On the website of a loyal reader, Spinny Liberal (go to blogroll and click on her opinionated site…excellent reads) she had a post about the senators calling for the assassination of Qadhafi and it got me to remembering the days when there were hearings on the US and its numerous attempts to assassinate other leaders in various countries…….

Libya is still raging…in case you have missed it with all the hype and boring details of some royal wedding……..it is still a yo-yo fight, back and forth, back and forth……..and just recently Qadhafi’s compound was attacked (yet again) and the speculation is that the Norwegian (I believe) planes were after Qadhafi himself…….basically an assassination attempt.

On Easter Sunday and over the whole weekend Repub congress people we going on the airwaves and calling for the assassination of Qadhafi…..

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told CNN: “Right now there’s just not enough momentum by the rebels… So my recommendation to NATO and the administration is to cut the head of the snake off. Go to Tripoli, start bombing Gaddafi’s inner circle, their compounds, their military headquarters.”In response to Graham’s call for assassination, McCain expressed general agreement with targeting the Libyan leader, but declared US strategy had to be based on “winning the battle on the ground” not on “a chance of taking him out with a lucky air strike.”

Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman—the one-time vice presidential candidate of the Democratic Party—joined the campaign for escalation and echoed Graham’s call to assassinate Gaddafi. NATO, he declared, “has got to start thinking about whether they want to more directly target Gaddafi and his family.” Lieberman cynically declared that the UN resolution justified a policy of assassination on the grounds it would “protect the civilian population.”

Political assassination?

In 1974 the Congress established a committee to investigate possible U.S. involvement in plots to assassinate foreign leaders deemed hostile to U.S. interests.

The committee reported its findings in 1975 to a dismayed Congress. Public outcry was loud and immediate. At the urging of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, President Gerald R. Ford signed an Executive Order banning all federal employees from committing assassination as a tool of U.S foreign policy or for any other reason. Exec. Order No. 11905. The order was extended by President Ronald Reagan 15 years later to also preclude hired assassins.

It is basically illegal for anyone in the government to expressly go out and kill…..but since 9/11 that sort of illegality has been lessened in a rush to kill those who killed Americans…..the question now is….will the US use a proxy to do the deed?  The French seem to be in a rabid war footing, maybe they will do it for us……….