[The strategy to be used? Deny everything. And if forced against the wall, pull out familiar excuses. For examples, "We didn't know it was 'torture.' Pres. Bush said we could. Vice Pres. Dick Cheney came by and cheered us on. Condeeleezza Rice signed off on it. Donald Rumsfeld was all for it. Gen. Colin Powell tried to stop us, but he doctored reports to justify illegal invasions of the Gulf and turned our analysts' work into pure propaganda. Pres. Obama's handlers have been all for it, so instead of dialing it back, we've committed more crimes under the Obama Administration than we were able to under the Bush-Cheney regime."]
Graphic new details of the post-9/11 U.S. torture program came to light Tuesday (Dec. 9, 2014) when the Senate Intelligence Committee released a
[This means it gets worse with many parts completely blacked out so no one can hold the Bush Admin and CIA to account for major atrocities and Nazi-level war crimes.]
despite torturing al-Qaeda and other captives in secret prisons worldwide between 2002 and 2006, and details a list of torture methods used on prisoners, including waterboarding,
So far no one involved in the CIA interrogation program has been charged with a crime
the whistleblower John Kiriakou. In 2007, he became the first person with direct knowledge of the program to publicly reveal its existence. He is now serving a 30-month sentence.
DN! speaks with Reed Brody, counsel and spokesperson for Human Rights Watch, who has written several reports on prisoner mistreatment in the endless U.S. war on terror/fear (which is a tactic that will never end or can be said to exist anywhere at anytime), including a 2011 report which called for a criminal investigation of senior
-- Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Don Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Colin Powell, CIA evidence-destroyer Jose Rodriguez, John Ashcroft, and others
.
 |
| What's a little torture, murder, war crimes? |
Just as we have the best democracy money can buy, we have an even better official military-industrial propaganda arm in the mainstream media. Its job is to spin, sanitize, and otherwise detract from all stories that might upset you. Give us complacency or give us death. Here the AP shows why everything the CIA did is in the past, nothing to worry about, nothing it's doing now, nothing but patriotism, shut up and obey it's none of your business anyway, hey, how would you like a visit from the Company? Yeah, I didn't think so. So get back to work, eat GMOs, and drink up, it's happy hour! And next time, mind your own business. We run this country from the back room not you from your ridiculous voting booth.
WASHINGTON, D.C. [just outside of the USA] - Top spies past and present campaigned Wednesday to discredit the Senate's investigation into the CIA's harrowing torture practices after 9/11, battling to define the historical record and deter potential legal action around the world.
The Senate intelligence committee's report doesn't urge prosecution for wrongdoing, and the Justice Department has no interest in reopening a criminal probe
The threat to former interrogators and their superiors was underlined as a U.N. special investigator demanded that those responsible for "systematic crimes" be brought to justice, and human rights groups pushed for the arrest of key CIA and Bush administration figures if they travel overseas.
Current and former CIA officials pushed back, determined to paint the Senate report as a political stunt by Senate Democrats tarnishing a program that saved American lives.
 |
| Gov't has many arms like Google, Facebook |
It is a "one-sided study marred by errors of fact and interpretation -- essentially a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that has done the most to protect America," former CIA directors George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.
Hayden was singled out by Senate investigators for what they said was a string of misleading or outright false statements he gave in 2007 about the importance of the CIA's brutal treatment of detainees in thwarting terrorist attacks. He described the focus on him as "ironic on so many levels" as any wrongdoing predated his arrival at the CIA.
"They were far too interested in yelling at me," Hayden said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
The intelligence committee's 500-page release concluded that the CIA inflicted suffering on al-Qaeda prisoners beyond its legal authority and that none of the agency's "
enhanced interrogations" provided critical, life-saving intelligence. It cited the CIA's own records, documenting in detail how waterboarding and lesser-known techniques such as "
rectal feeding" were used.
 |
| If the CIA says that was his compound, then Seal Team 6 are not murderous gov't assassins? |
 |
| Boogieman: A fake CIA 9/11 "mastermind" |
The CIA is in the uncomfortable position of defending itself publicly, given its basic mission to protect the country secretly. Its 136-page rebuttal suggests that Senate Democrats searched through millions of documents to pull out only the evidence backing up predetermined conclusions.
"That's like doing a crossword puzzle on Tuesday with Wednesday's answer's key," the CIA said in an e-mailed statement.
Challenging one of the report's most explosive arguments -- that harsh interrogation techniques didn't lead to Osama bin Laden -- the CIA pointed to questioning of Ammar al-Baluchi, who revealed how an al-Qaeda operative relayed messages to and from bin Laden after he departed Afghanistan.
Before then, the CIA said, it knew only that courier Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti interacted with bin Laden in 2001 when the al-Qaeda leader was accessible to many of his followers. Al-Kuwaiti eventually led the U.S. to bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.
Poring over the same body of evidence as the investigators, the CIA insisted most of the 20 case studies cited in the Senate report actually illustrated how enhanced interrogations helped disrupt plots, capture terrorists and prevent another 9/11-type attack.
More
BERKELEY, California (AP) - Stop. Hey, what's that sound? Protest songs are taking their place alongside chants of “I Can’t Breathe” and “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” as demonstrators raise their voices to condemn the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police [and rampant police brutality tacitly approved by corrupt and racist courts, the DOJ, and the mainstream media.]. There's something happening here.
[The strategy to be used? Deny everything. And if forced against the wall, pull out familiar excuses. For examples, "We didn't know it was 'torture.' Pres. Bush said we could. Vice Pres. Dick Cheney came by and cheered us on. Condeeleezza Rice signed off on it. Donald Rumsfeld was all for it. Gen. Colin Powell tried to stop us, but he doctored reports to justify illegal invasions of the Gulf and turned our analysts' work into pure propaganda. Pres. Obama's handlers have been all for it, so instead of dialing it back, we've committed more crimes under the Obama Administration than we were able to under the Bush-Cheney regime."]
Today Democracy Now! speaks with Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer,
and Joshua Fattal about their new book, A Sliver of Light: Three
Americans Imprisoned in Iran. Read an excerpt
from Bauer about the day they were arrested on trumped of charges of trespassing into Iran and spying for the U.S.
The spat between the CIA and its congressional "overseers" (actually overlookers since they overlook so much misbehavior) has intensified after California Senator Dianne Feinstein took to the Senate floor to directly accuse the CIA of spying on her overisight committee.
NSA SECRETS Read all about the mainstream sanitized version of Edward Snowden's revelations about America's spying apparatus. This "full" coverage adds watered down debate surrounding National Security Agency surveillance programs. Don't read the accurate Guardian version. Oops, too late: Britain targets Guardian newspaper
