May was also the month Judicial Watch finally obtained documents, via a Freedom of Information Act, from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA,) revealing that Brennan and Defense Department officials disclosed to Hollywood filmmakers the identity of the SEAL Team Six operator and commander involved in taking out Osama Bin Laden. A transcript of a meeting held July 14, 2011, reveals that ”documents seemingly reference John O. Brennan, Chief Counterterrorism Advisor to President Obama and Denis McDonough, who serves as President Obama’s Deputy National Security Advisor.”

“These documents, which took nine months and a federal lawsuit to disgorge from the Obama administration, show that politically-connected film makers were giving extraordinary and secret access to bin Laden raid information, including the identity of a Seal Team Six leader,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “It is both ironic and hypocritical that the Obama administration stonewalled Judicial Watch’s pursuit of the bin Laden death photos, citing national security concerns, yet seemed willing to share intimate details regarding the raid to help Hollywood filmmakers release a movie ‘perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost’ to the Obama campaign.”

All of the above suggests that John Brennan is, at the least, an extremely dubious pick to head the CIA. But a story by Associated Press columnist Kimberly Dozier entitled, “Who Will US Drones Target? Who Will Decide?” paints an even more disturbing picture of Brennan, who she contends has “seized the lead in guiding the debate on which terror leaders will be targeted for drone attacks or raids, establishing a new procedure to vet both military and CIA targets. The move concentrates power over the use of lethal U.S. force outside war zones at the White House,” she writes. She further noted that while some intelligence officials are comfortable with the new process, others expressed concern about ”how easy it has become to kill someone.”

PJ Media’s Patrick Poole puts it more directly: “John Brennan is the man under whom President Obama has consolidated the unprecedented power of assassination. He directly controls and oversees all aspects of the program that had been previously divided between the Pentagon, the CIA, and other officials,” he writes.

Continue reading (full article)...

"War on Terrorism Is Over"


The Washington Times Edit Board (Video 1 and Video 2)--in the second video Brennan refuses to answer questions about the true nature of jihad.

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Hagmann: The hidden real truth about Benghazi

The Mosaic of lies, deceits and state-sponsored terrorism:

Link to article: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/print-friendly/50586

By Doug Hagmann  Friday, October 26, 2012 Most people know that we’ve been lied to about the attacks in Benghazi, but few realize the extent of those lies or the hidden secrets they cover. After all, the lie is different at every level. Thanks to a well placed source with extensive knowledge about the attack, the disturbing truth is slowly beginning to emerge and is lining up with information contained in my previous articles published here weeks ago . The truth reveals the most serious situation in the world today as it involves the interests and destinies of us all.

A mosaic of lies

According to the U.S. government, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed during a spontaneous protest at the consulate office in Benghazi by a frenzied crowd of Muslims outraged over an obscure internet video. Recently released “sensitive but not classified e-mails” from Stevens to the U.S. Department of State painted a picture of poor security for U.S. personnel and the embassy, which was obviously true but had little to do with the events of September 11, 2012. The failure to dispatch an extraction team or otherwise rescue the men during a firefight that lasted upwards of nine grueling and tortuous hours was not the result of any intelligence failure, but caused by our unwillingness to widen the conflict and expose the nature and scale of our true mission in Benghazi.

Based on information provided by my source and corroborated elsewhere, the official account by administration officials is a mosaic of lies that were necessary to cover the unpalatable truth of covert actions taking place in Libya, Syria, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. The primary objective of our covert actions was to secretly arm anti-Assad “rebels” in Syria by funneling arms from Libya to Syria via Turkey, with other destinations that included Jordan and Lebanon.  Regarding the threat to Stevens and the other murdered Americans, the truth will reformat the persistent question posed to government officials, from UN Ambassador Susan Rice to White House Spokesman Jay Carney and others from “how could you not have known” to “how could you have done these things?”

First, it is important to understand that Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Dougherty and Tyrone Woods were not killed at a consulate office in Benghazi—as there is not such office there. They died at one of the largest CIA operations centers in the Middle East, which was located in Benghazi and served as the logistics headquarters for arms and weapons being shipped out of the post-Qaddafi Libya.

Although the U.S. government insisted that Stevens was involved in securing and destroying the numerous caches of arms and weapons once under the control of Qaddafi, the operation was more complex than that. The visual accounts of weapons being destroyed were indeed real, but those weapons were not operational. The working weapons were actually separated and transported to holding facilities for their eventual use in Syria. Russia was fully aware of this operation and warned the U.S. not to engage in the destabilization of Syria, as doing so would endanger their national security interests. Deposing Assad, as despotic as he might be, and replacing him with a Muslim Brotherhood-led regime would likely lead to unrestrained Islamic chaos across the region.

The Turkish warning

According to my source, Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 to meet with his Turkish counterpart, who reportedly warned Stevens that the operation was compromised. They met in person so that Stevens could be shown overhead satellite images, taken by the Russians, of nefarious activities taking place in Turkey. But just what were these nefarious activities?

It is reasonable to suspect that these activities were more dire than just your average “gun running” operation. Since the overthrow of Qaddafi, it is estimated that upwards of 40 million tons of weapons and arms were shipped out of Libya to Syria. But it was also known inside intelligence circles that Qaddafi possessed chemical weapons in addition to numerous surface-to-air missiles. Could it be that Russia obtained unmistakable surveillance footage of the anti-Assad “rebels” being shown how to load chemical payloads onto missiles inside Turkey near the border of Syria? Weapons, of course, that were shipped from Libya by the CIA in conjunction with various Muslim Brotherhood rebel groups.  If so, such weapons could be used as a “false flag” type of operation—one that would be implemented to “set-up” Assad by making it appear that he was using these weapons on forces dedicated to his overthrow.

The blowback by the international community would be swift and punishing, and the entirety of the civilized world would be demanding his overthrow. NATO would then be used to expedite his ouster, and Russia’s moral position within the international community would be weakened. Was the meeting held to show Stevens that the operation was compromised and that they had to stop?

A Nation/State sponsored attack?

While the administration asserts that the attack in Benghazi was conducted by a group of rebels acting alone, the facts seem to indicate otherwise. The level of coordination was such that we did not deploy military assets, located just an hour or two away by air, to rescue Stevens and the others at the CIA operations center in their time of need. If, as the administration contends, that the attack was perpetuated by a group of frenzied rebels, our military could have easily handled them in short order. So why was there no rescue operation?

Keep reading (article continues)...

CIA and Dick Cheney Assassinations

by Maggie at Maggie's Notebook

Democrats in Congress are outraged that the Pentagon and CIA were developing a plan to "assassinate" al Qaeda in Iraq. The assassination teams would be CIA personnel, and not U.S. Military. Especially heinous to Congress is that the Pentagon did not brief appropriate Congressional members about the incomplete and unimplemented plan.

CIA

Americans are no longer shocked to hear that we have not always targeted all al Qaeda members, including leaders...especially leaders...since the war began after 9-11. We are no longer shocked at much we hear, because doing what makes no sense is exactly what Congress always does. Nevertheless, while not shocked, we are surprised, and along with our surprise comes puzzlement. Why would we need a secret program, even assuming Congress is briefed, to kill top al-Qaeda members?

Targeted killing of terrorists is prohibited by presidential orders banning assassinations that date back to the Ford administration. But the president can waive that order, said Vicki Divoll, a former CIA counsel, because there is no specific federal law that bans the practice.

There's also no legal difference, she said, between killing al Qaeda targets with a hit team or with an unmanned drone, because the "intent to kill a targeted person" defines an assassination.

The "air strikes" are what made this never-implemented plan different. According to officials, it was okay to target and kill al Qadea with air strikes, but not okay to target and kill al Qaeda "at close range," - what might include hand-to-hand combat. Killing "at close range" might risk "civilian casualties." For now, the CIA will have to be satisfied with Predator Drones - except that Congress can't keep it's mouth shut about them either. While Pakistan recently complained about Predator drones taking off and landing inside their borders, officials assured Pakistan that only surveillance drones are used inside the country, not the Predator which is capable of launching missiles.

Privately, though, Pakistani officials doubt that claim, especially after the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Diane Feinstein, (D-CA), suggested 10 days ago that the CIA Predator drones do indeed use Pakistani airfields and not necessarily Afghan airfields, as most assume.

According to an anonymous source at the CIA, Dick Cheney directed the agency not to inform Congress of the specifics of the secret program.

Panetta told the committees there was no indication that there was anything illegal or inappropriate about the effort itself, the official said.

CIA directors since 2001 agreed with Cheney's decision not to inform Congress because the highly classified operation, described as "sporadic" and "embryonic," never managed to turn up the intelligence needed to carry out a kill and was not considered a covert operation, according to a former intelligence official. That official also was not authorized to discuss the program and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Congress has a right to know everything the CIA does, but the president can by law limit those told about covert operations to just the top four members of the House and Senate from the two parties and the senior members of the intelligence committees. Democrats on the House intelligence committee are pushing for a legal provision that would require the president to brief both committees in their entirety more often, but the White House has threatened to veto the move.

DefenseTech.org reminds us of Sandi Berger letting Osama bin Laden escape in Afghanistan, rather than chance civilian casualties: Doesn't this sort of smack of Sandi Berger-esque national security policy?

We know from the 9-11 commission report that Berger got cold feet when he had bin Laden in his sights for a proxy raid in Afghanistan because he was afraid of collateral damage and blowback. Now some of the same national security policy minds are back in the driver's seat so we can cancel a program to kill bad guys using CIA assets.

Here is the directive for how and when the CIA program would have been implemented:

Had it become fully developed, the CIA's aborted plan would have been a covert-action program. At the outset, the potential operation wouldn't have been limited to particular countries. The use of hit teams was in accordance with the authority granted by the 2001 order, said a former national-security official familiar with it.

In the most recent iteration of the project, top CIA leaders instructed officers involved to narrow its focus and report the plans to Congress if they reached a critical point where moving forward would involve activities that, if discovered, could embarrass the U.S., according to a former senior intelligence official.

Among all the punditry on this subject, we've heard little to nothing about the distinction between targeting for air strikes or targeting for "close contact," but surprisingly to me, there is a U.S policy prohibiting the "assassination" of anyone, not just heads of State!

Targeted killing of terrorists is prohibited by presidential orders banning assassinations that date back to the Ford administration. But the president can waive that order, said Vicki Divoll, a former CIA counsel, because there is no specific federal law that bans the practice.

There's also no legal difference, she said, between killing al Qaeda targets with a hit team or with an unmanned drone, because the "intent to kill a targeted person" defines an assassination.

However, that is not the end of the story. The rest of the story involves the Joint special Operations Command (JSOC). The JSOC is a somewhat secret branch of the U.S. Special Operations Command. The Special Operations Command is made-up of "special mission units." Among these units are the Delta Force and Seal Team Six. During the Iraq War other elite groups were known as "Grey Fox," "Capacity Gear" and "Titrant Ranger."

Pulitzer Prize winning investigating "journalist," Sy Hersh has charged that during the Bush-Cheney years the JSOC reported directly to Dick Cheney and no one else. He termed it an "executive assassination ring." The New York Times columnist didn't make the accusations in the NYT, but from podiums on college campuses, at the ACLU and public radio. New York Magazine writer Chris Suellentrop calls Hersh "the runaway mouth of America's premier investigative journalist."Bill Roggio writing for the Weekly Standard Blog says the Hersh claims that the JSOC reports to no one, or only to Cheney during the Bush-Cheney years, is false; they report to the Secretary of Defense and also falls under congressional oversight.

From Marc Ambinder:

JSOC units are very active in Iraq and Afghanistan; in those countries, since the U.S. is formally at war, their conduct can't really be analogized to an extra-legal hit squad....What's objectionable, in theory, is that the President can designate anyone as a terrorist and task JSOC with finding and executing them -- even if the person is not living in the war theatre and has never been charged with a crime. In practice, that's what presidents from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton have believed (the following from a 2001 report).

Senior intelligence officials confirm that a secret finding recently signed by President Bush, building on an earlier one by President Clinton, grant the CIA legal authority to conduct assassination operations against individuals designated as terrorists. As a result, the CIA is devising strategy and policy to that end, and is developing assets for assassinations within both the CIA and "uniformed military units," as well as foreign agents in Middle Eastern countries.

The outrage is likely a convenient smoke screen designed to take the focus off of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's accusation that the CIA "lies all the time." Target Dick Cheney's so-called assassination plots and the Dems might think they have a winner. Complain that the CIA targets al Qaeda and the Dems might think they have a winner...but maybe not. Just maybe we expect Congress to support every tactic possible to win these wars.