Corporatism and Fascism

A Canadian Doctor Diagnoses US Health Care
By Michael M. Rachlis | Truthout

The caricature of "socialized medicine" is used by corporate interests to confuse Americans and maintain their bottom lines instead of patients' health.

Universal health insurance is on the American policy agenda for the fifth time since World War II. In the 1960s, the U.S. chose public coverage for only the elderly and the very poor, while Canada opted for a universal program for hospitals and physicians' services. As a policy analyst, I know there are lessons to be learned from studying the effect of different approaches in similar jurisdictions. But, as a Canadian with lots of American friends and relatives, I am saddened that Americans seem incapable of learning them.

Our countries are joined at the hip. We peacefully share a continent, a British heritage of representative government and now ownership of GM. And, until 50 years ago, we had similar health systems, healthcare costs and vital statistics.

The U.S.' and Canada's different health insurance decisions make up the world's largest health policy experiment. And the results?

On coverage, all Canadians have insurance for hospital and physician services. There are no deductibles or co-pays. Most provinces also provide coverage for programs for home care, long-term care, pharmaceuticals and durable medical equipment, although there are co-pays.

On the U.S. side, 46 million people have no insurance, millions are underinsured and healthcare bills bankrupt more than 1 million Americans every year. Read more.

PANETTA SEEKS TO WHITEWASH CIA CRIMES
By Sherwood Ross

CIA Director Leon Panetta’s article titled “It’s Time To Move On” published in the August 4th Miami Herald is a stunning disservice to the principles of justice. It not only calls for whitewashing the Agency’s past horrific crimes, which have included torture and murder, but openly advocates the use of force and violence. Panetta writes, “the focus on the past, especially in Congress, threatens to distract the CIA from its crucial core missions: intelligence collection, analysis and covert action.” In CIA lingo, “covert action” has always meant dirty tricks, from blackmailing to assassinating foreign leaders, and from pouring bribe money to influence elections to overthrowing governments. Covert action is not your church Tuesday night bingo party. And these criminal acts are invariably performed in sneaky secret because if the American people learned of them they would never tolerate the spy agency’s cruelty and waste of tax dollars. Besides, not a few of the CIA’s crimes might make you puke.

And when Panetta charges that Congress “threatens to distract the CIA” he is revealing his fear that at any House or Senate intelligence committee hearings his Agency will have an awful lot of embarrassing crimes to account for. Yet, as reporter Tim Weiner points out in his aptly named “Legacy of Ashes, The History of The CIA(Anchor),” Congressional committees “need to do their work—ask hard questions, demand answers, and report back to the citizenry. They have been derelict in this duty for much of the past three decades, but their conduct since 9/11 has bordered on criminal negligence.” But when Congress changes course and tries to do its job, Panetta sees it as a “threat.”

By Dana Jill Simpson

Today the Wall Street Journal is reporting that behind closed doors certain groups in the White House want Mr Greg Craig gone. The White House is denying that is so, but clearly there are leaks taking place about discussions in the White House. However the question should be is Mr Greg Craig doing a good job for the Democrats that elected his boss President Obama. I think the answer would be no and here is why. President Obama was elected by Democrats and independents in this country that sought change in the direction our country was headed. However, Mr Greg Craig as Legal Counsel to the President has just provided us with no change.

Take Senator Sanders' Healthcare Quiz.

Cancer Survivor Hopes To Avoid Foreclosure
By Teresa Garcia | KGO-TV San Francisco CA

A cancer survivor's family is still in their Oakland home after winning a battle so many Americans are now facing. They were going to be foreclosed upon and evicted today. Read more.

OAKLAND, CA - 31JULY09 - Home Defender activists sit in on the steps of the home of Tosha Alberty, her husband, four children and two grandchildren, who were evicted after First Franklin Mortgage Services, owned by Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, foreclosed on the home. Community activists in the Home Defenders campaign of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) sat in on the house steps behind the padlocked gate in an act of civil disobedience, and were arrested for trespassing by the Oakland Police.

Click "Read more" for photos of the action.

South Asia, Latin America: Pentagon's 21st Century Counterinsurgency Wars
Rick Rozoff | Stop NATO

More than half a year after the departure of the George W. Bush administration the United States is embroiled in its largest combat operation since the second attack on Fallujah in November of 2004 and the most extensive and lengthy offensive in its nearly eight-year-old war in Afghanistan.

It has also announced plans to intensify its involvement in the 45-year counterinsurgency war in Colombia with deployments of 1,400 additional soldiers and contractors to five more military bases there.

House votes to clamp limits on Wall Street bonuses
By Anne Flaherty, Associated Press | Google

Bowing to populist anger, the House voted Friday to prohibit pay and bonus packages that encourage bankers and traders to take risks so big they could bring down the entire economy.

Passage of the bill on a 237-185 vote followed the disclosure a day earlier that nine of the nation's biggest banks, which are receiving billions of dollars in federal bailout aid, paid individual bonuses of $1 million or more to nearly 5,000 employees.

"This is not the government taking over the corporate sector," Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C, said of the House action. "It is a statement by the American people that it is time for us to straighten up the ship."

Aware of voter outrage about the bonuses, Republicans were reluctant in Friday's debate to push back, even though they voted overwhelmingly against the bill. They said severe restrictions should apply only to banks that accept government aid.

The legislation's ban on risky compensation would apply to any firm with more than $1 billion in assets, including bank holding companies, broker-dealers, credit unions, investment advisers and mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The White House and Senate Democrats haven't fully embraced the measure, leaving its prospects uncertain. The Senate Banking Committee planned to take up the proposal in the fall as part of a broader bill overhauling financial regulations. Read more.

US eyes private guards for bases in Afghanistan
By Richard Lardner, Associated Press | Yahoo! News

U.S. military authorities in Afghanistan may hire a private contractor to provide around-the-clock security at dozens of bases and protect vehicle convoys moving throughout the country.

The possibility of awarding a security contract comes as the Obama administration is sending thousands of more troops into Afghanistan to quell rising violence fueled by a resurgent Taliban. As the number of American forces grow over the next several months, so too does the demand to guard their outposts.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he wants to cut back on the use of contractors that now provide a wide range services to American troops in war zones, including transportation, communications, food service, construction, and maintenance. As recently as February, however, Gates called the use of private security contractors in certain parts of Afghanistan "vital" to supporting U.S. bases. A contract for the work also creates job opportunities for Afghans, he said.

But the use of private contractors in Iraq has been highly contentious. Since a September 2007 shooting of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad by guards employed by Blackwater (now Xe Services), critics have urged U.S. officials to maintain much tighter controls over hired guards. Read more.

MP3

Cornel West and Carl Dix Interview on Democracy NOW!

Carl Dix's Essay on the "Arrest of Henry Louis Gates in His Own Home!

Industry Donates To Drug Plan Foes
Lawmakers Funded By Pharmaceutical Companies Are Leading the Opposition to a Health Care Proposal
By Fredreka Schouten, USA TODAY via ABCNews.com

Lawmakers who count pharmaceutical companies among their biggest contributors lead the opposition to a health care proposal that would cut costs by allowing generic drugs to compete sooner with pricey biotechnology drugs, campaign-finance records show.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has helped lead Senate efforts to give drug companies 12 years of exclusive rights to sell biotech drugs, rather than seven as proposed by President Obama. Hatch has received nearly $1.3 million from the employees and political action committees of drug and health products companies since 1989, making the industry his largest contributor, according to data compiled by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics.

In the House, Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., whose district is home to dozens of biotech companies, is sponsoring a similar measure. Drug company employees and political action committees have donated $645,000 since 1992 to Eshoo — second only to the computer and Internet industry.

This year, she is the biggest recipient of pharmaceutical money in the House, the data show.

Hatch and Eshoo say the donations have no bearing on policy decisions.

"I've voted against them, and I have been with them," Eshoo said of drug companies. In this case, she said, the 12 years are needed to help companies recoup their investments. Other drugs have five years of exclusivity.

Industries donate "because they agree with the principles espoused by the candidate," Hatch said in an e-mail. " I don't believe they are trying to influence candidate's decisions." Read more.

My Mom Is A Torture Loving, Italian/Catholic, Fascist and Fox News Viewer
By Robert Corsini | The Public Record

It’s truly stupefying that today, in the midst of the Obama era, that legions of Americans continue to find it so easy to rationalize and doggedly defend the Bush administration’s torture program.

As more details are revealed it’s clear that never before in human history has such a complex system of abduction, international rendition, and judicial and legislative manipulations been employed to advance and empower an extremely narrow yet far reaching political agenda.

Bush and Co. have turned American democracy on its head and redefined political criminality and neo-fascistic hubris while injecting their poison into the minds of untold millions of Americans via a compliant and self-serving media system. They have rendered Orwell’s horrific vision for the future of humanity in ‘1984’, quaint. But above all, what is most astonishing to me is how they have made my 86 year old Italian-Catholic, Jesus loving mother, embrace torturers and denounce Peace Makers.

My two brothers and I used to have a good laugh when my parents would talk about the ‘good’ Mussolini brought to Italy. For my entire adult life, spirited political hyperbole and great food have always been a part of my family’s dinner table experience. ‘Pass the ravioli – the Japs deserved two nuclear bombs!’ ‘How could you say such a thing I thought you believed in Jesus?’

A study released in April by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press indicates the more often people attend church, the more likely they are to support torture. Sadly, the sobering data supports my own personal struggle growing up in an extremely conservative, Italian Catholic family. I will always remember my parents’ deep-seated belief that the biggest mistake ‘Il Duce’ ever made was aligning himself with Hitler (I think Hitler saw it the other way around) and how amazing my mother’s gnocchi were.

"How cute!" my adults would say when they passed a black baby or a small black child. They'd grin approvingly at the baby and smile their acceptance at the baby's mom. Sometimes they'd extend a hand to brush the baby's cheek to prove their gentility. And then they'd walk a bit further, lean into each other and snark the zinger that angered me then and now, "yeah, they're cute now but wait till they get older." There it was. There it is. The not so subtle prejudice I witnessed in my family that millions of impressionable children witnessed in theirs.

As far back as I can remember I was offended by this language. But others in my family, in my generation, were not. Many assumed the attitudes and language of our adults and continued these prejudices into their adulthoods. Some more strongly than others. Some used the "N word." Some used "ditsoon," the Italian pejorative for blacks. In my large extended family, that includes several police, racial insensitivity was the norm.

You're Appointing Who? Please Obama, Say It's Not So!
By Jeffrey Smith | Huffington Post

The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US food safety czar. This is no joke.

Here's the back story.

When FDA scientists were asked to weigh in on what was to become the most radical and potentially dangerous change in our food supply -- the introduction of genetically modified (GM) foods -- secret documents now reveal that the experts were very concerned. Memo after memo described toxins, new diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and hard-to-detect allergens. They were adamant that the technology carried "serious health hazards," and required careful, long-term research, including human studies, before any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be safely released into the food supply.

But the biotech industry had rigged the game so that neither science nor scientists would stand in their way. They had placed their own man in charge of FDA policy and he wasn't going to be swayed by feeble arguments related to food safety. No, he was going to do what corporations had done for decades to get past these types of pesky concerns. He was going to lie. Read more.

Don't Turn the Page on History
Facing the American World We Created
By Tom Engelhardt | TomDispatch.com

We've just passed through the CIA assassination flap, already fading from the news after less than two weeks of media attention. Broken in several major newspapers, here's how the story goes: the Agency, evidently under Vice President Dick Cheney's orders, didn't inform Congress that, to assassinate al-Qaeda leaders, it was trying to develop and deploy global death squads. (Of course, just about no one is going to call them that, but the description fits.) Congress is now in high dudgeon. The CIA didn't keep that body's "Gang of Eight" informed.

A House investigation is now underway.

We're told that the CIA -- being the president's private army and part of the executive branch of our government -- has committed a heinous dereliction of duty. In fact, not keeping key congressional figures up to date on the developing program could even "be illegal," according to Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin. (Not that Congress, when informed of Bush administration extreme acts, ever did much of anything anyway.)

VIPS Member Ray McGovern and Dallas Peace Center member Hadi Jawad organized and participated in the “Dallas Delegation,” a march in George W. Bush’s Dallas neighborhood. Marchers reminded Bush neighbors that they had living among them a criminal who repeatedly and notoriously broke federal and international laws.

Ray McGovern wrote:

In front of Bush house; we stopped long enough to refresh, in a very serious way, memories—by reading the Declaration of Independence regarding the usurpation of our foremothers' and forefathers' rights by another George.

Then we began to read the sections of our beloved Constitution that were trampled by George W. Bush. There are, though, so many such sections that we were not able to finish reading them all in the hot sun.

We did the sensible thing and began to march slowly and solemnly out of the neighborhood...at which point the Dallas police arrived and gave us an armed escort! Our bannering over the nearby Interstate was cut short by the same police, who told us, in effect, this is not Minnesota. In Texas, they said, It is illegal to banner because a distraction could cause a car wreck. We had no Coleen Rowley with us to give us good legal advice, so we drove off (again with police escort) to that major intersection and witnessed for a good while more. Great use was made of those wonderful banners and orange suits. The banners included "WHAT NOBLE CAUSE?" -- Cindy Sheehan's gutsy question of W four long years ago, as she left Dallas accompanied by some of the women of Code Pink and some Veterans for Peace to set up Camp Casey, in honor of her son Casey, killed on April 4, 2004. A year later, Bush made the glib comment that such deaths were "worth it," for folks like Casey died for what noble cause! Cindy, to her great credit, was not going to sit still for that.

NONE OF US SHOULD. And none of us can keep silent when abuses like torture take place in our name. Otherwise, we are all guilty—like those well mannered, obedient Germans of the Thirties.

It was an invigorating experience. I recommend it, or something like it, to all!

The march was facilitated with the help of the Dallas Peace Center. Pictures of the event are below the fold. Click “Read more” to see them.

The New Truth-Teller
By William Greider | The Nation

Phil Angelides, the former state treasurer of California, is a tough-minded liberal with hands-on knowledge of high finance and the social contradictions in modern capitalism. So it is remarkable that Angelides has been chosen to chair the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission newly created by Congress. The commission has enormous potential to generate deeper reforms than anything President Obama has yet proposed, simply by digging out the hard facts of what caused the financial collapse.

An honest investigation--like the Pecora hearings that famously revealed the truth of what caused the Great Depression--could splash embarrassment on both political parties and turn up shocking evidence of the political collusion between Washington and Wall Street. But can we really expect such a truth-telling creature to emerge from Congress? Maybe we can. The appointment of Angelides is a very promising start because of his record as an aggressive reformer on issues like corporate governance, social equity and environmental reform. The danger is that the Angelides commission will be paralyzed by the usual hard-nosed tactics of Washington partisans. Read more.

State Dept Offers New Caveat on Nixon Tapes | FAS

The transcripts of Nixon White House tape recordings that are published in the State Department’s official Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series are merely “interpretations,” not official records, the State Department acknowledged in the latest FRUS volume that was released this month. As such, those transcripts are susceptible to revision and correction.

“Readers are advised that the tape recording is the official document, while the transcript represents solely an interpretation of that document,” the new FRUS volume states in the Preface. The statement goes beyond previous FRUS references to poor tape quality. It is evidently a response to a simmering scholarly controversy over the accuracy of published FRUS transcriptions of the Nixon tapes, which appear to include clear errors.

Here are some examples of suspect “interpretations” from the Nixon FRUS Volume XIV (Soviet Union, October 1971-May 1972) that was published in December 2006 (with audio clips courtesy of nixontapes.org):

FRUS, as published (p.171): Kissinger: “On the other hand, you and I know that you were going to go for broke against the North.”
Probable Correction: Kissinger: “On the other hand, you and I know that you weren’t going to go for broke against the North.” (.mp3). Read more.

Court Rebukes Government Over “Secret Law” | FAS

“Government must operate through public laws and regulations” and not through “secret law,” a federal appellate court declared in a decision last month. When our government attempts to do otherwise, the court said, it is emulating “totalitarian regimes.”

The new ruling (pdf) overturned the conviction of a defendant who had been found guilty of exporting rifle scopes in violation of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). The court said that the government had failed to properly identify which items are subject to export control regulations, or to justify the criteria for controlling them. It said the defendant could not be held responsible for violating such vague regulations.

Accepting the State Department’s claim of “authority to classify any item as a ‘defense article’ [thereby making it subject to export controls], without revealing the basis of the decision and without allowing any inquiry by the jury, would create serious constitutional problems,” wrote Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. “It would allow the sort of secret law that [the Supreme Court in] Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U.S. 388 (1935), condemned.”Read more.

Pentagon Reclassifying Documents Already in the Public Domain
By The Public Record Staff | The Public Record

From George Washington University’s National Security Archive:

Pentagon classification authorities are treating classified historical documents as if they contain today’s secrets, rather than decades-old information that has not been secret for years. On Friday, the National Security Archive posted multiple versions of the same documents—on issues ranging from the 1973 October War to anti-ballistic missiles, strategic arms control, and U.S. policy toward China—that are already declassified and in the public domain.

What earlier declassification reviewers released in full, sometimes years ago, Pentagon reviewers have more recently excised, sometimes massively. The overclassification highlighted by these examples poses a major problem that should be addressed by the ongoing review of national security information policy that President Obama ordered on May 27, 2009. New presumptions against classification that may be added to an executive order on national security information will not, in isolation, end overclassification. Rigorous oversight, accompanied by improved training and consequences for improper classification are essential. Read more.

Antonia Juhasz wrote AfterDowningStreet.org to announce a new research and tracking program at Global Exchange. Read her Op Ed below. Antonia wrote:

I'm thrilled to announce the launch of the new Chevron Program at Global Exchange with my Op Ed (below) in today's San Francisco Chronicle. I'll be directing this new program which is just getting off the ground this week. In the coming weeks you'll find our website updated with new information on the Program. Many of you are already familiar with The True Cost of Chevron: An Alternative Annual Report which I was the lead author and editor of and which was released by Global Exchange and several other organizations in May 2009.

Global Exchange has launched the new Chevron Program in recognition of both the growing power and influence of Chevron as it rises from the sixth to the fifth largest corporation in the world and the budding new movement of Chevron-affected communities combining their efforts in resistance to Chevron's harms.

I am thrilled to be joining the amazing team at Global Exchange as well as continuing my current affiliations with the Institute for Policy Studies, Oil Change International, and Foreign Policy in Focus.

Chevron owes more to Richmond and California
By Antonia Juhasz | SF Chronicle

This week, Fortune magazine released its list of the 500 largest corporations in the world. With a nearly 25 percent increase in its revenues from 2007, Chevron Corp. moved from the sixth to the fifth largest corporation in the world. Only 36 countries on the planet had GDPs larger than Chevron's $263 billion in 2008 revenues.

By revenue, Chevron is the largest corporation in California, the second-largest U.S. oil corporation and the third-largest corporation in the nation. Chevron's nearly $24 billion in profits for 2008 were its largest on record and the fourth-highest profits of any corporation in the world. Chevron's profits have increased every year since 2002, increasing by an astounding 2,100 percent.

Those who have not benefited are the Richmond community, the site of Chevron's oldest refinery, and the state of California.

In November, Richmond voters passed Measure T. At the current price of oil, it would provide the city with an additional $16 million annually from Chevron (adding 11 percent to the city's tax revenues). Chevron sued, challenging the new tax.

Chevron has also repeatedly blocked state initiatives to impose a severance tax on oil extracted in the state. California is the only major oil producing state in the nation without such a tax. It is estimated that imposition of a severance tax could bring in over $1 billion a year to the California state budget. Read more.

Workers rebel
By Ben Lando, Nizar Latif and Alaa Majeed | Iraq Oil Report

The leadership of Iraq’s most prominent oil union says the government should not as quickly turn to foreign firms in developing fields already producing oil, blaming politicians for stalling progress in Iraq’s oil fields.

Signing international oil companies to produce oil in undeveloped fields is nominally OK by the unions – including the second bid round for 11 fields – but not those that Iraqi workers and state oil company is already pumping from.

And there are warnings from the workers that the BP-Chinese National Petroleum Corp. award for the giant Rumaila field could face physical resistance.

“We think that these contracts are illegal and illegitimate,” said Hassan Juma’a Awad, president of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions.

The workers fear they’ll be out of jobs when foreign firms come in. And they see the return of the foreign firms that once ruled Iraq as a petro-province as a potential threat to Iraqis benefiting from the massive fields. Read more.

Government Abandons Reliance On Tortured Evidence In Habeas Case Of Guantánamo Detainee | Press Release
No Credible Evidence To Continue Holding Mohammed Jawad, Says ACLU

The government today stated it would no longer rely on evidence obtained through torture and other coercion in the habeas corpus case challenging the unlawful detention of Guantánamo detainee Mohammed Jawad. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion on July 1 to suppress Jawad's statements, and today the Justice Department announced it would not oppose that motion.

"We commend the government for halting its reliance on evidence obtained through torture and other abuse in Mr. Jawad's habeas case," said Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project and a lawyer for Jawad. "Now it is time to send Jawad home to Afghanistan because there is no credible evidence against him. Nearly seven years of unlawful detention is long enough."

The judge in Jawad's military commission trial previously suppressed statements made by Jawad to Afghan and U.S. officials following his arrest, finding that they were the product of torture. However, the government had continued to rely on those same statements in Jawad's habeas corpus challenge, as well as other statements obtained through Jawad's continued abuse at Bagram and at Guantánamo.

Following his 2002 arrest in Afghanistan for allegedly throwing a grenade at two U.S. soldiers and their interpreter, Jawad was subjected to repeated torture and other mistreatment and to a systematic program of harsh and highly coercive interrogations designed to break him physically and mentally. Eventually, Jawad tried to commit suicide in his cell by slamming his head repeatedly against the wall.

Sources: Tenet canceled secret CIA hit teams
Successors resurrected the plan, ex-officials say
By Associated Press | MSNBC

As CIA director in 2004, George Tenet terminated a secret program to develop hit teams to kill al-Qaida leaders, but his successors resurrected the plan, according to former intelligence officials.

Tenet ended the program because the agency could not work out its practical details, the officials told The Associated Press. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the classified program.

Porter Goss, who replaced Tenet in 2005, restarted the program, the former officials said. By the time Michael Hayden succeeded Goss as CIA chief in 2006 the effort was again flagging because of practical challenges. Read more.

Bush Has Widened Authority of C.I.A. to Kill Terrorists
By James Risen and David Johnston | NYTimes | Published: Sunday, December 15, 2002

Intelligence officials said the presidential finding authorizing the agency to kill terrorists was not limited to those on the list. The president has given broad authority to the C.I.A. to kill or capture operatives of Al Qaeda around the world, the officials said....Under current intelligence law, the president must sign a finding to provide the legal basis for covert actions to be carried out by the C.I.A. In response to past abuses, the decision-making process has grown into a highly formalized review in which the White House, Justice Department, State Department, Pentagon and C.I.A. take part. The administration must notify Congressional leaders of any covert action finding signed by the president. In the case of the presidential finding authorizing the use of lethal force against members of Al Qaeda, Congressional leaders have been notified as required, the officials said.

The Bush administration has prepared a list of terrorist leaders the Central Intelligence Agency is authorized to kill, if capture is impractical and civilian casualties can be minimized, senior military and intelligence officials said.

The previously undisclosed C.I.A. list includes key Qaeda leaders like Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as other principal figures from Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups, the officials said. The names of about two dozen terrorist leaders have recently been on the lethal-force list, officials said. "It's the worst of the worst," an official said.

President Bush has provided written legal authority to the C.I.A. to hunt down and kill the terrorists without seeking further approval each time the agency is about to stage an operation. Some officials said the terrorist list was known as the "high-value target list." A spokesman for the White House declined to discuss the list or issues involving the use of lethal force against terrorists. A spokesman for the C.I.A. also declined to comment on the list.

Despite the authority given to the agency, Mr. Bush has not waived the executive order banning assassinations, officials said. The presidential authority to kill terrorists defines operatives of Al Qaeda as enemy combatants and thus legitimate targets for lethal force.

Mr. Bush issued a presidential finding last year, after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, providing the basic executive and legal authority for the C.I.A. to either kill or capture terrorist leaders. Initially, the agency used that authority to hunt for Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan. That authority was the basis for the C.I.A.'s attempts to find and kill or capture Mr. Bin laden and other Qaeda leaders during the war in Afghanistan.

The creation of the secret list is part of the expanded C.I.A. effort to hunt and kill or capture Qaeda operatives far from traditional battlefields, in countries like Yemen.

The president is not legally required to approve each name added to the list, nor is the C.I.A. required to obtain presidential approval for specific attacks, although officials said Mr. Bush had been kept well informed about the agency's operations. Read more.

The Man Who Knew Cheney's Secret
by Benjamin Sarlin | Daily Beast

The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh was mocked in March when he referred to Dick Cheney’s secret squad of CIA assassins. Now, he talks to The Daily Beast about the next shoe to drop.

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh raised eyebrows back in March when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that Dick Cheney ran a secret hit squad that he kept hidden from congressional oversight.

"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on," Hersh said at the time. He added: "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."

“I said what I said, they can always say what they say,” Hersh told The Daily Beast. “The last time they said the government doesn’t torture, this time it’s the government doesn’t assassinate.” Read more.

Cheney Sweats Out the Summer
By Ray McGovern | July 14, 2009

So far the summer has been mild in the Washington, D.C., area. But for former Vice President Dick Cheney the temperature is well over 100 degrees. He is sweating profusely, and it is becoming increasingly clear why.

Cheney has broken openly with former President George W. Bush on one issue of transcendent importance — to Cheney. For whatever reason, Bush decided not to hand out blanket pardons before they both rode off into the sunset.