Making Up Their Own Rules....

Here's a little snip from Seymour Hersh's excellent article in the latest issue of The New Yorker:

The new mission for the combat troops is a product of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s long-standing interest in expanding the role of the military in covert operations, which was made official policy in the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review, published in February. Such activities, if conducted by C.I.A. operatives, would need a Presidential Finding and would have to be reported to key members of Congress.

“ ‘Force protection’ is the new buzzword,” the former senior intelligence official told me. He was referring to the Pentagon’s position that clandestine activities that can be broadly classified as preparing the battlefield or protecting troops are military, not intelligence, operations, and are therefore not subject to congressional oversight. “The guys in the Joint Chiefs of Staff say there are a lot of uncertainties in Iran,” he said. “We need to have more than what we had in Iraq. Now we have the green light to do everything we want .”
emphasis added by NotClever

Full article here

I emphasized the last line in the snippet because that is the scariest line in the entire article. Reminds me of the classic movie line, "Badges? We don't need no stinking badges", just replace 'badges' with 'Congressional oversight', or 'United Nations resolutions'.

By simply labeling intelligence activities as "Force Protection", those activities can be hidden from the eyes of the people we voted into office, effectively circumventing the concept of 'checks and balances'.

Is this how a dictatorship begins?

NC

Do you really think that there was much of a check or balance on this sort of thing before hand?

Also, where does it state that such a thing is required? We gave those responsibilities to teh CIA, and that required oversight. There's no reason why oversight can't be imposed on the military also.

Originally posted by Nygdan
Do you really think that there was much of a check or balance on this sort of thing before hand?

If measured on a scale, I would say there there isn't/wasn't much of a check on it, but there was at least some. This appears to provide a green light to use military intelligence anywhere in the world with zero oversight.

There's no reason why oversight can't be imposed on the military also.

Agreed, and there is some oversight present, vis-a-vis, Congressional budget committees, etc. But at the sluggish rate this system works, when do you suppose oversight on this type of activity can be made institutional, 5 yrs? 10 yrs?

Given this administration's apparent tendency to play fast and loose with the facts, this looks like an incredible opportunity for them to make the facts as they see fit.

NC