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While it’s nice when someone points out cheney’s programs of torture did not do what Cheney makes believe they did, it’s better when someone has a more intimate knowledge of those programs, how effective they were and exactly who was for or against those destructive decisions
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colon Powell’s chief of staff says point blank, less then 1 percent of the CIA agreed with the program or participated, that most were appalled and in fact want those who did participate prosecuted if crimes were committed
I post Wilkerson’s interview following where he points out the CIA WELCOMES an investigation and THAT’S what will enhance their moral, that they are DE-moralized because those who’ve broken the laws they swore to protect are walking.
so to be clear, if cheney doesn’t want to demoralize the Cia then he WANTS there to be an investigation into these crimes
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Thanks for keeping the spotlight on the morale, with an e, of what Wilkerson indicates are the more than 99% of CIA personnel who objected to torture. The United States has not only a solemn legal obligation under the Convention Against Torture to investigate and, if warranted, prosecute all credible allegations of torture by those found within the U.S. We owe it to the Agency personnel who were and are doing intelligence right.
let’s talk about that “1%”
we know from cheney’s past that he recruited a branch of the cia because the actual professionals would not go along with made up bull crap
if you click that link you’ll find the origin;
when ford took over from nixon cheney and rumsfeld went to work in their depraved effort to undermine nixon’s treaty of detante (cheney was the underling back then)
the real cia would not go along with their plan so rumsfeld and cheney recruited a few of their pals, gave them cia authority, then those pals of theirs made up some bull crap to which cheney would proceed his campaign of fear and war monguering
that group of the pals he recruited to the cia was called “team b”
now, when you read that article you are gonna be amazed it was written BEFORE we went into Iraq…cheney/rumfeld used the exact same formula, lying about information, creating false information and creating threats they knew did not exist
and now we have “less then 1%” of the cia getting on board cheney’s torture train.
wilkerson says in the clip above, “quite the contrary” when asked if obtained information through these “techniques”, what he means is that all the professionals tell us we obtain LESS information the we do when using conventional methods
so there you have it, cheney and is “team b” are those responsible for these programs of torture
you guys remember how baffled rumsfeld was and the look of horror on his face when general pace countermanded rumsfeld and told hom our soldiers had a positive obligation to stop torture when they see it happening? (pdf);
he looked like he feared for his own self when general pace told that to him
An Interview With Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Part One)
27.8.09
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/
thanx for your link butterfly!
am reading right now, here’s a snippet, right on point;
yup
here’s what happened;
the u.s. government posted a bounty for anyone turning anyone else in, that bounty was substantial and I believe it amounted to more then a mans pay for the year
and no vetting was done after a person was turned in
given that kind of windfall, these people turned in business competitors, social competitors and anyone they had a dispute of any kind
with that kind of windfall a person would be turned in for no reason what so ever as well.
that’s what we are talking about with these detainees
this next quote gives us pride in our soldiers at large;
we have hope after all don’t we
Yes..always. Give whistle blower protection and this ‘house of cards’ is falling down. Part 2 of the interview should be just as enlightening. Hayden gave an interesting interview.
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“The ability to kill dangerous terrorists through a CIA assassination program other than missile strikes would be of value to the United States, former CIA Director Michael Hayden tells WTOP.
“Without confirming or denying what the nature of the program is, the fact that three different directors over the course of seven years returned to the issue, I think you’d have to say, ‘Yes, it was valuable,’” Hayden says.
Questions remain about the assassins program, and media reports revealing the CIA hired security contractor Blackwater to support the program point out that the blurred lines between DOD and CIA are not the only problems.
“It has been described as this one continuous seven-plus-year program. I think, more accurately, over the course of seven years, three different directors, three different attempts, three different offices within the agency took a crack at developing a capacity that everyone agreed we’d want to have,” Hayden says. “
http://www.wtop.com/?sid=1752195&nid=778
“On a recent trip to Kabul for our nonprofit organization, Jobs for Afghans, we made a startling discovery: There is no true Taliban insurgency.
Yes, there is a Taliban leadership, many of whom are “foreigners,” meaning, non-Afghans. Yes, there are many fighting-age men who fight because they are paid to do so, by the small cadre of Taliban and Al Qaeda commanders who have plenty of opium money. They fork out the excellent wage in these parts of $8 per day for “insurgent work.”
But a die-hard, dedicated army of fighters who pledge allegiance to the Taliban ideology and cause? It’s not there.
Even Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged last March in Brussels, “Roughly 70 percent are involved because of the money.” And Gen. Karl Eikenberry, former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said to Congress in 2007, “Much of the enemy force is drawn from the ranks of unemployed men looking for wages to support their families.” “
http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne…..1831.story
interesting stuff there butterfly, I had no idea
“Earlier this year during a visit to Washington, Mohammad Hanif Atmar, Afghanistan’s Interior Minister, estimated there are between 10,000 and 15,000 Taliban fighting his government and its U.S. allies.
That makes a quick cost-benefit analysis possible. While plainly some Taliban members are an ideologically committed hard core who won’t lay down their guns, a lot — perhaps most — would presumably stop attacking U.S. and allied forces if they could earn more from that than they currently do for fighting. Vice President Joe Biden has estimated that only 5% of those fighting for the Taliban are “incorrigible, not susceptible to anything other than being defeated,” while 70% are in it only for the money. The remaining 25%, he said, fall in between. So if the U.S. opted to pay all Taliban fighters $20 a day — double what they get now — to stop fighting, that would amount to a $300,000 daily bill, or one-fifth of 1% of the war’s current cost to the U.S. taxpayers of $133 million a day. The monthly cost of buying off the Taliban rank and file would be $9 million, less than the price of a single AH-64 Apache helicopter. “
http://www.time.com/time/natio…..tion-yahoo
In some ways the most appalling part of this whole story is the way that political leaders and MSM reporters have enthusiastically accepted the fantasies of an over-grown, over-indulged, comic book-trained child like Cheyney. Cheyney is the voice of responsible security and intelligence concern. But the corps of working military and intelligence professionals got–and get–no hearing despite decades of training, experience, and professional behavior. Even the political appointees directly responsible for defense and intelligence have looked up to the backsides of the political masters for inspiration rather than taking advice from the troops below.
How bad are things when the CIA wants an investigation presumably to clear their name? I expect the CIA to start leaking what Darth did quite soon.
“The Central Intelligence Agency has refused to turn over documents they were ordered to produce to a civil rights group under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Obama’s Justice Department has refused to provide more documents. The Department had been instructed to release a presidential directive authorizing CIA “black sites” as well as CIA inspector general (IG) records and documents from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel regarding the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
In a filing Monday, the CIA said they wouldn’t turn over the documents, claiming their publication would threaten national security. “
http://rawstory.com/08/news/20…..documents/
not happy with this man I am
“less than 1%” There sure were a great deal of retired CIA analyst out and about questioning the invasion of Iraq based on questions having to do with the validity of the intelligence.
Even more former CIA analyst and others calling “torture” torture and supporting the those who broke the law either by ordering, rewriting or implementing these illegal torture policies.
yup
it was cheney’s team b that created and supported the false data that got us into Iraq, the majority of the cia were yelling at the top of their lungs there was no threat
the same thing happened exactly under ford, with exactly the same players, click my link above about cheney and team b
there was no threat and the administration knew there was no threat
the only cia that does not want an investigation into these crimes are those members of team b
..for sure..30 years of the same criminals..they were and are the only real threat..ie the real terrorists. Look how your tax dollars get spend for ‘guarding’ forces in Kabul.
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“Guards have come to POGO with allegations and photographic evidence that some supervisors and guards are engaging in near-weekly deviant hazing and humiliation of subordinates. Witnesses report that the highest levels of AGNA management in Kabul are aware of and have personally observed—or even engaged in—these activities, but have done nothing to stop them. Indeed, management has condoned this misconduct, declining to take disciplinary action against those responsible and allowing two of the worst offending supervisors to resign and allegedly move on to work on other U.S. contracts. The lewd and deviant behavior of approximately 30 supervisors and guards has resulted in complete distrust of leadership and a breakdown of the chain of command, compromising security.
Numerous emails, photographs, and videos portray a Lord of the Flies environment. One email from a current guard describes scenes in which guards and supervisors are “peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks (there is video of that one), broken doors after drunken brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity….” (Attachment 2) Photograph after photograph shows guards—including supervisors—at parties in various stages of nudity, sometimes fondling each other. These parties take place just a few yards from the housing of other supervisors.”
http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files…..90901.html
Thank you. I’ve been hoping someone would address this issue. Demoralizing, even endangering those who didn’t break the law and didn’t support torture was the obvious question when Obama went over to the CIA to make assurances that no torturers would be prosecuted.
On the other hand, the CIA should be abolished altogether.
“Doctors and psychologists the CIA employed to monitor its “enhanced interrogation” of terror suspects came close to, and may even have committed, unlawful human experimentation, a medical ethics watchdog has alleged.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a non-profit group that has investigated the role of medical personnel in alleged incidents of torture at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other US detention sites, accuses doctors of being far more involved than hitherto understood.
The most incendiary accusation of PHR’s latest report, Aiding Torture, is that doctors actively monitored the CIA’s interrogation techniques with a view to determining their effectiveness, using detainees as human subjects without their consent. The report concludes that such data-gathering was “a practice that approaches unlawful experimentation”.
Human experimentation without consent has been prohibited in any setting since 1947, when the Nuremberg Code, which resulted from the prosecution of Nazi doctors, set down 10 sacrosanct principles. The code states that voluntary consent of subjects is essential, and that all unnecessary physical and mental suffering should be avoided.
The Geneva conventions also ban medical experiments on prisoners and prisoners of war, which they describe as “grave breaches”. “
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..02/cia-usa