21st Century Wire says…
In the aftermath of the US Senate Intelligence Committee’s bombshell Torture Report, both Democrats and Republicans are now jockeying for position to occupy the moral high ground. On one side you have apologists for CIA torture, and on the other are half-hearted partisan Democrats desperate to protect their own administration’s sins overseas – and in the middle is a small minority who still believe in doing what’s right in trying to preserve America’s waning integrity internationally.
It’s times like this which really separates the wheat from the chaff…
ABU-GRAIB: US military engaged in sick games with detainees in Iraq.
A bevvy of so-called ‘military experts’ are cued-up on all the major TV networks to give their assessment as to ‘What constitutes torture?’, as well as arguing over what passes for ‘intelligence’ these days. The conversation is as banal as it is Orwellian. The pro-torture crowd, including CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, seems like the Pentagon’s embedded anchor and torture advocate, are all currently rallying around GW Bush’s inner circle, while the CIA stooges continue to sound a lot like Dr. Josef Mengele’s assistants testifying at Nuremberg.
They are all keen to tout their successes in their expensive ‘War on Terror’, although they’ve still yet to present anything besides anecdotes, opinion and hyperbole. Even proponents of the ‘Afghan Surge’ are being wheeled out of the Pentagon’s basement, as military buffoons continue to claim credit for it’s’success’, but who seem to be getting their military strategies from the film Starship Troopers. In other words: throw as much men as you can at the problem until the insects are killed off. They apply the exact same illogic to the torture argument, which is to dole out as much physical and psychological punishment to their ‘high value detainees’ until the subject tells them what they want to hear. This is what pretty much what passes for ‘military genius’ in the post-Bush world of ethical vacuums and moral black holes.
Even Senator John McCain sobered up from his usual mode of NATO-jihad just long enough to admit to the US, and the world this week – that torture aka ‘enhanced interrogation’ doesn’t actually work at all when it comes to gathering meaningful intelligence, and moreover, that it paints the US in a bad light internationally. 21WIRE will add to that and say: the same goes for Washington obsession with domestic spying starting with the whole NSA surveillance (see 21WIRE NSA Files) and data harvesting operation – a monolithic, 21st century digital monstrosity that’s literally wasting billions per month in scarce US taxpayer funds.
Although the Senate report was spearheaded by Democrats, that’s not to say that this White House should be given a free pass on its own outsourcing of violence. The Obama Revolution in foreign policy terms, has been all about making US militarism, especially in places like Africa, seem acceptable and almost fashionable to his young left supporters. But tell us what is really fashionable about sanctioned 2,400 murders through JSCOC and CIA covert drone programs.
The bottom line is that killing and torture has become political. If they were not, the Obama would have already closed his own government’s Guantanamo Bay torture facility a long time ago
Complete story at - HARDLY ZEN: Top 5 Obama War Crimes Since His Nobel Peace Prize
In the aftermath of the US Senate Intelligence Committee’s bombshell Torture Report, both Democrats and Republicans are now jockeying for position to occupy the moral high ground. On one side you have apologists for CIA torture, and on the other are half-hearted partisan Democrats desperate to protect their own administration’s sins overseas – and in the middle is a small minority who still believe in doing what’s right in trying to preserve America’s waning integrity internationally.
It’s times like this which really separates the wheat from the chaff…
ABU-GRAIB: US military engaged in sick games with detainees in Iraq.
A bevvy of so-called ‘military experts’ are cued-up on all the major TV networks to give their assessment as to ‘What constitutes torture?’, as well as arguing over what passes for ‘intelligence’ these days. The conversation is as banal as it is Orwellian. The pro-torture crowd, including CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, seems like the Pentagon’s embedded anchor and torture advocate, are all currently rallying around GW Bush’s inner circle, while the CIA stooges continue to sound a lot like Dr. Josef Mengele’s assistants testifying at Nuremberg.
They are all keen to tout their successes in their expensive ‘War on Terror’, although they’ve still yet to present anything besides anecdotes, opinion and hyperbole. Even proponents of the ‘Afghan Surge’ are being wheeled out of the Pentagon’s basement, as military buffoons continue to claim credit for it’s’success’, but who seem to be getting their military strategies from the film Starship Troopers. In other words: throw as much men as you can at the problem until the insects are killed off. They apply the exact same illogic to the torture argument, which is to dole out as much physical and psychological punishment to their ‘high value detainees’ until the subject tells them what they want to hear. This is what pretty much what passes for ‘military genius’ in the post-Bush world of ethical vacuums and moral black holes.
Even Senator John McCain sobered up from his usual mode of NATO-jihad just long enough to admit to the US, and the world this week – that torture aka ‘enhanced interrogation’ doesn’t actually work at all when it comes to gathering meaningful intelligence, and moreover, that it paints the US in a bad light internationally. 21WIRE will add to that and say: the same goes for Washington obsession with domestic spying starting with the whole NSA surveillance (see 21WIRE NSA Files) and data harvesting operation – a monolithic, 21st century digital monstrosity that’s literally wasting billions per month in scarce US taxpayer funds.
Although the Senate report was spearheaded by Democrats, that’s not to say that this White House should be given a free pass on its own outsourcing of violence. The Obama Revolution in foreign policy terms, has been all about making US militarism, especially in places like Africa, seem acceptable and almost fashionable to his young left supporters. But tell us what is really fashionable about sanctioned 2,400 murders through JSCOC and CIA covert drone programs.
The bottom line is that killing and torture has become political. If they were not, the Obama would have already closed his own government’s Guantanamo Bay torture facility a long time ago
Complete story at - HARDLY ZEN: Top 5 Obama War Crimes Since His Nobel Peace Prize
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