[Peace-discuss] assassinations, invasions, suspension of civil rights

[Dlind49 at aol.com]

if you do not like current limitations just vote to authorize or legalize 
assassinations, invasions, suspension of civil rights.

they are crazy as bed bugs. 





Aide: Clinton Approved Killing Bin Laden
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
 
Filed at 12:38 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Bill Clinton gave the CIA ``every inch of authorization 
that it asked for'' to carry out plans to kill Osama bin Laden, the former 
president's national security adviser testified Wednesday, bluntly disputing claims 
that the spy agency lacked the authority it needed.

``If there was any confusion down the ranks, it was never communicated to me 
nor to the president and if any additional authority had been requested I am 
convinced it would have been given immediately,'' Sandy Berger said in 
nationally televised testimony before a bipartisan panel probing the Sept. 11 
terrorist attacks, the worst in the nation's history.

Berger testified a few hours after the panel released a report that said CIA 
officials, Director George Tenet among them, did not believe they had the 
authority to assassinate the leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network. A 
subsequent decision to rely on local Afghan forces sharply reduced the chances of his 
bin Laden's capture, the commission said.

Tenet, who preceded Berger in the witness chair, was not pressed on the issue.

The CIA director, whose tenure has spanned both the Clinton and Bush 
administrations, praised aides to both presidents for their attentiveness to terrorism.

At the same time, he said unambiguously the nation should be prepared for 
another attack.

``It's coming. They are still going to try and do it, and we need to sort of 
-- men and women here who have lost their families have to know that we've got 
to do a hell of a lot better,'' he said, in remarks that elicited applause 
from members of the victims' families seated in the audience.

The hearings were remarkable by any account.

Secretaries of state and defense from the two administrations testified on 
Tuesday, followed on a second day of hearings by senior officials who served 
alongside them in a budding era of terrorism that finally struck home two and a 
half years ago.

Less than eight months before a presidential election, political jockeying 
was evident during the day.

Two Democrats on the panel, former Sen. Bob Kerrey, and Richard Ben Veniste, 
publicly lamented the refusal of the Bush administration to allow national 
security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify in public.

For their part, some Republicans sought to pre-empt testimony expected later 
in the day from Richard Clarke, a former top counter-terrorism adviser and 
author of a new book sharply critical of President Bush.