Hersh is LYING I tell ya! NO secret "SS" unit! Oh...THAT secret SS unit.

[LynnTheDem]

Heh. The bushCartel lies sure are being exposed FAST lately! Imagine if we actually had a fair & balanced media!

Sy Hersh's expose:

Secret Unit Expands Rumsfeld's Domain

The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29414-2005Jan22?language=printer

bushCartel; LIE and DENY & TRY to smear Hersh

Pentagon denies spy unit

The US Defence Department has denied a report by the Washington Post claiming the Pentagon has created a new spying agency that is operating in Iraq and Afghanistan. The unit, called the Strategic Support Branch, is also operating in other places, the newspaper said. A memo to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, said the focus of the initiative was on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia", according to the Post.

http://www9.sbs.com.au/theworldnews/region.php?id=103664®ion=4

According to Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita, who characterized Seymour Hersh's article in the New Yorker last week as a work of fiction, the SSB does not exist.

There is no unit that is directly reportable to the Secretary of Defense for clandestine operations as is described in the Washington Post article of January 23, 2005 and the department is not attempting to bend statutes to fit desired activities, DiRita said in a prepared statement issued by the Department of Defense.

http://globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2005/01/mil-050123-dod01.htm

Pentagon admits existance of the formerly non-existant secret unit, Strategic Support branch

The meeting between Stephen Cambone, the Bush administration's undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and Sens. John Warner and Carl Levin follows revelations that the Defense Intelligence Agency has run a previously unknown covert operations unit since 2002 with the authority to operate clandestinely anywhere in the world.

Warner, a Virginia Republican and the committee's chairman, said in a statement issued after the meeting that he was convinced the unit's operations were "vital to our national security interests" and had been coordinated "with the appropriate agencies of the federal government."

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/24/pentagon.intel/

And of course this latest example of the bush Administration being caught red-handed in a lie will simply reinforce the rightwingnut freepo-fascists' belief that their bush-god and Cartel never ever tell lies.

[msgadget]

1. Heh,

The unit was set up after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, "to have as much flexibility as possible," he said.

They'd have been better off pulling the usual 'reality diversion' instead of flat denying it! But, as I said earlier today, the more important issue is them skating around congressional oversight.

AND, if they had so friggin' much covert intelligence, why did the US wreck Iraq?

AND, am I the only person here thinkin': gee, all this stuff is coming out immediately following the election...and the media isn't crying, "Liars, liars!" - what's wrong with this picture?

[radfringe]

2. technically

it's not a Secret .. anymore.... now that we know...


Abra-Cadabra -- now it's a secret...now it's not...

[Bluebear]

3. Presto chango! Nothing to see here, folks!

[DoYouEverWonder]

7. What's wrong with that picture?

The cuffs sticking out of the jacket, don't match the shirt he is wearing. Weird.

[FlemingsGhost]

4. If the last four years are any indication, nothing will come of this.

Actually, to be more accurate:

Hersh will publish a formal apology and retire.

DLC-Democrats will decide that now that they have a "ten-point triangulation reframing-the-debate" plan to win the hearts and minds of Americans, questioning the President about national security spy stuff is simply unwise.

Bush will take a vacation.

[LynnTheDem]

5. You've never met Mr. Hersh.

NO WAY would he EVER apologize and especially not for writing the FACTS.

Do you know the detective character, Nero Wolfe? THAT is Mr. Hersh to a T. He doesn't budge an inch on anything unless he decides he wants to. And he's not often likely to decide he wants to.

[leftchick]

6. Late Mon. it is revealed the SS unit... FOUND SADDAM!!! link...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apwashington_sto...

WASHINGTON -- When U.S. troops pulled Saddam Hussein from a hole in the ground a year ago, the capture was described afterward as the work of a team of conventional and special operations troops.

Nothing was said about an assist from an intelligence unit that the Pentagon created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to expand the military's ability to collect human intelligence - information from spies as opposed to listening devices or satellites.

The unit's existence was revealed by The Washington Post on Sunday.

Pentagon officials said Monday that the unit, called the Strategic Support Branch, had a hidden hand in interrogations and other aspects of the clue-sifting work inside Iraq that narrowed the search for Saddam and led eventually to the cramped underground chamber where he was hiding

......So it does not exist on Sunday and Monday we find out the SS death brigade is the one that found saddam. Now tell me these people are not Liars!!

:grr: :grr: :grr:

[LynnTheDem]

8. AMAZING!!!!!!!

This non-existant unit that didn't exist on Sunday found Saddam Hussein last year!

WOW!!! :wow: That is just INCREDIBLE!!!

No wonder the bushbots are so in love with their Mighty Amazing bush-god!!!

heh. :D And if people weren't dying by the tens of thousands because of these dipshits, this would all be too f*cking hilarious for words.

[leftchick]

9. psst. Lynn... It has been in operation since October 2001!!!

Was this in the original WP story? If it was I missed it...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&nci...

Pentagon Tries to Explain Secret Group


~snip~

Another official, who discussed the matter on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to reveal details, said the unit's origins can be traced to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, when commanders of special operations forces found they lacked the interrogation experts they needed.


This official, who has direct knowledge about the unit, said it is not a standing force but rather a "task-organized" group that is put together to meet a battlefield commander's special needs.


William Arkin, a former Army intelligence officer and author of a new book, "Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operations in the 9-11 World," said in a telephone interview Monday that the DIA unit may be a permutation of a secret intelligence unit known informally as Gray Fox, which reportedly has played a role in the hunt for Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).

Arkin said he was concerned that the Pentagon's expanding use of such secret intelligence units is blurring the lines between combatants and noncombatants, since some in these units don't operate in military uniforms but appear on the battlefield.

[LynnTheDem]

10. Why you...you...LIBERAL! How DARE you impugn the word of the bushCartel!

They SAID that unit DOES NOT EXIST!!! Only a treasonous America-hating LIBERAL *spit* would contradict the word of...oh. Wait.

Heh.

Never mind.


:D :D :D :D :D Just playing rightwingnutsies with ya! ;)

[izzie]

11. Gods can do anything. See Caligula

Now which one is the horse in Congress?

[underpants]

17. See! It WORKS!! What manly MAN-GODS they are!!!!

Oh sorry I just had some RW radio come in on my fillings.

[lostnfound]

18. The link isn't working now..? nt

[lostnfound]

19. Here's a link at the Houston Chronicle to same basic article

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3006569

Oddly, I can find it with dogpile but not google..?

[cthrumatrix]

12. funny how this doesn't get discussed much on network news and anybody

trying to get to the bottom of it.

[wicket]

13. Did you see the official DoD press release slamming Hersh?

Mr. Hersh obviously has hit a nerve!

http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2005/nr20050117-1987.html

   Mr. Hersh’s article is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed.  

Mr. Hersh’s source(s) feed him with rumor, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not exist, and statements by officials that were never made.

-snip-

Arrangements Mr. Hersh alleges between Under Secretary Douglas Feith and Israel, government or non-government, do not exist.  Here, Mr. Hersh is building on links created by the soft bigotry of some conspiracy theorists.  This reflects poorly on Mr. Hersh and the New Yorker.

Mr. Hersh cannot even keep track of his own wanderings.  At one point in his article, he makes the outlandish assertion that the military operations he describes are so secret that the operations are being kept secret even from U.S. military Combatant Commanders.  Mr. Hersh later states, though, that the locus of this super-secret activity is at the U.S. Central Command headquarters, evidently without the knowledge of the commander if Mr. Hersh is to be believed.

By his own admission, Mr. Hersh evidently is working on an “alternative history” novel.  He is well along in that work, given the high quality of “alternative present” that he has developed in several recent articles.

Mr. Hersh’s preference for single, anonymous, unofficial sources for his most fantastic claims makes it difficult to parse his discussion of Defense Department operations. 

[porkrind]

14. Thanks, Lynn. Great Post!

It never fucking ends, does it. Everyday it's some new scandal or outrage. Now we have yet another secret military/security/spy unit, unaccountable to the public. Great. Does anyone even know how many of these security/military/police/spy organizations we know of? How much of this shit do we need? Soon, half the country will be working in the "police state" industry. I know some of this is necessary and valid, but how much is enough?

Help me out here: Local Police, SWAT, Highway Patrol, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, CIA, FBI, DOD, DHS, INS, ATF, NSA, Cheney's "Office of Special Plans", our new "Strategic Support Branch", not to mention private "contractors" for when unaccountability is REALLY needed. I'm sure I'm missing a bunch.

The Cold War was so profitable to these corporatists/warhawks that they are recreating it using terrorism as the boogeyman to scare the shit out of us and thus control us. All the while their media keep us placated with pablum and "bread and circus".

[aden_nak]

15. There is too a Secret Se - *pfffzzzt* - transmission discontinued.

[LynnTheDem]

16. Aden-nak? ADEN-NAK???!! ...uh oh...

I think they got him.