Every Field a Killing Field- by Preston Peet: Drugwar.com

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 The Bush Administration insists it has not rescinded Ford's ban.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."