Cheney's "List"

The revelations that Dick Cheney allegedly ordered the CIA not to report a super-secret Special Access Program (SAP) to congress is... unremarkable. If you didn't believe Cheney was running his own show then you still believe Heinrich Himmler wasn't trying to establish a government within a government with his SS.

The suggestion that the SAP which Cheney was supposedly running was a CIA-operated internationally deployed army of assassination squads has the ring of bullshit to it. While the CIA, in the not-so-distant past was always leery of assassinating public political figures they certainly possessed the mechanisms and the will to assassinate operators and opposition outside the public spotlight. That suggestion is a blind alley leading to blank wall.

The essence of what has been said so far is that Inspectors-General of the various intelligence branches of the US government have reported that Bush's warrantless wiretapping activity was only one aspect of a much wider domestic program. An illegal one, therefore, very, very secret.

Most people, despite their political hue or squeamishness about the idea, would likely accept the concept of CIA-conducted hits on prominent al Qaeda figures. In fact, most have already done it, so to suggest such a program needed to be withheld from Congress to avoid a possible leak is like offering to galvanize a rubber tire to prevent it from rusting.

There was a time when anyone suggesting Cheney was so evil that he would develop lists of personal and political enemies, based on their constitutionally guaranteed right to speak freely and offer an opinion which differed from the direction of Cheney's government, would have been called paranoid. To suggest that those named on such a list were targets for "special treatment" would have earned you a tin-foil hat.

I think Cathie has nailed it.