I'm guessing that the program was a murder scheme, modeled on the old Phoenix operation in Viet Nam.

Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the C.I.A. interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities.

And naturally the CIA wouldn't lie about that either.

All I can figure out so far is that it was codenamed "Treadstone."

god damn dick cheney's shit-filled soul to hell.

What needs to be investigated also is how the Vice President gained the authority to order these actions and their concealment. Did the President formally delegate this authority to him in, e.g., a written memo? Was it verbally conveyed? How were people at the NSA, CIA, etc., made aware of this authority?

Or is it the case, as I suspect is quite possible, that Cheney simply arrogated this authority to himself while the Idiot King blithely imagined he had the helm? And that others in the executive branch went along, not because they actually had any reason to believe that he had the legal authority, but because they either agreed with what he was doing and wanted to go along, or were weak and afraid to question his standing?

I've been reading "Cheney ordered" and "Cheney demanded" for years now and I'd like to know where the office of the Vice-President got all this power from. It ain't in my copy of the Constitution. This may be obvious but I wonder why no one ever mentions it. Dan Quayle probably looks at Cheney's Soviet-like power and laments never "ordering" that henceforth potato would have an "e" on the end of it.

There you go larry, we're not only thinking alike but simultaneously!

And the show trials will begin-when?

Watergate is a distant memory-if that- to today's "reporters" and "elected representatives".

"Look, look! Over there! Over there! A missing blonde/dead rockstar/car chase/train wreck."

Never mind that the train wreck is our nation. . .

I also want to know how come the CIA was taking orders from the VP.

But I bet I'll never find out...

"Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the C.I.A. interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities."

So we aren't talking about warrantless wiretapping and we aren't talking about torture. That leaves Seymour Hersh's hit squad operating under Addington's discretion. If so, it makes sense that the White House is moving so gingerly.

Remember that we're all supposed to be looking forward.

god damn dick cheney's shit-filled soul to hell.

Neill, I truely appreciate your posting this statemen on every Dick Cheney topic--I look forward to the day when the entire Senate intelligence committee wears it on T-shirts to open an investigatory hearing--but could you PLEASE capitalize it correctly? One of our talking points is that the illiterates are all supporting the Republicans, and explaining avant-garde punctuation to people is a distraction.

Carthago delenda est!

Looking forward shall soon be more difficult to concentrate on, I suspect. You can't just ignore it if the VP got his hand caught in an assassination cookie jar.

Truth commission, anyone?

If this whole thing is as evil as it sounds, when are some of these sociopaths going to start snuffing each other to cover it up? Apparently they realized that it was easier to just keep lying to the Democrats and get all the big-name reporters hooked on attending cocktail parties on Martha's Vinyard. The postman with the sub-machine gun and the over-trained German super-agent crashing through the window aren't as cost-effective, though their victims don't whine as much afterwords as the Dems and the TV reporters.

I'd like to know where the office of the Vice-President got all this power from...

They got it because they took it, because either 1.) they knew they could just take it, 2.) or because the President told them to take it, 3.) or the Vice President told the President to tell them to take it.

My money's on #3. The sovereign reigns, but does not rule.

Great presidents get elected, my high school AP-USH teacher told me, to do somthing. Mediocre presidents get elected to be something. Bush's the type specimen for the latter. His goals were met the day he was inaugurated -- from then on, he left things up to the help, until maybe 2006 or so, by which time they had screwed up so much that even he couldn't hand-wave it away.

Wasn't there a Pincus article about Cheney organized death squads? Or am I making that up?

Treadstone.

Gee, not too long ago Cheney was hitting the media circuit and was more than loud and clear about releasing ALL documents that have been classified to reveal the TRUTH that he wants revealed. Or maybe he didn't really mean ALL documents...probably, really only documents that he helped write...whatever.

Let's reveal everything that discloses what Cheney was really up to. All of it. This would be in keeping with his puffed-up bravado appearances on his favorite spin-machine teevee shows.

Let's call his bluff and publicly disclose exactly what the psychopath was really doing.

And neill, if he had a soul, I'm sure it would be shit filled, but there is no indication that he has a soul at all. He is one of the demonic undead, whose only purpose on this earth is to create as much destruction as inhumanly possible in a human body.

My only hope where Cheney is concerned, is that his eventual demise is painful and long-suffering.

This means the team has completed preparations and cached weapons for their final assignment: blowing Obama's brains out if he makes a move to prosecute the war crimes.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, [...] -- NYT

That's all I need to know to determine, to my own satisfaction, that it had *not* been legal. He learns about it and five minutes later it's gone, and he takes his contrite ass to the Congress to say, "yes, we did lie, sorry 'bout that". Why would he be acting like that, if the program was all sweet-smelling and no worse than the programs we already know about?

My guess is, like that of several other posters, that, if it wasn't torture and it wasn't illegal wiretapping, then it was "selective elimination", probably without much provocation or evidence of evildoing.

And Congress will reassert its authority any minute, right?

For all the chilling details about the crooks who have been running this country - google Wayne Madsen expose 'Christian Mafia'

R. Porrofatto, I like the way you put the issue better.

But, if the program was never operational

and in eight years it never did anything but plan,

you'd get the impression it probably never would be, so,

what's to conceal?

The only thing more scary than this is that Blundering Biden is now in the job.

if it wasn't torture and it wasn't illegal wiretapping, then it was "selective elimination"

During his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush bragged about extrajudicial killings: "....And many others [i.e. terrorists] have met a different fate. Let's put it this way: They are no longer a problem for the United States."

It can't be Cheney's hit squad because that was actually operational.

My guess is it has to do with embezzlement and the missing billions in Iraq,

and 'contingency' planning.

For when we have to 'just take over'.

The only thing more scary than this is that Blundering Biden is now in the job.

Here's something to "scare the hell out of all

http://worldreports.org/news/186_settlements_and_refunding_or_dollar_collapses

***this goes into the Madoff Scheme, it talks about Windows Vista if you set up your program a certain way, you are unknowingly authorizing your computer to be monitored/shared with NASA - with Microsoft, Norton, McAfee...all involved.

***this gave me "a belly-full" Wow, scarey!!!

We've known for years that all roads led to Cheney, and now the details are being filled in. And to those on the right who say that liberals are "afraid" of Sarah Palin, well hell yes we are. Not of her personal abilities, but of those who would control her. They had a more-or-less credible "useful idiot" in the form of GW Bush, and look what has happened. If in the next couple of years we see a cabal formed to put Sarah in office, look closely at the promoters and the VP mentions. Her credibility is almost immaterial if they can put their mastermind in place to continue the Bush/Cheney lawlessness.

BTW, what is meant by "refunding settlements or dollar collapses" is that with the derivative markets global, the G7 threatened to let the dollar collapse if the U.S. didn't pay back certain entities.

With that, this is too scarey for me to talk about.

Leon Panetta was confirmed February 12. It was not till four and a half months later that subordinates informed him of the existence of the program. He must have thought the program was of some importance, because he immediately ordered its termination.

How did it happen that a duly appointed director didn't learn of the very existence of an important program for over four months? Who were the subordinates who told the director of the program? From whom did they learn of its existence? When did they learn it?

What is this program? If it has been terminated, why can't a free people be told about it? Doesn't its immediate termination suggest that it was an ill-advised program? Is it an unimportant one?

Speaker Pelosi was well thought of by the American people until she told them that she'd been lied to by the CIA. Then the esteem in which she was held plummeted. In what sort of democracy does that happen?

Sorry, annjell, but the site you listed looks more like a scary scam than a real organization. I only skimmed through, but I didn't see any documentation for their charges, or links substantiating their claims.

Charging US$200 for a copy of a report? Give me a break. Kinkos only charges five cents a page. You're talking a 4,000 page report, maybe a bit less if they're factoring shipping in.

I don't immediately discount all conspiracy theories until I at lease look at the claims and the evidence, but this one doesn't sound kosher.

You beat me to it. I was gonna say that I read this and kept seeing the intelligence chief in the Bourne movie telling a Congressional hearing that Treadstone was some sort of program they started, didn't do much with it, didn't get any good results and stopped, and then he throws the folder of documents on a stack of other documents and starts talking about some OTHER operation.

My guess from what I have been hearing of late, is that this will - if it ever gets further exposed - turn out to be a CIA black operation which sent teams into foreign country and executed people put on a carefully compiled list. If so, I'd be highly surprised if Mr. cheney's name isn't one of those who was making the final decisions on who was to be offed....

The more you stand back and look at events after 9/11, the more cheney looks like the kid on the playground who got beat up and then got together with a bunch of other nasty folks and plotted his revenge and at no time were there any discussions as to whether what they were doing was right, legal, or just......more than anything it was pure and simple revenge....

Unfortunately, it wasn't too carefully managed and "mistakes" were undoubtedly made, but hey....that's the wages of war.

Damn. Your Postscript stole my brilliant comment.

Michael W, from the beginning is does look like a scam - yet, I will not dismiss this info.

Personally, I think the info here makes "Enemy of the State," and "The Bourne Identity," look like child's play.

When you think about it, there are black boxes in your car, your cell-phone can be tracked if it's on, your credit cards tracked.....

Remember that we're all supposed to be looking forward.

Heh, thank you for the chuckles, brother.

Cheney has the balls needed to defend this country. Obama, on the other hand, donates 900 million USD to Hamas, a terrorist organization.

The one who should be investigated is Barack Obama.

The run of feinting couches is big this time. All this liberal swooning over a program whose details are secret.

BTW, Michael,

I'd have to say I'm going with what the website says. Here's one of the reasons why, almost every state in the union is broke!!!
Another, other countries have been talking about getting rid of the Dollar for over a year now!!!

Try emailing a copy of the website page to a friend. There's no charge unless you want to buy it in hardcopy that is coming out of the U.K.

For sure, I will believe them before believing any republican. In fact, foreigners happen to know more about our politics and laws better than we do.

Somebody who isn't me can go back and check how many times Cheney accused Pelosi of weakening national security by complaining about the CIA.

Davis X. Machina: "During his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush bragged about extrajudicial killings..."

That could just as easily have referred to battlefield killings in Afghanistan. Unless you want to argue that those were unlawful, too.

Senator Stoneless: I don't understand we in the congress have oversight and controll the purse strings. We're did you get funding for secret assasination squads?

Colonel Gofucyersef: Remember those pallets of US currency that were "misplaced" in the early dase of Iraqi reconstruction?

Senator Stoneless: Yes?

Colonel Gofucyersef: There you go.

You read it here first

Dick wanted his own stable of suicide bombers.
Plenty of poor people on the planet who will blow themselves up to enrich the families they leave behind.

Dick saw them as a resource to be exploited.

Annjell, okay, I'll give it a little more credence. I did a whois lookup for the website owner, and the info there matches the info given on the website. Frankly, I was a little skeptical because it was a .org instead of a .co.uk link. They match. And you are correct, the foreign press is often much more aware of American politics than the local press. Or the populace. (sigh).

I'll do some more searching for confirmation before I accept what he says at face value, though.

Thanks for the link.

What could be worse than what we already know Dick's evil cabal did -- torturing people to death? I mean, that's a serious question. Eating them?
Did Dick *actually* crush suspects' children's testicles in front of them? Rape their infants? Help me out, I'm a hippie, I just don't have the imagination for deeper evil by this point.

I'm reminded of how the republicans went after Pelosi when she said she wasn't fully briefed on what the CIA and Bush Administration were doing where torture was concerned, and now their motives are clear. They wanted to discredit her in order to cover up Cheney's role in the torture program and other secret programs. Boehner stated clearly that since the republicans couldn't go after Obama at the time, they'd target Pelosi, and they have. I watched Boehner call Pelosi a liar again on yesterday AFTER Panetta had admitted that the CIA had withheld information from Pelosi and other congressional leaders. I also read on Huffpo today where Hayden is now admitting that the CIA "occasionally" briefed members of congress. It is now clear to me that Pelosi was right, but if I were her adviser, I'd advise her not to wait on an apology from the republicans who targeted and smeared her. Some right-wingers on blogs have also stated that Pelosi did not inform the public without acknowledging that if she had spoken out, she would have opened herself up to a federal investigation and prosecution. They are also complicit in helping maintain this cover up and blowing smoke to prevent an investigation into these crimes. Holder appears to be "leaning" toward appointing a special prosecutor to investigate crimes of the Bush Administration. If this comes to fruition, it would be a step in the right direction, and let the chips fall where they may.
It is time for us to know exactly what crimes members of the Bush Administration committed in OUR names and to prosecute accordingly.

Cheney has the balls to get big strapping army men to chain up little Arab boys and fuck them up the ass when they're all helpless.

Michael W, thanks. I was not arguing with you at all. Actually, I'm not one to believe everything I hear, certainly neither are you.

However, look at some of the things that happened. We were told the "fundamentals of the economy is strong." Then all of a sudden, we needed to bail out the banks or the entire economy would collapse.

We were told they created new jobs, yet, jobs were being shipped overseas.

***I remember when Clinton was in office, he said we would become a 'service industry' - what service is he talking about, fastfood, hospitality?

Look at the war, the private security companies were hiring mercenaries from Peru and paying them less than minimum wage!!!

Then look at how investors lost money in the stock market, I was one of them. Why are they still trying to pay these executives million dollar payouts?

Why did they try to sell our nation's ports?

I tend to look at the entire picture, and like you, grasp pieces from each, instead of relying on just one source.

BTW, as you start going towards to bottom (yes, it is a lot a reading) it lists Madoff's account numbers. How accurate it is, I don't know, but I do know that major corporations have been setting up shop in tax-free haven countries with a vengeance in the past few years.

Sorry, I keep forgetting -

Michael W,

look up the contractor "Triple Canopy," they are the private contractor that hired Peruvians and citizens of other countries in Latin American paying them less than minimum wage for security work.

Isn't kind of funny that Cheney was doing all the nasty stuff that we thought he was doing?

"The only thing more scary than this is that Blundering Biden is now in the job."

Heh heh. Yeah! See, Republicans, Democrats, all the same shit. One VP orders the CIA to perform illegal activities and not inform Congress, manufactures evidence to start a trillion dollar war against a 3rd world country and extols the virtues of torture. The other one puts his foot in his mouth every other week.

See, same shit, different party. Man, these snarky conservative one-liners are killer!

Oh, annjell, go pollute some other board.

www.marketskeptics.com/2009/03/aig-pays-58-billion-to-foreign-firms.html

AIG pays 58 billion to foreign firms since receiving taxpayer bailout

This shows every foreign firm/bank that received money and how much they received.

This website calls Paulson's action a conflict-of-interest.

Again, to tie some of these things together, see http://worldreports.org/news/186_settlements_and_refunding_or_dollar_collapses

***BTW, if you read the entire 'lengthy' page, you will be spooked.

does a vice president have authority to do anything (other than break ties in the Senate) that the POTUS does not explicitly give him. In other words, what business does the CIA have doing illegal activity on the orders of the VP unless the POTUS authorized either the authority or the orders.

Now we find out that this was that program that Bush never authorized to hunt down individual members of al Qaeda.

Wasn't there an endless drone of Democrats asking why we hadn't gotten UBL yet ?

I guess they were for killing or capturing members of al Qaeda before it became politically expedient to be against it.

Sorry. We are what we repeatedly do. Help me! I find sites on the topic: Replica watch maker. I found only this - wholesale replica watches. Part of the bank of ireland group offers personal, business and corporate banking services including current accounts, personal loans, savings accounts. Home loans india personal loans india credit cards india fixed deposits india. With respect :cool:, Voleta from Uzbekistan.

Hi. Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
I am from Bhutan and also now teach English, please tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "For side, the other buddhist recovery gives to have old old muscles of testosterone outer as anhedonia, landed prevent, and such obesity, wellbutrin."

Best regards :P, Recreational use of wellbutrin.