GHW Bush Attorney says CIA Death Squads Commit “Garden Variety Murder,” not “Assassination,” per se

Watch the press - we are witnesses to the marketing of death squads ...

Open fascist rule is only a matter of marketing: Now that every torture investigation and lawsuit has been stymied by Obama, rich Republican legislators and a Democratic congress that "didn't know" (and the media have sold it to a somnambulent public with fictional entertainments that make brave men of torturing CIA jackals), we "patriots" need to accept death squads, too - the next step in our incremental Nazification. Death squads are a hard sell, but package the political murder in flags ("the secret CIA plan - one never executed - targeted only evil al Qaeda leaders ... ") - degree by degree - and we of the Dumb Herd will shrug our assent. Once death squad activity is approved (by average Americans - people who think fart movies and belly-button pop music and Sarah Palin are interesting, but ridicule anyone discussing the Kennedy or King or Lennon assassinations seriously), we can all move on to the next phase - CIA murders of political dissidents, primarily leftists (in conservative parlance, "Nazis"). Package it in flags ...

- AC

From "CIA Hit Teams: Who's In Charge Here?"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?blogid=14&entry_id=43606

... "Killing private persons overseas is a garden variety murder ... it has nothing to do with international law, and it's not an assassination," said David Rivkin Jr., an attorney who served in the George H.W. Bush White House.

Rivkin pointed to the 1985 sinking of a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand by French intelligence agents. A photographer died in the incident. But when New Zealand prosecutors caught some of the agents involved, Rivkin noted, they charged them with murder -- not with a war crime.

In the same way, some legal experts say, any U.S. operation against a terrorist overseas might likewise violate local murder laws -- but would not run afoul of prohibitions against assassination.

"It's all about preventing the U.S. government from engaging in regime change in other countries. Targeted killing is not regime change," said Amos Guiora, professor of law at the University of Utah, who wrote about the issue in Foreign Policy. "Assassination is political leaders. Bin Laden ain't a political leader. He's a terrorist." ...