REOPEN KENNEDY CASE

"Capturing leaders may have a limited psychological impact on a group if members believe that captured leaders will eventually return to the group,” the review reads, “or if those leaders are able to maintain their influence while in government custody, as Nelson Mandela did while incarcerated in South Africa.”

http://us.sputniknews.com/us/20141218/1013345124.html

The thread title points to, among other things, the interesting language used by the CIA.

As one of the tweeters on the link observed, the CIA loves euphemisms. Which in itself is an admission of wrongdoing. Otherwise why not call a spade a spade? The examples cited by the tweeter were ‘terminate with extreme prejudice’ (kill with or by torture) ‘enhanced interrogation’ (torture).

Here we have ‘high value targets’. Dehumanising people is a time honoured way of attempting to legitimise abusing and murdering them.

‘Counterinsurgency’ is another revealing word used in the linked article. ‘Insurgent’ in the Oxford Concise Dictionary is defined as: adj rising in active revolt; n a rebel or revolutionary. Counterinsurgency thus implies an anti-democratic suppression of a popular uprising from below.

In this context ‘high value targeting operations’ most likely means assassination of indigenous anti-imperialist leaders, which is what the CIA has been heavily involved in since 1947. This definition might also cover operations closer to home in 1963 and 1968.

According to this study apparently, the CIA doesn’t know whether high value targeting operations are effective or not. But they do it anyway. It’s like that Denis Hopper line in the film Waterworld, ‘Don’t just stand there, kill something’.

The glaring omission in this CIA study is the complete absence of any ethical dimension. That’s the great advantage of perpetual war. All is fair in love and war so ethics are redundant.

Unfortunately, the answer to Pete Seeger’s question is that we’ll probably never learn:

http://performingsongwriter.com/pete-seeger-flowers-gone/

Thanks Goban. IMO, that is spot on analysis.