I found here at www.commondreams.org perhaps the most brilliant, astounding writing I have ever read (and I’m a book addict).

I give you an excerpt from the memo sent to President Obama dated 04/30/2009. I only copied the introductory statement to the official memo compiled by The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), signed by some very heavy-hitters formerly in the Intel Community. Membership in VIPS totals 70 or more. You will recognize many of the listed signatures and names with their credentials.

Most high regard and honors are due this group of courageous truly patriotic Americans. They warned Bush and Cheney in time to have turned away from the disastrous path they were hell-bent to pursue, to the tragic, unnecessary and unjustified war of agression against Iraq.

Now, in this memo to President Obama, they are again holding out to him the product of their exceptional minds and strong convictions….will he listen and responsibly conduct the affairs of State as demanded by the Oath of Office to which he swore ?

Published on Thursday, April 30, 2009
An Anti-Torture Memorandum for President Obama

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Torture

This memorandum is VIPS’ first attempt to inform you on a major intelligence issue, as we did your predecessor; thus, some background might be helpful. Five former CIA officers established Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) in January 2003, when we saw our profession being corrupted to justify an attack on Iraq. Since then, our numbers have grown to 70 intelligence professionals, mostly retired, who have served in virtually all U.S. civilian and military intelligence agencies.

In our first Memorandum for the President (George W. Bush), dated February 5, 2002, [should be 2003] we provided a same-day commentary on Colin Powell’s U.N. speech. We warned the president that "an invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers for terrorists into the indefinite future [and that] far from eliminating the [terrorist] threat, it would enhance it exponentially."

We strongly urged the former president to widen the discussion on Iraq "beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic." VIPS’ second pre-war Memorandum for the President was titled, "Forgery, Hyperbole, Half-Truth: A Problem"-a reference to the bogus intelligence we saw being ginned up to "justify" war.

President Bush ignored our warning and the warnings of other informed individuals and groups. The corporate media uncritically echoed the Bush administration’s misuse and misrepresentation of the intelligence, despite the questions raised-including those raised by our unique movement. (It was the first time an alumni group of intelligence officials had formed expressly to chronicle and to halt the corruption of intelligence.)

The cheerleading for war had begun-a war that would fit the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal’s description of a "war of aggression." Nuremberg defined such a war as "the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

Torture: An Accumulated Evil

Torture is one of those accumulated evils. Violating domestic laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is another. You were right to unceremoniously jettison former CIA director Michael Hayden, who betrayed the thousands of NSA professionals who, until he directed that domestic law could be ignored, had adhered scrupulously to the 1978 FISA law as NSA’s "First Commandment"-Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans Without a Court Warrant.

In contrast, we believe you were badly misguided in giving a prominent White House post to former CIA director George Tenet’s protégé John Brennan, who has publicly defended "extraordinary rendition" in full knowledge that its purpose was torture. Brennan also had complicit knowledge of the lengths to which Tenet conspired with the Department of Justice to distort history and the law in drafting opinions that attempted to "justify" torture.

With all due respect, Mr. President, it would be another mistake for you to believe what you are hearing from the likes of Brennan and Hayden and the journalists they have fed and domesticated. Please do not be deceived into thinking that most intelligence officials, past and present, condone torture-still less that they are angry that you have put a stop to such techniques. We are referring, of course, to what President Bush called "an alternative set of procedures" involving cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment that violates domestic and international law. We focus on torture in the VIPS statement that follows these introductory remarks.

[some of bold = mine] If this article was previously covered here at the Lake, no matter – It should be nailed on every courthouse door in America!