Revised: Who Should the Average American Blame for CIA Torture?

By William Wraithwrite
“Hell is empty, And all the devils are here”
The Tempest Act 1 Scene 2 lines 213 William Shakespeare

“Bad men are full of repentance”
Aristotle

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Essay: Who Should the Average American Blame for CIA Torture?

Now that CIA torture and the closing of Guantanamo is mostly ‘again’ off the mainstream media’s radar (save bipartisan brouhaha like recent prisoner exchange for American Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl), due to plenty U.S. instigated distractions such as heavy meddling in Ukraine’s internal politics or politically manipulated debates about U.S. security measures in Libya, we can explore deeper questions as to previous events and players who instigated U.S. aggression abroad.

California Senator Dianne Feinstein, current chairman of supposedly our (the American peoples’) Senate Intelligence Committee, who is, for the most part, still a main proponent for NSA spying on the entire world’s metadata, is fatuous like a fat-cat will be gullible (as many elected Congress-persons are in their overly ambitious ways still naïve souls—more so then many care to admit). Too many act as mere mortal imbeciles although Senator Feinstein should get credit for partially taking on the Orwellian War State with her “…we’re better than that…” (that is regarding the release of documents about CIA torture to the public).

But, for example, take the bantered factoid termage “metadata” (newspeak), as deductive logic could equate means little if the NSA does not equally have access to the actual contextual data itself—duh! Not, of course, that a great deal of information cannot be gleaned from such indicators of transmission, but given the constancy of lies from the Beltway, it is little wonder the Director on National Intelligence, James Clapper, has barred all employees of U.S. Intelligence agencies, from discussing any related matters to journalists? Why else would they place so much emphasis on huge super computers?

One precedent Clap did set was to define a journalist as “any person engaged in the collection, production or dissemination to the public of information in any form related to topics of national security”. This broad definition of a journalist may be good news to alternative news sources; some who actually report more real news and far less manufactured propaganda consent then the mainstream media. Meanwhile more mainstream pundits are now attacking Edward Snowden (and get this some are Jewish intellectuals at this forefront, because it seems, if truth be told, too much of American foreign policy is really very much Israeli foreign policy, so exposing American corruption is also exposing Zionist exploitation of such corruption), so by whistle blowers pointing fingers at the U.S. they are also pointing fingers at Israel’s dominant reach on the American government and its many tentacles). See Justin Raimondo’s recent piece “George Packer is Good at Fellatio: But he calls it journalism” as even Packer, in Clapper’s mindset, is doing journalism of some sort?). See:  http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/05/22/george-packer-is-good-at-fellatio/

Herein already lies one major problem for the American public, besides manufactured propaganda displayed by too much of mainstream media and our government, lies continue to get stretched beyond capacity, as more leaked revelations continue to show old official statements blatant falsehoods. Go back to when torture was first revealed (of course not by the mainstream media but because of leaked photos of Abu Graib). Then many talking heads (people by the way who insist “they” are the real journalists) kept harping on the singular question of whether water-boarding was in fact true torture—which it is (but completely ignoring harsher forms of torture and concurrent murder).

Still it is still hoped by the powers-that-be we Americans are still naïve enough to believe, in our general lack of political street smarts, and our willingness to be patriotically bamboozled, that most of our leaders are actually telling us mostly the truth. (Perhaps even some staffers of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees hope the same along similar lines, even if other Executive branch careerist officials are working diligently to maintain a long-established status quo of corruption and deceit (not to mention hundreds of media coolies and other corresponding corporate elitists who equally are willing to play dumb because frankly they are so).

Perhaps American leaders seldom, if ever, have told the truth? This is certainly a worthy question (and such a level of cynicism, given the historical nature of politics, ought not be ruled out).

Nevertheless the likes of Senator Diane Feinstein and Representative Mike Rogers as House Chairman on Intelligence, presumably assume, because they hold titles to power and privilege, that they actually have the foremost insider scoop to truth and intelligence (when it is far more they are animal-feed-bag-fed some of the most debunked packages of disinformation and useless detritus one would hope flushed out of all intellectual orbit—that is hoped, had it been given to a deranged or psychiatric-person-of-neglect that such a personage would still have had the spiritual wherewithal to bury, plastic-wrapped as dog-doo-doo, into the nearest dumpster). And this is not a hyperbolic overstatement. This is the reality of the United States of America and our people, who have entrusted leadership to too many spastic-like idiots. These leaders, we may well assume, are routinely lied to as well, no doubt in sophisticated fashion (but then how much effort does it take to fool the American mind), so it is no wonder they too are being spied on.

PROBLEM #1: Elected Officials are often misinformed, or dis-informed, as are average Americans—a very serious problem. It is only now they are beginning to see some wool come slowly off the eyes. Edward Snowden revelations reinforce how much the American public has been misled by deliberate and professionally trained techniques of deception and propaganda. Little wonder why people like Secretary of State John Kerry publicly demanded Edward Snowden come back to the United States to stand in judgment to American Justice (which has become a mockery in far too many ways—including it widely now known, through several sources, that many prisoners held in Guantanamo were there because War Lords of Afghanistan! decried them terrorists to the American Army (see Amy Goodman’s interview Anand Gopal and his new book “No Good Men Among the Living: American, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes” for the latest at  http://www.democracynow.org/2014/5/28/obama_extends_nations_longest_war_to ). See also:

“Revised: U.S. Government Plays Yahweh with Gulag Gitmo” by Very Vagabond at:  http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2013/06/423883.shtml

“YOU CANNOT DIE IN HELL: Using Indefinite Detention for” Political and Religious Purposes” by William Wraithwrite at:  http://www.indymedia.ie/article/104610

If the indefatigable gasbag John Kerry had any idea how ridiculous he sounded about American Justice he would quit his job in silence. Hey John it’s not just that you head one of the “many” corrupted Executive branch departments of the Federal Government but some people are actually coming around to understand the United States is probably one of the most corrupt countries on the planet. If there were justice in America Mr. John Kerry then some banksters would be serving time behind bars? Or hey Mr. J. for Justice why don’t you remind the world that it was ‘our’ American government, that is in secret, that concocted an elaborate secret rendition program, to not only have our own personnel engage in torture but had the connections and operational skills to get all kinds of other thug countries abroad to do our torture for us (you know “out of sight out of mind” by those ‘trusted’ well enough to do the job)? Was the State Department involved in getting that all coordinated as well?

One ought consider too many Americans think it a crime to engage in acts of conscience such as what Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and Bradley Manning engaged. And yet they that think so too are the first to claim this is a free society. Moreover when we consider that the real accomplishment we have made in Afghanistan after all these years is to have opened up the floodgate to opium and heroin trafficking the entire self-righteousness of Senators like McCain and Lindsey Graham (wanting to impeach Obama) and other so-stupid-in-their-arrogance types like Ted Cruz (bringing up legislation about not releasing any prisoners from Guantanamo) shows us just how misinformed the public is about who those prisoners were and are—which is another indictment on the Lame-Stream Media (listen to Scott Horton interview Andy Worthington (see:  http://scotthorton.org/interviews/2014/05/28/052814-andy-worthington/ Many of those prisoners are there because Drug Lords decided so—not because they were terrorist? Also listen to Amy Goodman interview BROCK MCINTOSH argue how a corrupt Congress “Veteran: Politicians Using Freed POW Bowe Bergdahl as "Chess Piece to Win Political Matches". The United States is as mean as it is grossly misinformed. (See:  http://www.democracynow.org/2014/6/5/veteran_politicians_using_freed_pow_bowe


Perhaps you might suggest Mr/ Secretary of State, for marketing promo, to those who don’t want more immigrants coming across the border, to put pictures of illustrious leaders on the border fences—pictures of George W., Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfield, Condoleezza Rice, James Clapper (and his Trotsky glasses), Senator John McCain as invariantly stupid responses, and of course various Neo-Cons—certainly these might scare some back to the murder-ravaged lands of Mexico?

Or perhaps that is what American diplomacy is really all about—making the unsavory sound pleasant? American leaders answers to the problem of their lies being exposed is to double down on trying to tell better lies. Heck John you then must know what American justice is all about—why ain’t it about concocting memos by trained lawyers to justify torture so as to make it sound legal? Ain’t it about “not” closing a prison system on a foreign territory in Cuba because our military and related CIA can hide away School of America-like tactics?

PROBLEM #2: Our American system itself has become even more financially corrupt. Many investor types, including and especially war/ intelligence industry experts who work financial markets, made twenty tons plus of money on our “illegal wars” and never-ending “non-declared black operations” abroad (often approved and advocated by the Holy Land of Israel and supposedly Christian peoples of the West) and continue to be especially lucrative for the fascist reality of private contractors in places like Afghanistan (perpetrated by the United States Government using tax payer dollars bilked from common people).

And if this were not enough corruption to fathom supposedly our U.S. State Department acts very much to have turned into another faucet for corporate exploitation. For example, we spent FIVE BILLION taxpayer dollars since 1992 illegally manipulating Ukraine’s internal politics (all the while, of late, accusing Russia of their external influence)? And you can pretty much assume at least half of that 5 billion (if not much more) was siphoned off into private and corrupt pockets—but by who and what bank accounts? Here is a real investigative question for the mainstream media that they will never watch dog over but this is what Congressional investigative types should be investigating.

Nevertheless our topic, blaming primarily people in the CIA and the military, for egregious torture and murder (which we can well assume to be as hideous as reason might allow), falls within this far broader set of corrupted cultural realities (even as we realize the very egregious nature to this globally expanded clandestine archipelago of secret prisons and hundred if not thousands of renditions).

And yet a lot of this stuff should be pegged to the many political figures and pundits who, were not employees of CIA or the Pentagon, but because of a great deal of government and media deceit involved, became the prime movers in getting our country involved in illegal wars as precursors to any torture and defining very loosely enemy combatants.

To primarily focus on CIA as singularly ruthlessness is a cop-out in respect to the American Empire and entire culture (that all share in this major culpability—secular as it may be in its evil). Americans willingly and sometimes gleefully approved of torture tactics—even if most Americans were not willing to know anything close to the actual extent of such a reality—they still bear, as a supposed voting Democracy, some of its real blame (not to mention the insatiable appetite for material well being and energy supplies).

The entire American culture and system has been corrupted in its arrogant overgrowth, with much corporate profit power involved in warfare. And yes the Intelligence process became viciously sadistic as relegated to people who might not have known the freedom of consciousness (but one doesn't need to be an insider like Seymour Hersch to know this much.)

Torture, far more in episode than what people like James Clapper would like us to know, only occasionally startles us in miniscule and narrowly defined debates by the mainstream media, and yet this stuff happened AFTER other forms of war corruption had already transpired.

After 9/11 the war propaganda machine went into high gear “mere hours” after 9/11 took place, completely to change American foreign policy into its currently horrific and tumultuous terrorism war everywhere and anywhere, including in our own country as first by establishing the current and extreme intelligence operation of Police State (understatement).

War itself is and always has been terrorism to the receiving culture: even as so-called wars on terrorism often too use terrorist tactics. Many Americans now feel terror of their own government—now realizing our own leaders cannot and should not be trusted.

After 9/11, we Americans were told, via propaganda campaigns by the mainstream media to “connect the dots”, as this metaphor was broadcast over and over to our general naiveté (which was, for the most part, not prepared for the sophisticated Shock Doctrine coming to re-make a manipulation campaign for the average person’s mind and thoughts.

Few people, to this day, years later, much questioned why the Bush Administration felt so confident to go full force on the offensive so quickly (almost immediately after 9/11) when prudently trained and cautious people would have still have been focusing on the possibility of more eminent threats (and would not have likely formulated an accusation as to who were the perpetrators so quickly and how it was necessary to seek revenge)? Within 24 hours the mood of the media was one of presuming the attacks were over, to changing the media message, on day two, into a need for aggression abroad. This should have been, in itself, a shock and awe red flag for reflective people. Government officials claimed they had no idea prior to it happening, then suddenly claimed to have absolute certainty that Osama bin Ladin did it (yet never showing any video of any of the Arabs being in airports or loading planes)? The whole story is very dubious.

For example, George Bush was back at the White House, to which we get a convenient story of a larger “bin Ladin family” happening to be vulnerably here in the States at the time, then requesting to fly back home (when flights were canceled elsewhere) that is used to insinuate this somehow proves they, the Saudis, should be prime suspects of 9/11 (which sounds very red herring—as the bin Ladin family would not have been around in the first place had they known it was to happen or that they were suspected to have been involved)? Yet this is a “conspiracy theory” some on the left and in Zionist circles, such as previous Senator Phil Graham, are happy to espouse (but no one calls their ideas conspiracy theories—and far fewer still are willing to consider if Israel had any role in it).

This is to say no one calls it anti-Semitic to call Arabs, Palestinians or Islamists terrorists? Whereas many would and do automatically take umbrage at the idea of claiming Israel and American policies are such? Yet it is crystal clear to a few at least that the United States is engaged with a war against Muslims worldwide as a new Age of Christian Crusades. There was supposed to be a separation of State and Religion but our foreign policy, all three branches of government, and the intelligence apparatchik, have been high jacked to fight a religious war under the guise of fighting a war on terrorism.

Consider how much war and aggression has been carried out since 9/11.

Consider how much profit private corporations and individuals have made.

Are these realities separate from innocent people who were tortured and who may be still tortured and illegally imprisoned in various secret and not so secret prisons? See essay: “9/11: Who Really Benefited?” by Captain America see:  http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/07/23/18685784.php

Yet some of those who actually tortured others, we might presume, believed they were dealing with real terrorists and people involved in 9/11. Others went along with the general propaganda being promulgated that anyone Muslim or Arab-like was a bad guy. Those who worked the dirty work may have thought the trade-off was ugly but necessary.

Yet there were other people in intellectual jobs who knew lies were being perpetrated by the government and corporate media, who did not directly participate in any prison environment or torture tactic (and yet they are the people who created this mindset for such allowance of evil). Will public relations people like the pantheon of NeoCons, such as Richard Pearle or Judith Miller of the New York Times become indicted for their awareness of the lies told to the American public? Could not Rupert Murdock and Roger Ailes be as much criminal psychopath as brutes who smash heads against walls in far off prison cells?

We Americans fell for their lies and we cannot and likely will not admit it. We believed the Bush Administration. We have too often been ready to suck up the dis-information campaigns they willingly created and threw at us, because we so desperately wanted to believe in “our” shared American cause.

Nevertheless, from day two of 9/11 there was as immediate blitz to start all manner of violent intervention and warfare elsewhere. The Corporate Military Industrial Complex come back in motion (no longer to suffer Vietnam syndrome) to make even more megabucks (so a ‘little’ torture and violence here and there (like also happened widespread in the Vietnam War but was hidden from the mainstream), in relation to profits was just part of the Mephistopheles bargain). After all who cares here if Judeo-Christian enemies are tortured and murdered —nothing the Old Testament has not already justified numerous times?

Therefore to simple point fingers at a very corrupted institution called the Central Intelligence Agency is a lie in a major way. It has become partly corrupted by Congress people not taking responsibility and thus allowing this agency to become so (such as decades of torture hidden in its archives). What about those who backed up George W. Bush to get him illegally elected? What about Vice President Cheney, no doubt supported by his staffer Scooter Libby, going to the CIA and demanding distorted intelligence (and then willingly taking critical lies from the special Pentagon project run by Douglas Feith and Wolfowitz, and coordinated via Israel’s military who came secretly to visit that Office of Special Operations)?

Our military machine of death profit and corporate/ bankster conspiracy of the one percent has allowed so many lies to transpire in the name of profit that we are numbed to the reality. Real torture includes corporate elites who sit in corporate boardrooms—even if all they think they are doing is giving elected officials lucre (or drinking Sarah and eating Sirloin steak as then gleefully meting out tips to pretty waitresses).

And by the way who really got all those many stolen artifacts from Iraq’s museums’ when the U.S. Military was not positioned to protect one of the oldest civilizations’ intellectual and artistic wealth? How was it that that looting was so easily allowed to happen?

Where are The People who should be demanding real SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE in ALL Middle East countries, including the fact that we support a Zionist State that espouses its own ethnocentricity?

We need to challenge the moral worthiness of Judaism, Christianity and Islamism. There are messages of war, messages of cruel punishment, messages of hypocrisy, messages of dysfunctional and enabling tyranny in all three of these religions. For example Jesus Christ too was tortured and murdered like a common criminal and slave. He could not even save himself. This is not something people should honor. It was and still is a symptom of Empire.

It is time for secular rationality to demand we be free “from” religion—not just freedom to practice religion—because religion, thanks to the Middle East traditions, has lent to too much justifying injustice.

CLOSE GUANTANAMO AND STOP ILLEGAL TORTURE NOW.

MAKE U.S. SENATE AND HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE MEMBERS GO INTO TORTURE CHAMBER-LIKE ENVIRONMENTS TO CONTEMPLATE THEIR ARROGANCE AND NEGLIGENCE. ARREST THEM IF NECESSARY AND PUT THEM ON TRIAL (or suggest psychiatric help to allow them to retire).

STOP SUPPORTING BOTH MAJOR POLITICAL PARTIES AS BOTH ARE CORRUPT.

Amen

[Note: If you agree with this essay and think it important then share it with many others—email, fax, publish, post, discuss, tweet/twitter, etc. Only everyday people will make any difference in the larger scheme of things.]


See also: “When God Became the Terrorist: Traces of the Authoritarian Nature of the Three Abrahamic Religions at:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2013/07/511565.html (e-book)