"After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said," the Post reported. "The evidence has to meet a certain, defined threshold. The person, for instance, has to pose 'a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests,' said one former intelligence official.
Holy crap, is this a real order? I'm going to have to do some digging on this one. If true, we can add this to the ever-growing list of criminal actions that the previous administration has pulled. But now it's almost taboo to talk about the Bush administration. Of course, liberals won't complain about this, oh no.
U.S. involvement in Yemen is largely being directed by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), according to the Post. The command was perhaps best known as former Vice President Dick Cheney's "executive assassination squad," first revealed by veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh.
I remember when Seymour Hersh first mentioned JSOC:
Hersh replied,"After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet."
Hersh then went on to describe a second area of extra-legal operations: the Joint Special Operations Command."It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently,"he explained."They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. ... Congress has no oversight of it."Hersh stated.
"It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on,""Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us."
Stories have been coming out about covert Pentagon assassination squads for the last several years. In 2003, Hersh himself reported on Task Force 121, which operated chiefly out of the Joint Special Operations Command. Others stories spoke of a proposed Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group.
Hersh: 'Executive assassination ring' reported directly to Cheney
Here are some interest things from SourceWatch:
"JSOC units have reportedly been involved in a number of covert military operations over the last two decades. Some of these operations include providing assistance to Italian authorities during their search for kidnapped US Army Gen. James Dozier, participating in Operation Urgent Fury; the US invasion of Grenada, planning a rescue attempt of US hostages being held in Lebanon, rescuing hostages being held aboard the cruise liner Achille Lauro, participating in Operation Just Cause; the US intervention in Panama, directing US Scud hunting efforts during Operation Desert Storm, conducting operations in support of UN mandates in Somalia, and searching for suspected war criminals in the former Republic of Yugoslavia.
"JSOC units regularly conduct training with similar units from around the world, and provide training to nations that request US support. JSOC has also provide support to domestic law enforcement agencies during high profile, or high risk events such as the Olympics, the World Cup, political party conventions; and Presidential inaugurations.
"The full text of PDD-25 is reported to exempt the Joint Special Operations Command from the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 18USC Sec.1385, PL86-70, Sec. 17[d]. which makes it illegal for military and law enforcement to exercise jointly.[2]"
Joint Special Operations Command
Task Force 121 was in the news again: first they captured Saddam Hussein, now they're going after Osama bin Laden. David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, in their February 29, 2004, New York Times article "New U.S. Effort Steps Up Hunt for bin Laden" reported that [1]
"President Bush has approved a plan to intensify the effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, senior administration and military officials say, as a combination of better intelligence, improving weather and a refocusing of resources away from Iraq has reinvigorated the hunt along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"The plan will apply both new forces and new tactics to the task, said senior officials in Washington and Afghanistan who were interviewed in recent days. The group at the center of the effort is Task Force 121, the covert commando team of Special Operations forces and Central Intelligence Agency officers. The team was involved in Saddam Hussein's capture and is gradually shifting its forces to Afghanistan to step up the search for Mr. bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar, the former Taliban leader...."
The Washington Times reported February 23, 2004, that the top-secret US commando team that helped capture Saddam Hussein is heading for Afghanistan. The Times says it's the latest sign that the hunt for bin Laden is coming to a head. The Defense Department says it is moving 'Task Force 121' to Afghanistan because its mission in Iraq is basically finished, and that intelligence on the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden is growing.
Task Force 121
Also interesting is the article on the Proactive Preemptive Operations Group
In August 2002, the first public hints of a new U.S. secret counterintelligence group -- the Proactive Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG) -- emerged from a report of the Defense Science Board (DSB), a Pentagon advisory group, and found its way into daylight.
[edit on 27-1-2010 by Someone336]
