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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! May 19, 2009 Imaginary Death SquadsBy Greyhawk...can result in real death. Accusation's that U.S. military members assassinated Benazir Bhutto aren't the first such allegations built on the foundation of Seymour Hersh's fable of "Dick Cheney's Death Squads" - and Hersh isn't the only "credible" source providing fodder for world-wide conspiracy theorists. They should be the last. They won't be. Former prime minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on the orders of the special death squad formed by former US vice-president Dick Cheney, which had already killed the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafique Al Hariri and the army chief of that country.More news from Pakistan: US journalist Seymour Hersh on Monday contradicted news reports being published in South Asia that quote him as saying a “special death squad” made by former US vice president Dick Cheney had killed Benazir Bhutto. The award-winning journalist described as “complete madness” the reports that the squad headed by General Stanley McChrystal – the new commander of US army in Afghanistan – had also killed former Lebanese prime minister Rafique Al Hariri and a Lebanese army chief. “Vice president Cheney does not have a death squad. I have no idea who killed Mr Hariri or Mrs Bhutto,” Hersh said.Hersh offers this warning about quoting him: “This is another example of blogs going bonkers with misleading and fabricated stories and professional journalists repeating such rumours without doing their job – and that is to verify such rumours.” That's true - for a previous example of professional journalists using Hersh stories without fact checking them see "Abu Ghraib": When Hersh was caught lying on video regarding that story he was quick to walk it back, too: “I actually didn’t quite say what I wanted to say correctly,” Hersh now says. “It wasn’t that inaccurate, but it was misstated. The next thing I know, it was all over the blogs.” Translation: "I'm a liar, and if you repeat what I say without fact-checking me I'll call you a liar too." Funny, in a way. But far away from the comforting embrace of home, Seymour's fevered mouth actually will get Americans - and those he inspires to fight them - killed. Much of the "Dick Cheney's executive assassination ring" story can be traced back to a Hersh speaking event in March: "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."Keith Olbermann was on the story in no time flat: Hersh‘s bombshell allegations about the assassination ring, the result of reporting for a book he says might be still a year or two away from being published. Hersh is telling MinnPost.com in an email after the event, that the disclosures are, quote, “not something he wanted to dwell about in public.”For added "authority" he called in Newsweek magazine's Howard Fineman to participate in the hyperventilation: First, we‘ll call in our own Howard Fineman, senior Washington correspondent for “Newsweek” magazine, who‘s book, “The Thirteen American Arguments” has just been released in paperback.CNN ran with the story, too - and "progressive" blogs followed soon after. Today, CNN interviewed Hersh and former Cheney national security aide John Hannah. Although he expressed regret for revealing the story (calling it a “dumb-dumb”), Hersh stood by his initial statements. “I’m sorry, Wolf, I have a lot of problems with it,” he said about the assassination scheme:Note that here Hersh took his story one step further - claiming the authority to "whack" someone was delegated to troops in the field.HERSH: I know for sure…the idea that we have a unit that goes around, without reporting to Congress… and has authority from the President to go into the country without telling the CIA station chief or the ambassador and whack somebody. … You’ve delegated authority to troops in the field to hit people on the basis of whatever intelligence they think is good. That was two months ago - time enough for Hersh's remarks to be almost forgotten in America but also to have spread around the world. It should surprise no one then that this week's "news" isn't the first time the conspiracy theory-hungry Middle Eastern media have run with the ball. Here's a translation of an al Manar (Lebanon) television report citing a Russian TV interview with another "investigative journalist" on the topic: Dick Cheney, the name that always pops up whenever there is talk about a serious crime someplace in the world. Well, Cheney had his own death squad CIA unit which he ran from the white house. By Cheney's orders, the assassinations unit killed former Lebanese minister and Lebanese Forces chief Elie Hobeika on the 24th of January 2002 and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on the 14th of March 2005, prominent investigative journalist Wayne Madsen said. Madsen who is known for his close ties with active circles in the CIA, was speaking to the Russia Today television when he revealed that the same squad that had assassinated Hobeika in coordination with former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's office, had also assassinated Hariri.Nice for Hersh that blogs reported the major media coverage of his comments - so that now he can blame them all for not "investigating" what he said. The rest of us can only hope al Manar viewers have more well-developed personal truth filters (aka "bullshit detectors") than Keith Olbermann's; that readers of news in Pakistan can process information with a bit more discretion than Newsweek subscribers. Because while Olbermann fans might be satisfied with the thrill of merely demanding "Truth Commissions" to validate their fantasies, overseas victims of this fraud have other targets closer to home. Here's more of Hersh's original comment: "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.And as he made clear on CNN, authorized to "whack" on their own. He's used to tossing that sort of stuff out without being questioned. Here's Hersh quoted in 2006 on American troops in Iraq: If Americans knew the full extent of U.S. criminal conduct, they would receive returning Iraqi veterans as they did Vietnam veterans, Hersh said.Of course, if he wanted to Hersh could point to other "authoritative" sources. Those sources aren't limited to fraudulent "Iraq Veterans Against War" members, either. Here's Iraq vet (and "veterans group" founder) Jon Soltz writing in the Huffington Post on U.S. Army Rangers in Afghanistan: You don't mistake someone from 10 yards away. But, was it murder or negligence? Was this a deliberate homicide?Soltz assures us he doesn't believe what he's saying - much the same way Hersh assures us he doesn't say what he's saying. Funny how that doesn't stop people from hearing them anyway. It's become far too easy to make accusations like these, far too easy to casually slander members of the armed forces and far too easy for those doing so to back-pedal, or claim they're blaming the leaders of these troops - that these murderous thugs are as much victims of those leaders as are the corpses they've left in their wake. It's far too easy to merely shake your head in disgust at the entire state of affairs, shrug and wander away. It's harder to fight back - it always is. The miscalculation made by those who'd continue their attacks time after time after time was to assume veterans wouldn't notice they were being branded, or that they would welcome that "victim" status, or simply choose that easy shrug and walk away. Posted by Greyhawk / May 19, 2009 9:37 AM | Permalink 3 TrackBacks
Dick Cheney keeps a secret death squad in his. At least that's what the Truthers and Seymour Hersh think. Read MoreWelcome to the Dawn Patrol, our daily roundup of information on the War on Terror and other topics - from the MilBlogs and various sources around the world. If you're a blogger, you can join the conversation. If you link to any of these stories, add a ... Read More Sleep is highly overrated (opined the ex-crankster gangster). Spending 6-7 hours unconscious is a waste of my time, imo. I could get so much more done! Like reading all the blogs that I come across ~ on a daily basis . Posting about all that... Read More 11 Comments |
July 19, 2010Dawn Patrol 07/19/2010 [Greyhawk]
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Is Hersh out of his f***ing mind? The only thing that can possess someone to make batshit crazy allegations (or believe them, for that matter), is someone who is as equally batshit crazy.
Here is Hersh on Abu Gharib. This is what many people believe are in the photos whose release are being debated.
"Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."
Yep - that's the story here.
Hersh is obviously lying; otherwise, he would be dead. Cheney's goon squads could take him out anywhere.
Fineman quoted that "great movie" (and it is) The Untouchables when he said, "“We became what we beheld,” in reference to the Bush Administration. Of course the full quote is "I have foresworn myself. I have broken every law I have sworn to uphold, I have become what I beheld and I am content that I have done right!"
Fineman probably cheered when he heard that in the theater. Now, I don't think the Bush administration went nearly that far, but it just goes to show that Fineman doesn't even get the relevance of the quote he's using - that Ness, in the movie, went as far as he needed to, to protect decent people, and wasn't corrupted by the process.
Needless to say, the film addresses the moral question far better than Fineman and Olbermann care to.
I should add that I'm not advocating tossing out the laws "to get Capone" as it were. Rather, I don' think the Bush administration was or did either. It's Fineman's simplistic cherry-picked quote that's revealing.
It wasn't just Progressive blogs that covered this in March.
"Libertarian" Progressive blogs repeated this also, taking their cue from their allies on the far-left.
Lew Rockwell is one example:
This is what goes on at Ron Paul blogs, that is why he is insane
Cheney kept the secret assassination ring in a bunker under the Naval Observatory. I think Hersh is getting his inside scoop from Joe Biden.
Well, yes, there is such a Unit. It is called "The Unit" and it is a television show. Hersh is retelling the premise of "The Unit", it's not CIA, it doesn't tell State what it does, etc. it reports directly to the White House.
Perhaps someone played a joke on him. Or he was in light dream state with the television left on. Or he has problems divorcing reality from fiction. I'm serious, he's talking about "The Unit."
By coincidence (or not---creeeepy) CBS canceled "The Unit" today. I forwarded my thoughts in this regard to the blogger linked to this page, I hope you don't mind.
But J - The Unit had a real deal advisor - so it must be true. (Which is probably why Cheney had it
canx'dwhacked.)