• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

C.I.A. Had Plan to Assassinate Qaeda Leaders

WillRockwell said:
1 - Why could Congress not be told of this?
2 - we DID kill Qaeda leaders. What program was that under?
3 - How do we know this program was only for AlQaeda?



They had eight years of secrecy to get this program operational. Is this just another example of Bush/Cheney incompetence?
Click to expand...
Read my first post.
 
He's saying it wasn't a covert op because it never moved out of the planning stage into the actual operational stage.

And wow Devil, do you write novels, cause that was a **** ton of conjecture and fiction trumped up to try and look like reality in that little spew you just did.
 
Gibberish said:
Why exactly didn't Cheney and Bush execute this plan they had for 7 years? Was Saddam more of an imminent threat than Al-Qaeda?
Click to expand...
That was explained in the article. Hunter-Killer teams make for great Hollywood but are damn difficult to stage logistically.
 
WillRockwell said:
How was it not "covert ops"? Neither Congress nor the incoming DCI were informed of its existence? Do you really believed it was "discussed" for eight years yet never used?
Click to expand...

I'd be willing to bet that literally thousands of potential ops are discussed but never used.
 
Devil505 said:
I'll be willing to bet that it was implemented.
Click to expand...
You don't play poker much, obviously.

Devil505 said:
Does anyone believe the secret CIA program that former VP Cheney illegally hid from Congress (a felony) was really for the capture or killing of Al Quieda terrorists?
Click to expand...
The media does. Considering their basic dislike of Cheney, why would they whitewash it?

Also, care to cite what law requires the CIA to brief Congress on plans that are not at the implementation phase?

Devil505 said:
I think all Americans would applaud & expect such a program after 9/11 & would certainly have not required such illegal secrecy from our own Congress, nor would have "Turned the stomachs" of Leon Panetta (CIA Director) & Congressional watchdogs when they were recently briefed on it.
Click to expand...
Ever see what a head shot looks like in real life? If Panetta had to see any training films for such a hunting expedition, I can easily believe the realities of it would turn his stomach. Sniper fire isn't the quick clean bloodless killing you see in Hollywood. A 7.62x51mm round from an M40 is going to make a lot of hamburger meat when it finds its intended target.

Devil505 said:
I'd guess the program involved much worse things (like killing detainees, torturing them to death, etc) which would have truly turned us into Nazi's.
Click to expand...
Oh please. If there was a program for killing detainees, there wouldn't be the relocation problems with detainees that Bush had and Dear Leader has (no detainees, no problem, simple math).

Devil505 said:
I know Obama wants to look ahead & forget the past (for political reasons) but we didn't just forgive Nazi or Japanese war criminals after WWII & we need to clean our own house if we ever hope to regain our moral standing in the world.
Click to expand...
It was politics when we staged the kangaroo court known as the Nuremberg trials and its politics now. A large number of senior American military leadership opposed the war crimes trials after WWII, chiefly because there was little the Germans did in WWII that the Allies did not also do (firebombing Dresden, use of napalm over Tokyo, unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific, et cetera).

Nuremberg was bad law then, and Holder's threats of prosecutors is bad law now. It's this pathological pursuit of bad policy and bad law that makes folks on the left lunatics.

The proper course is to let these matters fade into history--but that would require the lunatic left abandoning their unreasoning hatred of President Bush, so of course the lunatic left has rejected it.
 
Last edited:
Scuza me, but does it offend some people that AQ bosses were targeted for death?
 
WillRockwell said:
You are six weeks behind on your Republican Talking Points Daily Memo. Pelosi was right, she was lied to. In fact, CIA director Panetta was also lied to.
Click to expand...

No she wasn't what part of this story do you folks don't understand that this program never got past the discussion stage and that Mr. Bush did tell Congress as a matter of fact he told the whole World.
 
Let's look at this question another way. In regards to the security of this country, should the CIA be responsible to Congress or the President only? What would be the implications if the CIA were only responsible to the President?
 
tlmorg02 said:
Let's look at this question another way. In regards to the security of this country, should the CIA be responsible to Congress or the President only? What would be the implications if the CIA were only responsible to the President?
Click to expand...

Things would get done simple to the point
 
Scorpion89 said:
Things would get done simple to the point
Click to expand...

It would be more expedient, but what of checks and balances? Without Congressional oversight for such a weapon as the CIA, the executive branch would be grossly powerful. The president would be able to abuse such an asset with no one to know. So, I think that though the CIA needs more support, and none should be prosocuted for their actions under Bush/Cheney, there still needs to remain some oversight by Congress. After all, Congress holds powers over our greatest asset, the military and the intelligence agencies should be no different.
 
The irony here is seeing folks be so understanding of the Bush administration for not being able to pull this off. Of course when Clinton tried the exact same thing and the Pentagon told him they just couldn't do it, when he personally requested "black ops" teams to go in covertly and snatch or kill enemies and was told "we just don't have the kind of resources to do that"....well Clinton was incompetent, Clinton did nothing, in fact I was remember being called a liar...as was Richard Clarke...because "the Pentagon and CIA just don't say no to the President." :roll:

So the big secret is we had a "plan to covertly kill Al Qaeda?" I doubt this is the only thing the CIA hid from Congress, but if I'm wrong and this is it...then who cares? I'm glad they had a plan. I'm disappointed they couldn't make it work. But I understand the challenges.
 
Scorpion89 said:
Things would get done simple to the point
Click to expand...

Wrong. Nothing would be simple or to the point. The CIA has a very long history of doing very bad things in the name of the U.S. It would end up making the 60's through the 80's look like an episode of "Get Smart." There must be oversight.
 
Last edited:
Kandahar said:
I don't think it's necessarily incompetence...I can understand the point about it being a lot more difficult to assassinate specific targets than it seems in the movies. There's probably a lot of truth to that.

I do think that #1 is a very good question. I don't see why something like this would need to be kept secret from Congress.
Click to expand...

I would think that Congress would have actually been behind this program. It's too bad it never got operational.

My question now is did we actually ever invest real money in building up that capability for future use? I mean before it was axed.
 
Lerxst said:
Wrong. Nothing would be simple or to the point. The CIA has a very long history of doing very bad things in the name of the U.S. It would end up making the 60's through the 80's look like an episode of "Get Smart." There must be oversight.
Click to expand...

No I disagree they should only report to the President this would save allot of time and effort on their part.

As for going back to the 60s thru 80s in referance to the CIA god I would hope so things would be alot better for it.
 
Lerxst said:
The irony here is seeing folks be so understanding of the Bush administration for not being able to pull this off. Of course when Clinton tried the exact same thing and the Pentagon told him they just couldn't do it, when he personally requested "black ops" teams to go in covertly and snatch or kill enemies and was told "we just don't have the kind of resources to do that"....well Clinton was incompetent, Clinton did nothing, in fact I was remember being called a liar...as was Richard Clarke...because "the Pentagon and CIA just don't say no to the President." :roll:

So the big secret is we had a "plan to covertly kill Al Qaeda?" I doubt this is the only thing the CIA hid from Congress, but if I'm wrong and this is it...then who cares? I'm glad they had a plan. I'm disappointed they couldn't make it work. But I understand the challenges.
Click to expand...

Not exaclty true Mr. Clinton ask the US Army if they could put together a Black Ops team and he was told that under the (rules at the time) the US Army was forbidden to operated these types of Black Opps teams. Would leave the folks in these teams open to International Warcrime Charges and would go against the MCOJ.

As for the CIA they were never actually ask by Mr. Clinton and when they did ask Mr. Clinton permission to take out Bin Laden Mr Clinton told them not once but three times no because he was worried about so-called clatural damage or deaths. In retrospect Mr. Clinton admit that he was wrong on that part and should have allowed the CIA to take the Drone Hits.
 
WillRockwell said:
1 - Why could Congress not be told of this?
Click to expand...


What with the leaks coming out of Congress, to cover their political screw ups, it's not hard to wonder why they didn't tell them.
 
Lerxst said:
I would think that Congress would have actually been behind this program. It's too bad it never got operational.

My question now is did we actually ever invest real money in building up that capability for future use? I mean before it was axed.
Click to expand...

Good question maybe it's something that needs to be really look into. I for one would like to see some of the rule that hold back both the US Military and CIA be removed or at least modified for what the world is like now. Not what it was in the 60s and 70s.
 
Scorpion89 said:
Good question maybe it's something that needs to be really look into. I for one would like to see some of the rule that hold back both the US Military and CIA be removed or at least modified for what the world is like now. Not what it was in the 60s and 70s.
Click to expand...

You mean back when the CIA was a loose cannon, funneling money to Saddam Hussein and Osama binLaden? You liked all the duplicity which grew into a harvest of terrorism and hatred?
 
WillRockwell said:
You mean back when the CIA was a loose cannon, funneling money to Saddam Hussein and Osama binLaden? You liked all the duplicity which grew into a harvest of terrorism and hatred?
Click to expand...

First you need to get your fact straight WRW, the CIA never provide anything to either Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden.

It is a well know fact that while the CIA try to provide both money and training to Bin Laden group he forbid any contact with the United States.

As for Hussein care to provide actually proof that the CIA funneled money and stuff to him. You do understand that their has been three different reports on this subject and everyone of them shows that the CIA never was involved with Hussein as a matter of fact Hussein order then President Reagn to close CIA Headquater in Bagdad in 1987 this was the turnin gpoint in the relationship with Hussein and the United States Govn.
 
Scorpion89 said:
First you need to get your fact straight WRW, the CIA never provide anything to either Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden.

It is a well know fact that while the CIA try to provide both money and training to Bin Laden group he forbid any contact with the United States.

As for Hussein care to provide actually proof that the CIA funneled money and stuff to him. You do understand that their has been three different reports on this subject and everyone of them shows that the CIA never was involved with Hussein as a matter of fact Hussein order then President Reagn to close CIA Headquater in Bagdad in 1987 this was the turnin gpoint in the relationship with Hussein and the United States Govn.
Click to expand...

Care to show proof the Bin Laden did not recieve any CIA money in the Afghan campaign? Everything I have read on the subject, including "Ghost Wars," asserts that Bin Laden indeed recieved training and money from the CIA.
 
tlmorg02 said:
Care to show proof the Bin Laden did not recieve any CIA money in the Afghan campaign? Everything I have read on the subject, including "Ghost Wars," asserts that Bin Laden indeed recieved training and money from the CIA.
Click to expand...

Yep here you go from Wikki,

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_assistance_to_Osama_bin_Laden]Allegations of CIA assistance to Osama bin Laden - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

The U.S. government officials and a number of other parties maintain that the U.S. supported only the indigenous Afghan mujahideen. They deny that the CIA or other American officials had contact with the Afghan Arabs (foreign mujahideen) or Bin Laden, let alone armed, trained, coached or indoctrinated them. Scholars and reporters have called the idea "nonsense",[11] "sheer fantasy", [12] and "simply a folk myth."[13] They argue that

* with a quarter of a million local Afghans willing to fight there was no need to recruit foreigners unfamiliar with the local language, customs or lay of the land
* that with several hundred million dollars a year in funding from non-American, Muslim sources, Arab Afghans themselves would have no need for American funds
* that Americans could not train mujahideen because Pakistani officials would not allow more than a handful of them to operate in Pakistan and none in Afghanistan[14];
* that the Afghan Arabs were militant Islamists, reflexively hostile to Westerners, and prone to threaten or attack Westerners even though they knew the Westerners were helping the mujahideen.

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri says much the same thing in his book Knights Under the Prophet's Banner.[15] Bin Laden himself has said "the collapse of the Soviet Union ... goes to God and the mujahideen in Afghanistan ... the US had no mentionable role," but "collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant." [16]

According to CNN journalist Peter Bergen, known for conducting the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997,

The story about bin Laden and the CIA — that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden — is simply a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn't have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn't have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently. The real story here is the CIA did not understand who Osama was until 1996, when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.[13]

Bergen quotes Pakistani Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf, who ran the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Afghan operation between 1983 and 1987:

It was always galling to the Americans, and I can understand their point of view, that although they paid the piper they could not call the tune. The CIA supported the mujahideen by spending the taxpayers' money, billions of dollars of it over the years, on buying arms, ammunition, and equipment. It was their secret arms procurement branch that was kept busy. It was, however, a cardinal rule of Pakistan's policy that no Americans ever become involved with the distribution of funds or arms once they arrived in the country. No Americans ever trained or had direct contact with the mujahideen, and no American official ever went inside Afghanistan.[17]

Marc Sageman argues that no American money went to the foreign volunteers.

No U.S. official ever came in contact with the foreign volunteers. They simply traveled in different circles and never crossed U.S. radar screens. They had their own sources of money and their own contacts with the Pakistanis, official Saudis, and other Muslim supporters, and they made their own deals with the various Afghan resistance leaders."[18]

Vincent Cannistraro, who led the Reagan administration's Afghan Working Group from 1985 to 1987, puts it,

The CIA was very reluctant to be involved at all. They thought it would end up with them being blamed, like in Guatemala." So the Agency tried to avoid direct involvement in the war, ... the skittish CIA, Cannistraro estimates, had less than ten operatives acting as America's eyes and ears in the region. Milton Bearden, the Agency's chief field operative in the war effort, has insisted that "[T]he CIA had nothing to do with" bin Laden. Cannistraro says that when he coordinated Afghan policy from Washington, he never once heard bin Laden's name.[19]

Other reasons advanced for a lack of a CIA-Afghan Arab connection of "pivotal importance," (or even any connection at all), was that the Afghan Arabs themselves were not important in the war but were a "curious sideshow to the real fighting."[20]

One estimate of the number of combatants in the war is that 250,000 Afghans fought 125,000 Soviet troops, but only 2000 Arab Afghans fought "at any one time".[21]

Marc Sageman, a Foreign Service Officer who was based in Islamabad from 1987-1989, and worked closely with Afghanistan's Mujahideen, says:[22]

Contemporaneous accounts of the war do not even mention [the Afghan Arabs]. Many were not serious about the war. ... Very few were involved in actual fighting. For most of the war, they were scattered among the Afghan groups associated with the four Afghan fundamentalist parties.

According to Milton Bearden the CIA did not recruit Arabs because there were hundreds of thousands of Afghans all too willing to fight. The Arab Afghan were not only superfluous but "disruptive," angering local Afghan with their more-Muslim-than-thou attitude, according to Peter Jouvenal.[23] Veteran Afghan cameraman Peter Jouvenal quotes an Afghan mujahideen as saying "whenever we had a problem with one of them [foreign mujahideen], we just shot them. They thought they were kings."

Many who traveled in Afghanistan — Olivier Roy,[24] Peter Jouvenal.[25] — reported of the Arab Afghans' visceral hostility to Westerners in Afghanistan to aid Afghans or report on their plight. BBC reporter John Simpson tells the story of running into Osama bin Laden in 1989, and with neither knowing who the other was, bin Laden attempting to bribe Simpson's Afghan driver $500 — a large sum in a poor country — to kill the infidel Simpson. When the driver declined, Bin Laden retired to his "camp bed" and wept "in frustration." [26]
 
There is a problem with this commentary. First you are assuming that the officials are telling the truth. Second, if Pakistan controlled all of the weapons and money flowing into Afghanistan, then how can we know what went to whom?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom