[Marxism] McChrystal was Cheney’s chief assassin

[Nasir Khan <naskha3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Press TV, 15 May 2009

Seymour Hersh says that Dick Cheney headed a secret assassination wing
and the head of the wing has just been named as the new commander in
Afghanistan.

In an interview with GulfNews on May 12, 2009 Pulitzer prize-winning
American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, said that there is a
special unit called the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that
does high-value targeting of men that are known to be involved in
anti-American activities, or are believed to be planning such
activities.

According to Hersh, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was
headed by former US vice president Dick Cheney and the former head of
JSOC, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal who has just been named
the new commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan.

McChrystal, a West Pointer who became a Green Beret not long after
graduation, following a stint as a platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne
Division, is currently director of Staff at the Pentagon, the
executive to Joint staff to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Most of what General McChrystal has done over a 33-year career remains
classified, including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of
the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite unit so clandestine
that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence.

On July 22, 2006, Human Rights Watch issued a report titled “No blood,
no foul” about American torture practices at three facilities in Iraq.
One of them was Camp Nama, which was operated by the Joint Special
Operations Command (JSOC), under the direction of then Major General
Stanley McChrystal.

McChrystal was officially based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, but
he was a frequent visitor to Camp Nama and other Special Forces bases
in Iraq and Afghanistan where forces under his command were based.

An interrogator at Camp Nama known as Jeff described locking prisoners
in shipping containers for 24 hours at a time in extreme heat;
exposing them to extreme cold with periodic soaking in cold water;
bombardment with bright lights and loud music; sleep deprivation; and
severe beatings.

When he and other interrogators went to the colonel in charge and
expressed concern that this kind of treatment was not legal, and that
they might be investigated by the military’s Criminal Investigation
Division or the International Committee of the Red Cross, the colonel
told them he had “this directly from General McChrystal and the
Pentagon that there’s no way that the Red Cross could get in.”

In the July 2, 2006 report, When Human Rights Watch asked whether the
interrogator knew whether the colonel was receiving orders or
pressures to use the abusive tactics, Jeff said that his understanding
was that there was some form of pressure to use aggressive techniques
coming from higher up the chain of command; however neither he nor
other interrogators were briefed on the particular source.

“We really didn’t know too much about it. We knew that we were only
like a few steps away in the chain of command from the Pentagon, but
it was a little unclear, especially to the interrogators who weren’t
really part of that task force.”

The interrogator said that he did see Gen. Stanley McChrystal,
commander of US Joint Special Operations forces in Iraq, visiting the
Nama facility on several occasions. “I saw him a couple of times. I
know what he looks like.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is the
international body charged under international law with monitoring
compliance with the Geneva Conventions, and it, therefore, has the
right to inspect all facilities where people are detained in a country
that is at war or under military occupation.

To hide prisoners or facilities from the ICRC or to deny access to
them is a serious war crime. But many US prisons in Iraq have held
“ghost” prisoners whose imprisonment has not been reported to the
ICRC, and these “ghosts” have usually been precisely the ones
subjected to the worst torture. Camp Nama, run by McChrystal’s JSOC,
was an entire “ghost” facility.

The decision by Obama’s administration to appoint General McChrystal
as the new commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan and retaining
the military commission for the US war-on-terror detainees held in the
Guantanamo Bay prison are the latest examples of the new US
administration walking in Bush’s foot steps with regards to torture
and denial of habeas corpus.

Reprinted: 
http://nasir-khan.blogspot.com/2009/05/mcchrystal-was-cheneys-chief-assassin.html

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