Cheney and the new CIA controversy

Where was the liberal outrage when Pelosi lied through her teeth on camera?

 

counting stimulus money.

 

Or hoarding it.

 

I am and until it is proven otherwise, I'm standing by that.

Agreed. Except when information is going to be leaked. Which is my problem with notifying Congress of instances like these. Somebody at the highest levels of power knew about it (Bush Administration). That's good enough for me for a program like this.

Right, because as we've said here, it was never implemented so there was no legal obligation to tell Congress. If they'd actually gone out and conducted these operations then yes, I could see the argument for Congress not knowing, to a certain degree. Again, it just seems to me that the Dems are just trying to provide political cover for Pelosi. Otherwise, do you really think this would be as big of news as it's being made out to be? I don't think so.

 

I don't know if members of Congress were briefed or not. There are differences of opinion on that.

General Michael Hayden who ran the CIA at the time says top members of Congress was briefed 4 times a year on the surveillance programs. He stated they were kept well informed. However, because the details of the plan remain classified, it is hard to form any kind of an opinion as to what extent, if any, Congress was kept informed of the plan.

The plan itself looks absolutely legitimate - what little is known about it. The plan was designed to take out al-Qaida and Taliban leaders by means other than bombing, which usually results in a lot of civilian casualties. The goal was to reduce civilian casualties while at the same time maintaining the ability to kill terrorist operatives. Certainly nothing wrong in that. I am a little confused about why current CIA Director Leon Panetta cancelled the program last month after learning about it. However, in view of the fact that the program never became operative even during the Bush administration, one can only conclude there was some kind of a problem with it. There was one suggestion that if failed to produce any results, but since it was never made operational, obviously it could not be expected to produce much results. But in view of the fact that it never became operational - whatever the reasons - I don't see much of a legal issue here. Certainly nothing that would justify a major, not to mention an expensive, congressional investigation. The only real issue would be whether or not government funds were used in planning the program which probably would require congressional oversight. But if the executive branch had the funds to plan the program, obviously those funds had to have been appropriated by Congress, so Congress must have known something in order to approve the funding. As issues go in Washington, this is not a biggee. I think this is just an attempt to resurrect Senator Patrick Leahy's "truth commission (God, what a euphamism).

 

:lol:

hook line and sinker.

 

So what are you trying to say? That the threat of terrorism is a figment of my imagination?

 

Simple. It was on the table but never put into play. And it's precisely because it was never operational that Congress didn't need to know about it.