American Death Squads?
Former Vice President Dick Cheney
Current and former government officials have apparently confirmed that the CIA had developed plans to create and deploy small, specialized teams overseas on specific missions to kill terrorists.
It was also made clear by CIA Director Leon Panetta, that these plans had been hidden from lawmakers on the command of former Vice President Cheney.
I think there are 3 major, but separate questions that rise from all of this.
- Do official “Death Squads” conform to the core values and ideals that the United States has always stood for?
- If the answer to #1 above is no, or “probably not” (as it was most often in my own unscientific polling of friends and family), just how big of a deal is that then? Personally, I feel these teams of assassins are completely adverse to the principals our nation was founded on, yet at the end of the day I’m not sure I’d care about that if they returned home with Osama Bin Laden’s head in a duffel bag. I certainly would congratulate the individual members of that specific team, no doubt about it. Does this mean I’m not true to my beliefs in the founding principals of our nation, or does it simply reflect that we live in a world where there’s little room for absolutes, and sometimes “acceptable” does lay between right and wrong based on the circumstances?
- And finally, how and why does the Vice President get away with concealing such planning from the entire legislative body, including the members of our Military and Intelligence Committees who specifically have clearance to be briefed on exactly this kind of thing, in order to prevent the Constitution from being abandoned.
My commentary within the questions says enough about my own thoughts on them, what I’d really like to know is how other Americans and readers from around the world view them?
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