Ray McGovern: Unwritten Death Contract Awarded to Blackwater

Unwritten Death Contract Awarded to Blackwater

by Ray McGovern


Hats off to Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times for ferreting out what it was that sent CIA Director Leon Panetta scurrying over to Congress in late June.

According to Mazzetti, Panetta's top lieutenants, many of them holdovers from the last administration, had just told him that, under President Bush, they had farmed out assassinations to their Blackwater subsidiary. I use "they" advisedly, since the CIA holdovers that had kept Panetta in the dark continue to function as Panetta's top managers.

Panetta abruptly stopped the project and contritely briefed the intelligence committees. Until now, it was not clear what had prompted Panetta to set up hurried consultations with the intelligence "oversight" committees of the House and Senate.

An odd odor still hangs over the affair. After being briefed by Panetta, one committee member described him as "stunned" that his lingering lieutenants had kept information on the program from him until nearly five months into his tenure. Yet there is not the faintest hint that anyone on either committee dared to ask why Panetta continues to leave such tainted officials in very senior positions.

Anyone know why he does not send them packing?

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/21-0

Telling the CIA that employees could no longer be involved in drug dealing...but contractors, yeah, sure, let 'em have at it.

I noticed a lot of the torture stories that make it into the mainstream press talk about the Bushies approving it for "high value targets," top leaders of the Al Qaeda. However, if they had really just stuck to that, there would be a lot less controversy. What is more distressing is the Iraqis & Afghans picked up at random and tortured to cow the locals into submission.

Similarly, few people would lose much sleep if Bush was really taking out the top leaders of Al Qaeda, but they might be more concerned if the emphasis was on the story about Cheney okaying the assassination of Benezair Bhutto the elected leader of Pakistan. Do you think that's the only leader they put the hit on? If the coup leaders in Venezuela or Haiti had killed Chavez or Aristide, would the Bushies have called the whole thing off and admitted they made a horrible mistake?

The analogy is even more obvious with wiretapping. They claimed they were looking for terrorists, but in reality, they were listening to everyone, and using that info for political agendas, as their eavesdropping on reporters proved.

It is time to stop letting the Bushies frame themselves as the great terrorism fighter and start saying they were fighting democracy here and resistance to corporate dominance abroad.