so wait... now we're OUTSOURCING assassination attempts?

The CIA has a long and glorious history of flouting international law by engaging in state-sponsored assassinations. (Apparently, those crazy folks at the United Nations think that people, EVEN people the U.S. government doesn't particularly like, deserve a fair trial before being summarily executed.) So, when Leon Panetta finally told Congress that the CIA had been developing plans to assassinate senior Al Qaeda operatives since 2001, it really shouldn't have come as much of a surprise. However, news broke yesterday that the CIA had actually hired Blackwater USA (yes, that Blackwater USA) to assist with these attempts to locate and kill high-level terrorists. That's right, the CIA is now outsourcing assassinations.

Furthermore, this was all part of a "top secret" operation--so secret, in fact, that Cheney ordered that it had to be kept hidden from lawmakers (you know, like the ones on the Congressional Intelligence Committee). Yet, despite falling into the Bush administration's grossly expanded category of things that must be concealed from the legislature, the CIA, in its infinite wisdom, decided that large parts of this ultra-secret plan could not only be revealed to but also carried out by a private corporation with an (at best) contentious human rights record.

the al qaeda candidate

So, I was fairly shocked to hear that Al Qaeda was endorsing John McCain for president. Naturally, this is excellent news for Obama (Barack gets Powell endorsement; McCain gets that of the most hated group in the country, not to mention the fact that it undermines his "tough stance" on the terror issue). I wasn't surprised because i don't think Al Qaeda would clearly benefit from his presidential policy with an influx of new recruits due to the continued war hawk policies of the Bush presidency (they almost certainly would), but rather because i thought they were a heck of a lot cleverer than that. After all, in 2004, the Osama Bin Laden endorsement video may have lost Kerry the election (it clearly didn't help). At the time, I assumed this was a rather brilliant move on the part of Bin Laden to ensure that Bush would get reelected; the man's no idiot, he knows his support of a the automatically weak-on-terror Democrat would be potentially crushing to the campaign, resulting in the reelection of W. and the continuation of war hawk policies that drive alienated and disenfranchised Arab and North African youth further into the arms of Islamist militant groups. so, what does it mean that Al Qaeda endorses John McCain? Are they secretly pushing for an Obama victory (which, according to at least some in this country, would lead to some sort socialist Islamist state) or are they genuinely hoping for a McCain presidency? I would probably say the latter (and only partially because I'm a leftist pinko from an anti-American part of the country). While the Osama Bin Laden tape was widely released, this endorsement was listed only on a password protected website. Clearly, some dissemination must have been intended (otherwise why post it at all?), but had they wanted to have the same effect on the American population at large, they obviously could have staged something more dramatic (and may still, for all I know, but let's certainly hope that they won't).