Discussion of Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan
Jeremy Scahill on GritTV
Beginning almost immediately after September 11th, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld essential segregated JSOC (about JSOC) from the rest of the military. And the idea there was that they were going to create a sort of stand-alone military force that would reply directly to the administration rather than the military chain of command. So essentially JSOC has an open classified mandate where they can take people — snatch then, they can carry out targeted assassination, and they also run their own bombing campaign inside of Pakistan, I’m told, that runs parallel to the CIA’s. And one of the reasons why this is significant is that all of the actions of the CIA have to be briefed to the so-called “Gang of Eight” — in the intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein and others — and these operations, I’m told, are not being briefed to the Congress.
In other words, while the United States States trumpets the rule of law, it is by and large a country that routinely circumvents any pesky law that stands in the way of profit, subjugation, or imperialism. (The scary thing is that, where Blackwater are concerned, the US military may actually agree with my sentiments.)
Jeremy Scahill has his own blog, and is an active twitterer.
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