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Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh Describes 'Executive Assassination Ring'
At a "Great Conversations" event at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an "executive assassination ring."
Journalist Seymour Hersh speaking in Doha at an Al Jazeera forum on the media in 2007. (REUTERS/Fadi Al-Assaad) Hersh spoke with great confidence about these findings from his current reporting, which he hasn't written about yet.
In an email exchange afterward, Hersh said that his statements were "an honest response to a question" from the event's moderator, U of M Political Scientist Larry Jacobs and "not something I wanted to dwell about in public."
Hersh didn't take back the statements, which he said arise from reporting he is doing for a book, but that it might be a year or two before he has what he needs on the topic to be "effective...that is, empirical, for even the most skeptical."
The evening of great conversation, featuring Walter Mondale and Hersh, moderated by Jacobs and titled "America's Constitutional Crisis," looked to be a mostly historical review of events that have tested our Constitution, by a journalist and a high government officials who had experience with many of the crises.
And it was mostly historical, and a great conversation, in which Hersh and Mondale talked about the patterns by which presidents seem to get intoxicated by executive power, frustrated by the limitations on that power from Congress and the public, drawn into improper covert actions that exceed their constitutional powers, in the belief that they can get results and will never be found out. Despite a few references to the Founding Fathers, the history was mostly recent, starting with the Viethnam War with much of it arising from the George W. Bush administration, which both men roundly denounced.
At the end of one answer by Hersh about how these things tend to happen, Jacobs asked: "And do they continue to happen to this day?"
Replied Hersh:
"Yuh. 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. That does happen.
"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it's called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...
"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.
"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.
"It's complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It's a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you've heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized.
"In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people.
"I've had people say to me -- five years ago, I had one say: ‘What do you call it when you interrogate somebody and you leave them bleeding and they don't get any medical committee and two days later he dies. Is that murder? What happens if I get before a committee.?'
"But they're not gonna get before a committee."
Hersh, the best-known investigative reporter of his generation, writes about these kinds of issues for The New Yorker. He has written often about JSOC, including, last July that:
"Under the Bush Administration's interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference."
("Finding" refers to a special document that a president must issue, although not make public, to authorize covert CIA actions.)
Here is a tape of the full Mondale-Hersh-Jacobs colloquy, a little over an hour, without the audience Q and A. If you want to look for the Hersh statement quoted above, it's about at the 7:30 mark.
The rest of the evening was, as expected, full of worry and wisdom and quite a bit of Bush-bashing.
Jacobs walked the two elder statesmen through their experiences of:
* The My Lai massacre, which Hersh first revealed publicly and which he last night called "the end of innocence about us and war."
* The Pentagon Papers case, which Mondale called the best example of the "government's potential for vast public deception."
* Henry Kissinger's secret dealings, mostly relating to the Vietnam War. (Hersh, who has written volumes about Kissinger, said that he will always believe that whereas ordinary people count sheep to fall asleep, Kissinger "has to count burned and maimed Cambodian babies.")
* The Church Committee investigation of CIA and FBI abuses, in which Mondale played a major role. (He talked about the fact that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, not only spied on Martin Luther King but literally tried to drive him to suicide.)
* The Iran Contra scandal. (Hersh said the Reagan administration came to office with a clear goal of finding a way to finance covert actions, such as the funding of the Nicaraguan Contras, without appropriations so that Congress wouldn't know about them. Mondale noted that Reagan had signed a law barring further aid to the Contras, then participated in a scheme to keep the aid flowing. Hersh said that two key veterans of Iran-Contra, Dick Cheney and national security official Elliot Abrams, were reunited in the George W. Bush White House and decided that the key lesson from Iran-Contra was that too many people in the administration knew about it.)
* And the Bush-Cheney years. (Said Hersh: "The contempt for Congress in the Bush-Cheney White House was extaordinary." Said Mondale of his successor, Cheney and his inner circle: "they ran a government within the government." Hersh added: "Eight or nine neoconservatives took over our country." Mondale said that the precedents of abuse of vice presidential power by Cheney would remain "like a loaded pistol that you leave on the dining room table.")
Jacobs pressed both men on the question of whether the frequent abuses of power show that the Constitution fails, because these things keep happening, or whether it works, because these things keep coming to light.
Mondale stuck with the happy answer. "The system has come through again and again," he said. Presidents always think they will get away with it, but eventually reporters like Hersh bring things to light, the public "starts smelling this stuff," the courts and the Congress get involved. Presidents "always, in the long run, find out that the system is stronger than they are."
Hersh seemed more troubled by the repetitions of the pattern. The "beautiful thing about our system" is that eventually we get new leaders, he said. "The evil twosome, Cheney and Bush, left," Hersh said. But he also said "it's really amazing to me that we manage to get such bad leadership, so consistently."
And he added that both the press and the public let down their guard in the aftermath of 9/11.
"The major newspapers joined the [Bush] team," Hersh said. Top editors passed the message to investigative reporters not to "pick holes" in what Bush was doing. Violations of the Bill of Rights happened in the plain sight of the public. It it was not only tolerated, but Bush was re-elected.
And even Mondale admitted that one of his greatest successes, laws reforming the FBI and CIA in the aftermath of the Church Committee, were supposed to fix the problem so that "we would never have these problems again in the lifetime of anyone alive at the time, but of course we did."
- Posted in
44 Comments so far
Show AllI respect Hersh, but I have mixed feelings about such sensational and scandalous claims.
It's fascinating enough, but I've had enough of revelations that don't GO anywhere, except maybe to help market a book or create a buzz. And one way or the other, drift into what Jay Rosen terms the "Sphere of Deviance"-- a kind of protein soup of tantalizing, but taboo or chaotic, topics and information excluded from open public discussion.
Investigative reporters often have a bit of huckster in them, and Hersh certainly does. Greg Palast, too, regarding government-based wrongdoing; he will occasionally report scoops or stories that portend, at long-last, discovery of a smoking gun.
But somehow they fade away instead of gaining traction sufficient to move whatever the issue is to the front burner.
So...OK, interesting. But we'll see where it goes.
· Yr Obd't Servant
My gut agrees with you - this may be a little over the top...
However I certainly wouldn't be surprised if it was true either (I suspect few would be surprised) - and that says volumes.
I thought when W overturned the government ban on Assassination, that was sensational too and it did get a mention in the media with no followup story.... except a few like Hersh are still on it.
I don't think Bush did it (Made murder a legal policy) just to scare people... No the smoking gun is Bush's pen.
I suspect this may be linked to the secret "sophisticated and lethal special operations program" Bob Woodward was talking about last September.
In any case, this represents the same ideology the Zionist state PROUDLY flaunts, and is yet another immoral step towards the Israelification of America.
The drafters of the United States Constitution would be appalled to hear that modern US Presidents had assumed for themselves some implicit power to draw up a hit list and kill people abroad or on US soil in a time of peace, even on a contract basis.
I don't see why Seymour Hersh generously terms this issue "complicated", while acknowledging the JSOC teams "are committing what we would normally call murder."
It is simply murder, a power that was never delegated within our Constitutional scheme of things to be exercised by any official of any of the three branches of federal government, outside the context of capital punishment (when all three branches have a defined role).
If you want to smite the evildoers with extreme prejudice, you either declare war and use your soldiers, or else you use the criminal justice system. This is really not a gray area, in terms of Constitutional law, ethics, or morality.
Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Madison, and the other Founding Fathers would be ashamed. What Hersh describes is the very essence of what it means to call a king a tyrant.
Bill from Saginaw
If what he says is true, I hope he has copies of his notes hidden in several secret locations.
Joe
His sources cannot be too numerous, so the entire 'hit squad' may just " disappear ", like all of those unanswered questions about the missing nukes … and _ 9 _ ! _ ! _ .
I do respect the honor of those soldiers that take personal responsibility to uphold the constitution, regardless of shrubish_in_thief and darth_cheney ( … ) complicity in various war crimes.
¿ How can there be honor & integrity to perpetuate evil secrets and hide behind war criminals ?
National security is really about arresting and convicting those who orchestrate mass murder for profit & power, not an excuse to cover up despicable acts.
Namaste
Senator Paul Wellstone's October 25, 2002, plane crash "accident" always reeked of assassination, and I think I'm not the only one who believes this. Allegedly, the plane's wings iced over; no one had added wing deicer before the plane took off in northern Minnesota in late-October.
Perhaps a coincidence that Hersh appeared with Walter Mondale who subbed for Wellstone in that 2002 US Senate election during last night's appearance at the Univ of Minnesota.
Senator Wellstone was the most progressive of US Senators and a constant opponent of Bush-Cheney until his untimely death.
You're far from alone
I believe a mircowave cannon(it disables electronic controls) such as what can be used on satellites was one thing used to bring Senator Wellstone and his family crashing down. Garage doors in the area were going up and down without anyone using their openers.
Also remember when the remainder of Wellstone's family got very upset and refused to allow bush to do his Mafia imitation and attend the funeral of his victim.
No, you're definitely not the only person who believes this. That "accident" stinks to high heaven.
Let's not forget the recent death of Mike Connell as well, whose plain crashed in similarly mysterious circumstances. He was the computer guy who was supposedly going to talk about his role in the hijacking of the Ohio vote in the 2004 presidential election, according to Stephen Spoonamore.
911,building #7, Wellstone, JFK, MLK, Dicks assassination squads, ect.ect. These are all conspiracy theories all right, but they are the crime families conspiracy theories! If Dick employed these people for foreign assassinations of his perceived enemies, what makes you think he wouldn't do it domestically? Mr. Hersh, please stay out of small planes!
The part about an "executive assassination ring" that was accountable to no one is not surprising. This way everybody can play Alberto Gonzalez stupid and say "I can't recall, don't know, and am shocked, shocked I tell you..."--aka "plausible deniability".
What is equally disturbing is:
"The major newspapers joined the [Bush] team," Hersh said. Top editors passed the message to investigative reporters not to "pick holes" in what Bush was doing. Violations of the Bill of Rights happened in the plain sight of the public. It it was not only tolerated, but Bush was re-elected."
So now we know it wasn't that they were too atupid to see what was going on, rather, they deliberately were forbiden from fulfilling their journalistic function to challenge authority and made to be so many stenographers and tabloid PR flacks.
No wonder fewer and fewer people want to watch Brian shoutcast Williams, pretty-perky Katie Kouric with her little living room interview set, or the snooze hour with Jim Lehrer. No wonder fewer and fewer people want anything to do with daily or weekly newspapers.
Poet
NeoCONers are only loyal to their cause, which is global and beyond borders. Hit_squads _Я_us has long been a very effective political tool.
See below for a great article , that explains the detailed history of media was infiltrated and how Gates ( and therefore Obama ) is deep into it ( shrubish bu$h!t )
The Neocons Strike Back
By Robert Parry
March 11, 2009
"The neoconservatives have demonstrated that their power in Washington remains strong as they have succeeded in keeping veteran diplomat Chas Freeman out of a top intelligence job."
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/031109.html
Namaste
Hersh is a good reporter. If he doesn't suffer a "heart attack" or get run over by a truck in the near future, you will probably see still more of the government's dirty laundry hung out for airing.
If he hadn't blown the whistle on the plan to nuke Iran, it would probably be a fait accompli, a long time ago.
The hit squad sure took care of Mike Connell before he was to testify...
Wellstone was not the first populist senator to have his plane mysteriously crash before an important vote...
the CIA Learned their lesson by making sure his wife was aboard, so she could not carry out his term...
And the San Jose/Palo Alto area lawyer who started criticizing Cheney on a Radio Show until he got thrown ten stories to the concrete while committing suicide.
And that DC madame, Palfrey? Wasn't Cheney gonna get named by her?
And of course let us not forget the Biggest Assassination of all with Cheney's DNA on it, not exclusively but pervasively, 9-11.
That was an assasination
Of 3,000 Americans,
A prelude to an assassination of our constitution by the Republicans who destroyed this country's soul.
Joe.
Seymour Hersch will be killed b4 publication of any work, which, in turn, will then be destroyed, halted, and disappeared.
I was going to say that Hersch should be looking over his shoulder if what he believes is true about cheney's hit squad.
Other predictions: Madoff will "die" of a heart attack just like his buddy Ken Lay before ever seeing a jail cell. The same would happen to cheney and bush if they ever got convicted of anything, but we all realize they won't
Too late, Madoff is being escorted to jail now, and was in a holding cell after his hearing today...he's already been in a jail cell, yay. Now he can die :-)
BUILDING SEVEN, How do we override the.... BUILDING SEVEN... constant flow of disinformation and.. BUILDING SEVEN ... brainwashing, psyops and corporate control... without,, BUILDING SEVEN,, Losing our minds in this post modern, deconstructed anti-community that is the .. BUILDING SEVEN.. Internet?
The cognitive dissonance is driving us all out of our minds!! Our short term memories are shot!
All the information is right in front of us and NOTHING REALLY HAPPENS! IT JUST KEEPS ROLLING ALONG.
building seven
Yes, quite so. it's just like Las Vegas, we've got the
__ WTC 7
and the
__ 9 _ ! _ !
except all I can think to say is craps!
BUILDING SEVEN!
Free fall is no longer free ( of neoCONer claptrap )
( Almost ) Any C student in a high school physics class can now make NIST "world experts" ( Dr Dodo DeeDeeDee ) look like the total clueless IDIOTS that they want us to be. One has to bend over really far to reach the quantum of heights these mental midgets lord over.
The malarky and posturing that has replaced logic and science in our gov'ts attempts at covering up BUILDING SEVEN is renown, although not widely known.
The fact is, appeal to authority has reached a record low bar level of un-sanity and gladly foreclosed independence -- for so many "educated" folks -- IS JUST PATHETIC.
Namaste
P . S .
We all knew that shrubish bu$h!t attempted to circumvent the entire Constitution, and any man made law -- but taking on the Law of Gravity -- means that he's got some LOT of explaining to do. Last I checked, the stars and planets are not at all perturbed by NIST's incompetence, nor even falling with the sky.
If NASA used NIST's ideas about freefall to design a birdhouse -- it would likely kill any bird that could hop and get even close to it, or worse yet -- convince them that birds can no longer fly.
Maybe Hersh needs time to write, but I don't see why this "complicated," as he says.
Certainly, U.S. covert forces have been involved with aiding assassinations over the years (Patrice Lamumba, Che Guevara, General Rafael Trujillo, President Sukarno of Indonesia, President Diem of Vietnam, Saddam Hussein, etc.). The FBI did its own form of indirect killing domestically under COINTELPRO (Fred Hampton).
Maybe what's different is that Hersh says they did direct assassinations. I thought there was some prohibition on that so that U.S. presidents wouldn't be targeted in the same way by foreign intelligence agencies. A sort of gentleman's agreement.
I'd urge Hersh to work with Congress to prosecute Bush, Cheney and crew, but maybe he's doing that. However, we already know that the Bush administration has committed war crimes in which tens of thousands have been murdered - and no action has been taken by Congress, which largely approved and funded those wars.
(By the way, Hersh tends to heap the praise on soldiers, generally speaking, but participating in illegal wars of aggression should get no praise. The United States has a short history of actually being attacked on its own soil, with Pearl Harbor and 911 coming to mind.)
I'm sure people here know all the covert ops foreign policy history, but, for those who might not, a good chronicle of this skullduggery can be found in the book, "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II" by William Blum.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Killing-Hope/William-Blum/e/9781567512526/?itm=8
-TIA
Love to kill? Sharp as a tack? Join the covert killing ("intelligence") community and get paid to kill. Your work will both prevent AND cause the next imperial blowback event like 9/11, and you will be doubly thanked, publicly for preventing it, and privately for causing it.
Conservatives/Liberals the terms are outmoded. Governors are less interested in the governed than they are about Re-election. Would *"Native Criminal Class", be a better Descriptor? *Gore Vidal
Thanks for all the memories.
I have been burning up the Bookstores looking for a good understanding of the issues that the "founding fathers", may have been thinking about when they staged their protest over the King's uses for the colonies. One by one they had their comforts taken away and were threatened with being arrested and tried by England's courts. They were not allowed to discuss as we freely do the commonality of all these issues to bring us a shared view of what the country needed as a whole.
Let me say this carefully and with thoughtful consideration for you all. They wanted to be free to run their own lives without the constriction of the English government (their government), to describe for them what to buy or who to go to church with.
The activities of the Bush-Cheney executives and all of the administrators in all of the branches of government have been counter to the vision and the needs of our forefathers. That is clear. What is needed by our little group to discuss is the rationale to understand that the American people need a government that wants to promote all of the people.
This last 5 or 6 election cycles that brought us a view of conservatism that was supposed to help restore the ideals of a party that had been desroyed by an American president's ambition to use the government for his own personal agenda (Nixon). The best description of the the election of 1980 is that the ideals of the Conservative party were beginning to get back to center of the political spectrum. In reality the Reagan years beginning in 1980 were a diffrent kind of conservatism where the political dogs were instead used behind-the-scenes of Federal appointments and in beginning the well documented attack on the Welfare state, destroying the remnants of the social system that was created after the great depression. Why people describe Reagan as a great president is a mystery to me considering all of the (ahem !!!) things that happened while he was in office.
I feel a strong visceral reaction to wanting to know all of the activities of the recent administration and I want those things to be out in front of the American people so that everyone can see the horror show that was the Bush Government. I want the people that participated in the actions of the government to remove our civil rights to GO TO JAIL!!! I am getting a little pedantic and I only wanted to describe some of these actions that make me feel ill.
If the sysytem of laws that we respect and swear to uphold means anything then we must honor the memory of our forefathers and demand a full accounting of every government activity that resulted in the loss of Civil Rights or any loss caused by these actions.
I am a citizen and I demand this level of honor for the memory of those "fathers", that gave their lives to make this system possible.
"The evil twosome, Cheney and Bush, left," Hersh said. But he also said "it's really amazing to me that we manage to get such bad leadership, so consistently.
And he added that both the press and the public let down their guard in the aftermath of 9/11."
Everyone knows that the planes did not bring those towers down, but no one wants to talk about it.
The media in this country are not doing the jobs, or at least not reporting the truth to Americans. If you look back at the last 38 years , back to Nixon-Vietnaum-Watergate, thats when the Noecons figured out that to adavnce their evil plans they had to controll the major media networks and education. They have kept us in the dark and made us more stupid.
Thats why we have had bad leadership consistantly, 30 years of republican neocon rulership, dirty tricks, charcater assinations at all levels, secret socaity groups. Bill Clinton is an insider, part of the new world order click, though he was a democrat, he approved nafta,gat and the removal of the glass-steigal act.
So we have had 40 years of neocon media and presidential controll, thats why our counrty is failing financially, and socially, its thier plan to control while stealing our wealth and going global for empire.
Keep us poor and scrambling, so we cant organize. Government isn't the problem, we are the problem. We the people are the ultimate " checks and balances".
If the Ecexcutive, Judiciary, and legeslative branchs can not keep each other in check and protect the constitution ,then " we the people " should step in.
And we have, it took voter pole watchers and counters to make sure the elections were not stolen again. Organized groups of enlightend Amercians spreading the word that we can not afford any more republican right wing neocon fake christian presidents .
The last 40 years have been a nightmare, a train wreck, and the worst part is, as we were headed 120 miles an hour to are crash, no one saw it coming, or at least did not bother to report on this evil.
Its very clear to me, that there is no way republicans will get the white house ant time soon in the next 50 years. They do not have the votes unless they lie to us , or cheat and rig the votes. Just ask Mike Conell, the IT admistrator for Karl Rove, Bush, RNC and GOP about vote rigging. OOOOps, we cant, he was going to testify in court but died in his private plane after it crashed.
These evil rpublicans will kill, mame, destroy everything in their path to keep power.
BornFreeMen
"when the Noecons figured out that to adavnce their evil plans they had to controll the major media networks and education"
I'm not so sure about that. How would that explain the unilateral support for israel? I don't know of very many congressmen or women who don't support our war-like stance with the middle east. I think one of the easiest ways for americans to channel their anger at middle easterners is to funnel all that aggression through Israel regardless of outcome.
However, I do think that the neo-cons have taken over congress and the white house. What I don't understand is how they can think unilateral support for israel at the cost of thousands and thousands of american lives and boatlodes of our money and weapons won't ruin the security of our nation. Neo-cons always tout their values are to maintain security of our nation by taking an offensive stance against other states who fail fall into lockstep.
Z O R O A S T E R
You say "What I don't understand is how they … think" and that they " … tout their values are to maintain security of our nation "
That's because the neoCONers are pathological psychopaths, and that they lie about everything about their motives and justifications.
These people are not just politicians, they're global gangsters with a > 40-yr plan of subjugation and manipulation. The myth that they are republicans is very useful to them.
Namaste
I never referred to republicans being neo-cons. the two are intertwined in the media, but amonst GOP supporters they have nothing to do with each other.
neo-cons can only be global gangsters if they have a money supply to fund themselves. Pull the plug on their money supply and they will dwindle.
There was one thing revealed in Hersh's book Chain of Command that I hadn't read anywhere before...that the Bush administration allowed Pakistan to fly out hundreds of Pakistani ISI and military advisers, along with hundreds of their Taliban and dozens of their Al Qaeda...apparently it was a pretty big operation, and took days to complete, right after we invaded Afghanistan.
The capitalist class, the elites in this world, will do anything to maintain their control and power over this planet. It's as simple as that. One shouldn't be surprised. It's been going on for a very long time now and has brought forth the deaths of millions upon millions of people throughout the long history of capitalism. Secret assassination teams are no more appalling than all the other murders committed by this class, to keep itself in power and control the destiny of humanity.
-----------------------------------------
What Is Marxism? - a short primer on a subject the working class needs to know.
http://www.marxist.com/Theory/what_is_marxism.html
Eh, the communist/non-western ruling elites did this too you know.
Nowhere on the same scale and always as a response to the threats of the imperialists.
-----------------------------------------
What Is Marxism? - a short primer on a subject the working class needs to know.
http://www.marxist.com/Theory/what_is_marxism.html
Stalin, Mao.
Fundamentalist marxism is as much a dead end as fundamentalist capitalism.
Stalin ran the Soviet Union more as a gangster than as a Marxist... Since he was the bank robber and muscle behind Lenin's revolution, he exploited the new system to his own benefit more so than promoting Marxism...
Free MP3 of Hersh's talk:
http://www.cce.umn.edu/media/greatconversations/hersh_jacobs_mondale/hersh_jacobs_mondale.mp3
The last part of that URL is
hersh_jacobs_mondale/hersh_jacobs_mondale.mp3
For some reason CommonDreams website does not create automatic hyperlinks anymore, and you can't use HTML anymore either. But just cut and paste it together and it should work.
The CIA and the executive have been overthrowing, assassinating and installing foreign leaders for decades, in dozens and dozens of countries, why is this news now?
( 1. ) There is the usual circumspect CIA manner of assassinations, that goes through various official channels -- under some superficial monitoring by COngress,
and then there's …
( 2. )The totally black on black completely hidden 'eyes-only' one-on-one connection between VP darth_cheney and the actual assassin.
In the former there is the appearance of oversight, in the later there is no acknowledgement of any existence of it.
Namaste
because assassination is always news.
Note the date.
--------------------------------------------
U S
Mindless Jaggurnaut rolling on,
Crushing, devouring, all in its path
A runaway freight with no engineer;
Or is it?
The people are tired of trying to stop it,
Or control it, or understand it.
Worn down by their efforts,
Their disillusionment, their pain.
No one cares who the engineer is,
Or if there is one.
No one cares who it crushes,
As long as it’s somebody else.
A runaway freight,
Plunging into an unlighted,
Unfinished tunnel;
Full of people along for the ride.
Steve Osborn
22 Nov. 1974
--------------------------------------------
The tunnel is a little deeper than I thought at the time, but we still seem to be gathering speed after thirty-five years.
Great Poem Steve!
The Freight Train rolls on and on and luckily some are tryin to reach the engine.
Now is the Rush of Time.
Supposedly it sounds like Michael Connell, GOP web guru voting machine hacker extraordinaire stole a lot more than just the 2004 election. Also look at 2000, 2002, 2006... and it seems we turned the fire hose on their plans when they were going to do it again in 2008. This time we subpoenaed him days before the election, he started getting the nervous twitch... mentioned he might tell the truth in court.... then WHAMMO Connell does a barrel role into the ground on final approach in his private plane while returning from Washington. And his friend had been advising him to avoid flying.
Hmmm... would smoking gun proof of a series of stolen elections make every piece of Bush legislation, every presidential appointee, every Bush appointed supreme court judge INVALID???? Even TREASONOUS perhaps? Really makes you wonder....