A very bad President

From MinnPost.com: “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.
“It’s complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It’s a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you’ve heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized.
“In many cases, they were the best and brightest. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people.
“Five years ago, I had one say: ‘What do you call it when you interrogate somebody and you leave them bleeding and they don’t get any medical committee and two days later he dies. Is that murder? What happens if I get before a committee?’
“But they’re not gonna get before a committee.”

This is not dialogue from the upcoming sequel to Bourne Ultimatum, but new insight from America’s premier investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. In March he spoke at a University of Minnesota seminar on America’s Constitutional Crisis. In this brief but telling comment, he referred to the Joint Special Operations Command, describing them as an “executive assassination ring” operating without any oversight other than Dick Cheney’s when he was VP.

Having broken several major stories on the Bush Administration’s backroom maneuverings and foreign policy, Hersh is now working on a book in which he plans to expose the degree to which the American Dream and American practice utterly diverged under the 43rd President.