Every Field a Killing Field
by Preston
Peet- for DrugWar.com
posted Dec. 16, 2002
The CIA Logo
US President GW Bush has further
loosened the reigns governing who the
CIA is allowed to kill without asking permission, anywhere
it deems necessary if they first label the targets as terrorists.
This is, as
reported by the New York Times (Dec. 15, 2002- free NYTimes registration
required), only if "civilian casualties can be minimized."
Apparently the Bush-legalized
killing of some innocent civilian bystanders as well as accused
terrorists by both the CIA and the US military, is not to be considered
terroristic but rather justified brutality in the name of Homeland
safety and security, false premises both.
While shocking in its open disregard for
any sort of due process, Bush's list of allowable targets, subject
to admendment at any time, is an expansion of
an order first publicized back in October 2001, and does not
exactly issue in a new state of affairs. Killing so-called threats
is
not a new phenomenon, it is
a stock in trade in official US foreign, and even sometimes
domestic policies.
One would have to be naive to believe that
the CIA
and US
military did not and do not plan,
support, and carry out terror and assassinations around the
world when it sees fit to do so. Such
actions did not stop even after the ban
on such behavior was signed by President Gerald Ford in 1976,
after the
Church Comittee disclosed the rampant use of terror and assassination
tactics by US intelligence services and many of its allies.
The US
has engaged in killing both overtly and covertly for years,
and isn't showing the slightest sign of letting up any time soon.
Federal, and on occassion state and local police agencies, have
shown no
hesitation over killing foreign and US citizens in the past.
With the current
administration doing everything in its power to keep
as much secret from the people it works for as it can, how
can we trust that everyone who makes it onto the list is a legitimate
target? Who would the assassin and those who choose the targets
answer to? Who will reign them in if, or rather when, the abuses
sink to the former depths that necessitated Ford's order banning
assassinations in the first place? The
Bush Administration insists it has not rescinded Ford's ban.
Therefore this new order is one more sign that the current Bush
administration does not consider itself bound by the same laws
that hold the rest of the world, including private US citizens,
accountable.
The US has not only allied
itself with myriad death squads and torturers, bombers and dictators
right up to this day, but has gone so far as to support them
with funds, arms, training and active advisors. The only new part
of Bush's latest declaration is that he is attempting to legalize
said behavior.
While defending oneself and one's country
is noble and understandable, it would seem that by utilizing the
tactics of those one deems evil necessarily leads to acts of evil
by all sides instead of any real problem solving. There's the
added problem of deciding exactly who is a terrorist threat. Would
a cop who handcuffs a man then shoots him be legitimately considered
a terrorist? How about an Israeli settler who shoots a Palestinian
because someone in his family was blown up in a bus by a Palestinian
whose brother was shot by an Israeli soldier enforcing curfews?
Where does the killing stop? Is it only the US government who
is legitimately allowed to carry out assassinations, or are other
countries also allowed to kill whomever they consider threatening?
Upon one moment's reflection, it would appear this "new"
policy will lead to ever more tit-for-tat murder and strife. It's
hard to build a positive on top of two negatives.
When attacks on US citizens anywhere in the
world are reported, I myself feel an overwhelming sense of empathy
and anger. I also think, "there but for the grace of god
go I." I imagine that the people of other countries must
feel similar feelings. So how am I, a resident of NYC and therefore
a fairly recent target of terrorist attack, going to accuse someone
of committing unjustified terrorism if they respond to US missiles
killing however many of their own by
retaliating likewise? As Episcopalian
Bishop Paul Moore said in Washington, DC recently, "for
millions of people in many parts of the world, we in the US are
the terrorists."
How are we ever going to build a better world
that is honestly safer for us AND our children, as US politicians
and prohibitionists like to say they're seeking, if we ourselves
resort to acts of base terror in search of peace?
Links
CIA
Hits and Misses
A look at various CIA assassinations both successful and not so
successful. There's a lot of links following the article.
Killing
Hope: U.S. Military & CIA Interventions Since WWII
"[William] Blum has authored a compendium of U.S.-sponsored
atrocities and outrages committed in the past years, providing
an engaging portrayal of CIA operations throughout the world.
What emerges is a truly frightening picture of an organization
capable of assuming any form at any given moment, chameleon in
its pervasiveness and its ability to crush, co-opt and subvert
its way to success."
CIA
The homepage of the US Central Intelligence Agency
Limits
of assassination
This article is supportive of the idea that the CIA can and
should kill people pre-emptively.
U.S.
Policy on Assassinations, CIA
"In the wake of the September 11 attacks, it has been suggested
that the prohibition on assassinations handicaps U.S. counter-terrorism
efforts, particularly as the nation girds for possible armed conflict
in Afghanistan or elsewhere. In fact, the constraints imposed
are no more than those essential to the maintenance of the values
proclaimed by U.S. military and law enforcement officers."
U.S.
policy on assassinations
"In 1976, President Ford issued Executive Order 11905 to
clarify U.S. foreign intelligence activities. The order was enacted
in response to the post-Watergate revelations that the CIA had
staged multiple attempts on the life of Cuban President Fidel
Castro."
U.S.
Opposes Targeted Assassinations
From an almost unbelieveable position of hypocricy, the Bush Administration
berated Israel for targeting suspected terrorists for assassination,
even as the US itself blew suspected terrorists to smithereens
by missile attack.
Political
assassination back in vogue
"State-mandated assassinations are back in the US, and, oddly,
very few people seem to be pondering the issue. The CIA killing
in Yemen of an Al-Qaeda leader, Qaed Senyan Harthi, was the first
example of the Bush administration’s willingness to reverse a
decades-long ban on political assassinations, confirmed by former
President Gerald Ford following Senate hearings on the matter
by the Church Committee in 1975."
Philadelphia
1985, Pristina 1999
"In searching for explanations for the hideous bombing now
being methodically carried out by NATO military planners against
the small country of Yugoslavia, the U.S. media keep trying to
find answers in the history of Balkan ethnic conflicts. But they
are looking in the wrong direction." A comparison between
the bombing of the MOVE families in Philadelphia in 1985 and the
bombings in Pristina in 1999 by US authorities.
CIA
Plots To Kill Fidel Castro
"The CIA's attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro in the 1960s
were as numerous as they were demonically creative. But through
it all, "the Beard" survived. Prepare to visit the sinister world
of assassination politics, courtesy of the CIA
Inspector General's Report on Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro."
MKULTRA:
CIA Mind Control
"The CIA used LSD and hypnosis in its quest to manufacture
a human automaton for assassinations and covert operations."
Us
vs. Them- A Comparison
A comparison between GW Bush and Osama bin Laden.
Eye-for-eye
violence escalates
"Palestinians charge assassinations provoke more attacks;
Israelis say they prevent them."
Whacking
Saddam
"Wouldn't it be great" if the US could secretly send
in US Special Forces to kill Saddam and his sons, write this woman
for GOPUSA, a website that proudly proclaims it is bringing "the
conservative message to the US." Ain't murder without trials
grand?
In
the Face of the “War Against Terrorism” Launched by the United
States
Colombia:
Not a "Tragedy", Not a "Mistake", Not an "Internal" Conflict
"The United States is increasing its involvement in this
quagmire, and this is not a 'mistake'. Similar to many interventions
in Latin America over the last century, what the US is doing in
Colombia is well planned and very intentional."
The
Greatest Purveyor of Violence
"In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King gave a speech that many
of the most powerful leaders and opinion-makers in the nation
considered terribly unpatriotic. In that speech, Dr. King argued
that the Vietnam War, which our government assured us was necessary
and moral, was in fact, an immoral war waged by what he called
the world's greatest purveyor of violence, his own government,
against the Vietnamese people."
U.S.
fuels dirty war in Colombia
"In May, the Bush administration unveiled its proposed contribution
to the death and destruction in Colombia."
Documents
show CIA had 'hit lists' in Guatemala in 1950s
"The CIA, plotting to overthrow the Guatemalan government
in the 1950s, compiled "hit lists" and began training Central
American assassins to kill political and military Communist leaders."
Just
Say Know! The CIA's War on Democracy
"Since then, literally millions of people have been massacred
in a U.S. holocaust that has gone unnoticed and is commonly denied.
The first to be assassinated, in these CIA-fostered campaigns
of terror and mass murder, have usually been progressive politicians,
labour leaders, human rights activists, priests, nuns and other
'subversives.'"
Center
for the Study of Intelligence
"The Center for the Study of Intelligence seeks to promote study,
debate, and understanding of the role of intelligence in American
society."
