He was writing of the Vietnam war, not of the secret CIA plan to kill Al-Qaeda leaders.
Something just doesn’t measure up with news that it is okay for the CIA to fire missiles from remote controlled drones at suspected terror targets, but the agency can't use a hit squad to kill individual terrorists. Count this blogger among the perplexed. We can rain death from the sky on terrorists and innocent civilians, which further weakens this country’s worldwide reputation. We can’t take out individual bad guys. The Wall Street Journal got to the nub of the issue. A source told the WSJ that assassination teams are much more effective at two feet than at 50,000 feet. “Do you want the collateral damage of 50,000 feet or two,” asked the source.
The WSJ reports a) the secret plan never got off the ground; b) Congress was kept in the dark about its existence under order of VP Dick Cheney, and c) Obama-appointed CIA chief Leon Panetta killed the program once he heard about it.
There is no federal law barring the assassination of terrorists, a former CIA counsel told the WSJ. There is a Presidential order prohibiting the targeted killing of terrorists, but that can be overturned by a waiver. The WSJ and New York Times have spilled a lot of ink about the secret, never used and now canceled assassination plan story. There’s got to be more to it.
Stills' song also has the words: "Paranoia strikes deep/Into your life it will creep." That applies today after eight years of the secretive Bush White House.
(Image via Wired)