John Wayne diplomacy: Rough, tough, and don't take no sh*t from anybody-and violate treaties whenever you feel like it…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 9:25 AM Permalink

…it has been plain as day that gw bush has absolutely no respect for American law; he just decides which which laws he will break and then breaks them.

Now comes word of "secret executive orders" authorizing the U.S. to willingly commit acts of war against other countries without a shred of proof that that country poses a threat to America.

Excerpts from the NYT:

The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.

These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush, the officials said. The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States.

In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected militants’ compound [emphasis added. Bill] in the Bajaur region of Pakistan, according to a former top official of the Central Intelligence Agency. Officials watched the entire mission — captured by the video camera of a remotely piloted Predator aircraft — in real time in the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center at the agency’s headquarters in Virginia 7,000 miles away.[…]

But as many as a dozen additional operations have been canceled in the past four years, often to the dismay of military commanders, senior military officials said. They said senior administration officials had decided in these cases that the missions were too risky, were too diplomatically explosive or relied on insufficient evidence.

More than a half-dozen officials, including current and former military and intelligence officials as well as senior Bush administration policy makers, described details of the 2004 military order on the condition of anonymity because of its politically delicate nature. Spokesmen for the White House, the Defense Department and the military declined to comment.

Is anyone surprised that the very worst president in our history would willingly violate any law or treaty by which America is bound to certain legalities, up to and including committing acts of war by violating the borders of sovereign nations which pose no threat to America?

Is the standard for attacking sovereign nations now, "Well, we have no proof that you pose a threat, but you may have person/s on your soil that might harm us so, again, with no proof at all, we're going the send heavily armed military expeditions over your borders, maybe bomb a few places hoping to nail a terrorist, and if you don't like it, tough, even if we murder a lot of innocent women and children to do it,"?

Think that's not the standard? Read:

[…]For example, shortly after Ethiopian troops crossed into Somalia in late 2006 to dislodge an Islamist regime in Mogadishu, the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command quietly sent operatives and AC-130 gunships to an airstrip near the Ethiopian town of Dire Dawa. From there, members of a classified unit called Task Force 88 crossed repeatedly into Somalia to hunt senior members of a Qaeda cell believed to be responsible for the 1998 American Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

At the time, American officials said Special Operations troops were operating under a classified directive authorizing the military to kill or capture Qaeda operatives if failure to act quickly would mean the United States had lost a “fleeting opportunity” to neutralize the enemy.

Occasionally, the officials said, Special Operations troops would land in Somalia to assess the strikes’ results. On Jan. 7, 2007, an AC-130 struck an isolated fishing village near the Kenyan border, and within hours, American commandos and Ethiopian troops were examining the rubble to determine whether any Qaeda operatives had been killed.

So based on questionable information America cut loose with an AC-130 gunship (Called "Puff the Magic Dragon in Vietnam for it's ability to put a 20mm cannon round into every square foot of an area the size of a football field within seconds) and only afterwards sent in commando teams to see IF there were any dead terrorists amongst the innocent men, women, and children they had murdered? Now the AC-130s use electronically fired mini guns spitting out several thosands of rounds a second as well as a 105mm cannon that can be fired with pinpoint accuracy.

How can anyone not be surprised that when you're attacking countries at will America can no longer represent a force for good or an honest broker for peace in those or any other countries?

But, as usual, that's just my opinion and I could be wrong.

Labels: Assassination, betrayal, bush hypocrisy, bush war doctrine, conspiracy, corruption, executive orders