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Saturday, August 2, 2008 |
ThinkProgress: "Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh - a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker - revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President's office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.
In Hersh's most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The 'meeting took place in the Vice-President's office. The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,' according to one of Hersh's sources.
During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney's office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:
HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don't we build - we in our shipyard - build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.
Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can't have Americans killing Americans. That's the kind of - that's the level of stuff we're talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected."
There is a video at the above link.
That it could cost some American lives, never has been an obstacle for America to start a war.
11:15:03 AM 
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Do you know any democratic country that passes laws which are then secretly changed and even annulled by its president? There are no such countries. Unless, of course, you take into account the undemocratic ones. Then, yes, there is one country, it's the United States. It's like Louis XIV peeing in the face of Congress and the American citizen.
An Executive Order Integrity Act of 2008 is in the making to restore at least some of the nation's integrity. But will it be passed, and if so then not secretly changed or annulled?
FAS: "The President would no longer be able to secretly modify or revoke a published executive order if a new bill introduced in the Senate yesterday becomes law.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, responds to a Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion that was revealed last year by Senator Whitehouse on the Senate floor. According to that unreleased opinion, 'There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new Executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous Executive order. Rather than violate an Executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.'
What this means is that any published executive order may or may not actually be in effect. It may or may not correspond to the legal framework that governs the executive branch. The public has no way of knowing.
'No one disputes that a President can withdraw or revise an Executive Order at any time,' said Senator Feingold yesterday. 'That is every President's prerogative. But abrogating a published Executive order without any public notice works a secret change in the law.'
'Worse,' he said, 'because the published Order stays on the books, it actively misleads Congress and the public as to what the law is.'"
10:36:50 AM
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© Copyright 2008 Hetty Litjens.
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