The US, UN & Iraq III

2.11 Prohibition on Assassination. No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.

"What would it take to hit 50 caves in 48 hours?" [Cheney said]. In case anyone missed his message, he wanted to kill more people. "What could we do with more force?".

Foreign policy is always difficult in a democracy. Democracy requires openness. Yet foreign policy requires a level of secrecy that frees it from oversight and exposes it to abuse. As a result, Republicans and Democrats have long held that the intelligence agencies--the most clandestine of foreign policy institutions--should be insulated from political interference in much the same way as the higher reaches of the judiciary. As the Tower Commission, established to investigate the Iran-Contra scandal, warned in November 1987, "The democratic processes ... are subverted when intelligence is manipulated to affect decisions by elected officials and the public."

When any human endeavor has the freedom to do whatever it wishes, it usually goes haywire. c.i.

This kind of security policy requires the public to base its support or opposition on expert intelligence to which it has no direct access. It is up to the president and his administration--with a deep interest in a given policy outcome--nonetheless to portray the intelligence community's findings honestly. If an administration represents the intelligence unfairly, it effectively forecloses an informed choice about the most important question a nation faces: whether or not to go to war. That is exactly what the Bush administration did...

Re: the cancellation of the election in Najaf: did Bush upon hearing the news say "Can we do that here?"

"Stop right there," said Specialist Arthur Myers of New Jersey. "If you take a picture, I will break your camera."

USAID told several NGOs that have been awarded humanitarian contracts that they cannot speak to the media -- all requests from reporters must go through Washington.

Once again, I defy ANYONE to outline (by citing facts, not opinion) how Bush stole the election.