Dick Cheney ordered the CIA to hide secret programme from Congress

[Kuya]

It's alright, it was nice arguing with you.

Anyway, i find this idea that this programme was actually an assassination squad--It seems a bit unlikely, considering that the US already carries out acts similar to assassinations, and considering that the CIA had already informed Congress that it was carrying out torture (Congress only cares about not being left out, and maybe if it's really illegal- which withholding information from them is a crime according to the National Secury Act, if i'm not mistaken). So why would they tell Congress about torture and not about an assassination programme that never fully got off the ground?

I think we need an investigation because this stinks of shadyness.

[*Shinzon*]

It's alright, it was nice arguing with you.

Anyway, i find this idea that this programme was actually an assassination squad--It seems a bit unlikely, considering that the US already carries out acts similar to assassinations, and considering that the CIA had already informed Congress that it was carrying out torture (Congress only cares about not being left out, and maybe if it's really illegal- which withholding information from them is a crime according to the National Secury Act, if i'm not mistaken). So why would they tell Congress about torture and not about an assassination programme that never fully got off the ground?

I think we need an investigation because this stinks of shadyness.

I think probably because the program may have been killed and brought back as something else? I don't think it's the first time that the CIA would have done that either.

[thestalkmore]

I'm all for assassination squads tbh. In fact, I want to be a part of one. Hurrah!

[Rhinox]

There are reports that it could have been Assasination squads but the program was later "Revised" to just be Protective detainment. It is said that Cheney had a List of people (including americans) that would be rounded up in case of another major attack on american soil.

[Kuya]

This was Seymour Hersh describing the program in March, yet according to what he's saying, it's been going on for a while, and it was only stopped because there was a lot of collateral damage. This contradicts the statement that this was not fully functional. So something is amiss. Either Seymour is describing a completely different program or we're not getting the full picture.

“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.

[Beckwin]

goddam this is some real-life Bourne shit.

[Alderaan]

How is any of this new? Anytime this was brought up in the past, it was dismissed as conspiracy theory. People need to wake the fuck up and see what's really going on. The problem is, who's going to go after Bush and Cheney when they have an assassination squad working for them.

[Kuya]

I wanted to put this in its own thread since i wanted many people to see it, but i've already made enough threads, but i haven't seen anyone post it yet and i've heard that a lot of people haven't heard of this, so i'll post it here since it's related to the CIA.

Anyway, apparently, a CIA backed warlord committed war crimes in 2001 which the Bush administration protected from any investigation because it found it politically inconveniant. Now for anyone who's versed in American international policy, the CIA backing tyrants and criminals is nothing new, but there are allegations that US soldiers were present in the area. This was reported years ago by the documentary The Convoy of Death. I will post some videos of a DN report, and a strancript of the most sickening part. Then i will post news sources.

First part:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dy2JAY9mwHs

Part three, the part that shows the documentary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWgbLPgljTo


Part of transcript:

JAMIE DORAN: Originally loaded onto trucks at Kunduz, many of these men were crammed two to three hundred at a time into the backs of sealed containers. After around twenty minutes, the prisoners began crying out for air.

EYEWITNESS: [translated] The weather was very hot. They put too many people inside the containers. Many died because there was no air.

INTERVIEWER: [translated] How many containers were at Kalai Zeini when you left?

EYEWITNESS: [translated] There were about twenty-five containers. The condition of them was very bad, because the prisoners couldn’t breathe, so they shot into the containers, and some of them were killed.

TRUCK DRIVER: [translated] They told us to stop the trucks, and we came down. After that, they shot into the containers. Blood came pouring out of the containers. They were screaming inside.

JAMIE DORAN: One Afghan soldier admits that he personally murdered prisoners.

AFGHAN SOLDIER: [translated] I hit the containers with bullets to make holes for ventilation, and some of them were killed.

JAMIE DORAN: You specifically shot holes into the containers. Who gave you those orders?

AFGHAN SOLDIER: [translated] My commanders ordered me to hit the containers to make holes for ventilation, and because of that, some prisoners died.

JAMIE DORAN: But this was no humanitarian gesture. Rather than shooting into the roofs of the containers, the soldiers fired at random, killing those nearest the walls. A local taxi driver had called in at a petrol station on the road to Sheberghan.

TAXI DRIVER: [translated] I smelled something strange and asked the attendant where the smell was coming from. He said, “Look behind you.” There were three trucks with containers fixed on them. Blood was running from the containers. My hair stood on end. It was horrific.

JAMIE DORAN: But for those prisoners crammed inside the containers, a quick death would have come as a blessing. Some of them remained for days in the desert before reaching Sheberghan. Accounts from survivors talk of licking the sweat off each other’s bodies and even biting their fellow captives in a desperate effort to gain fluid in any form. The Pentagon has stated frequently that it knew nothing of the container convoy.

WITNESS: [translated] The Americans were in charge.

INTERVIEWER: [translated] Where were they? On the walls or near the gates of the fort?

WITNESS: [translated] They were standing at the front gates, where the prisoners were.

TRUCK DRIVER: [translated] When we got to Sheberghan prison, there were some Americans and some Afghan soldiers. They wanted to unload the trucks, and they were taking charge of the area.

INTERVIEWER: [translated] How many American soldiers were there?

TRUCK DRIVER: [translated] About 150 to 160. We didn’t count the number.

INTERVIEWER: [translated] What were the Americans doing in the prison?

TRUCK DRIVER: [translated] They were there to make sure the prison was secure. There were so many Americans, and they were all armed and wearing their uniforms.

JAMIE DORAN: As the containers were opened, the full extent of the carnage became apparent. One soldier, who has since fled from Afghanistan, describes the scene in an interview with a Pakistani newspaper.

AFGHAN SOLDIER: [translated] I shall never forget the sensation as long as I live. It was the most revolting and most powerful stench you could ever imagine: a mixture of feces, urine, blood, vomit and rotting flesh. It was a smell to make you forget all other smells you ever experienced in your life.

JAMIE DORAN: For ten days, the Red Cross tried to get access but were refused. They were told that they couldn’t enter because American soldiers were working inside. And this picture taken at Sheberghan on December 1st, 2001, during the period when the containers were arriving at the prison, confirms their presence. Witnesses speak of US soldiers searching the dead for identification before insisting that the Afghans remove the bodies from the prison. The Pentagon, however, will not comment.

News sources 1:

Earlier this year, bulldozers and backhoes returned to the scene, reportedly exhumed the bones of many of the dead men and removed evidence of the atrocity to sites unknown. In the area where the mass graves once were, there now are gaping pits in the sands of the Dasht-e Leili desert.

A United Nations-sponsored team of experts first spotted two large excavations on a visit in June, one of them about 100 feet long and more than 9 feet deep in places. A McClatchy Newspapers reporter visited the site last month and found three additional smaller pits, which apparently had been dug since June.

Faqir Mohammed Jowzjani, a former Dostum ally and the deputy governor of Jowzjan province, where the graves were located, told McClatchy it's common knowledge that Dostum sent in the bulldozers.

He speculated that Dostum wanted to destroy the evidence because of local political trouble that could have made him more prone to prosecution for the killings.

Washington backing was required for any investigation

However, no investigation was likely without strong U.S. backing, and Prosper said that he couldn't recall whether Washington ever gave funding for a probe.

Farid Mutaqi, a senior investigator for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission in the nearby city of Mazar-e-Sharif, said that it was almost impossible to visit the site because of Dostum's power in northern Afghanistan.

News source 2:

WASHINGTON — After a mass killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war by the forces of an American-backed warlord during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Bush administration officials repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode, according to government officials and human rights organizations.



Some members of the Taliban were held at a prison in Shibarghan in February 2002. A mass grave of Taliban prisoners of war is thought to be in a desert stretch just outside Shibarghan.
American officials had been reluctant to pursue an investigation — sought by officials from the F.B.I., the State Department, the Red Cross and human rights groups — because the warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, was on the payroll of the C.I.A. and his militia worked closely with United States Special Forces in 2001, several officials said. They said the United States also worried about undermining the American-supported government of President Hamid Karzai, in which General Dostum had served as a defense official.

The question of culpability for the prisoner deaths — which may have been the most significant mass killing in Afghanistan after the 2001 American-led invasion — has taken on new urgency since the general, an important ally of Mr. Karzai, was reinstated to his government post last month. He had been suspended last year and living in exile in Turkey after he was accused of threatening a political rival at gunpoint.

A recently declassified 2002 State Department intelligence report states that one source, whose identity is redacted, concluded that about 1,500 Taliban prisoners died. Estimates from other witnesses or human rights groups range from several hundred to several thousand. The report also says that several Afghan witnesses were later tortured or killed.

The first calls for an investigation came from his group and the International Committee of the Red Cross. A military commander in the United States-led coalition rejected a request by a Red Cross official for an inquiry in late 2001, according to the official, who, in keeping with his organization’s policy, would speak only on condition of anonymity and declined to identify the commander.

A few months later, Dell Spry, the F.B.I.’s senior representative at the detainee prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, heard accounts of the deaths from agents he supervised there. Separately, 10 or so prisoners brought from Afghanistan reported that they had been “stacked like cordwood” in shipping containers and had to lick the perspiration off one another to survive, Mr. Spry recalled. They told similar accounts of suffocations and shootings, he said. A declassified F.B.I. report, dated January 2003, confirms that the detainees provided such accounts.

But a senior official at F.B.I. headquarters, whom Mr. Spry declined to identify, told him to drop the matter, saying it was not part of his mission and it would be up to the American military to investigate.

The Pentagon, however, showed little interest in the matter. In 2002, Physicians for Human Rights asked Defense Department officials to open an investigation and provide security for its forensics team to conduct a more thorough examination of the gravesite. “We met with blanket denials from the Pentagon,” recalls Jennifer Leaning, a board member with the group. “They said nothing happened.”

[Kuya]

It should be noted that the Pentagon is claiming no US personelle where present during all of this, however testimony from various people claim (as you can see in the third video) US soldiers were present there and saw the containers, and the bodies. You even have, in the third video, a photo confirming the presense of US soldiers in that area.

Evidently an investigation is required.

[Cyn]

Surely you meant personnel Kuya? or are you British instead of a dirty Rican now?

[Kuya]

Sometimes i tend to prefer the French spelling out of habit.

[Kuya]

Oh so very relevant:

http://i28.tinypic.com/2v8l8nn.jpg

[archibaldcrane]

Brilliant.

[GRT]

should i feel nerdy for being able to recognize all of those faces?