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kpete

(71,898 posts)
Tue Dec 9, 2014, 06:30 PM Dec 2014

Charles P. Esquire Tells Us What Really Has Bushco Pooping Their Pants: "The CIA Never Forgets"

THE TORTURE REPORT, PART THREE: WHAT WILL HAPPEN NOW
By Charles P. Pierce on December 9, 2014


..........


To me, the most singular thing about the Senate report is how thoroughly it takes the rest of the executive branch off the hook, which is the same dynamic that Weiner noted about the report of the Church committee. Whenever a scandal like this hits, it seems, the people who give the actual orders, the people who create the climate for the crimes, and, in this case, the people who tortured the Constitution to find a legal justification for torturing human beings, are always invisible. As was the case with the Church commission, I believe, this Senate investigation shrank from demonstrating to the American people the kind of monsters they freely elected. I believe this investigation shrank from the obvious conclusion that the legislative branch fell down on its oversight responsibility and, therefore, to its responsibility to the country. I believe that this investigation shrank from the obvious conclusion that, as regards the investigation's findings, the ultimate conclusion is that democracy committed a kind of suicide. So, as always, the onus for the crimes falls almost always upon the unelected and the faceless.

Perhaps the only truly funny moment in Senator Dianne Feinstein's presentation on Tuesday afternoon was her description about how those crafty CIA spooks so badly misled poor, naive David Addington about what was going on in all those black cells in Poland and Thailand. This is the same David Addington who, according to Jane Mayer, was whipping up enthusiasm for "the program" within the administration with a vigorous campaign of bureaucratic dick-swinging. In her book, The Dark Side, Mayer quotes another Bush administration lawyer's impression of Addington's approach.

Addington pounced on the doubters, deriding them as squishy. "You can't imagine what the dynamic was like in the White House," said another former administration lawyer. "Basically anything less than being as macho as Addington was seen as a sign of weakness. The mood was, 'You can't be sentimental. You have to be cold-eyed.'"


According to Feinstein on Tuesday afternoon, cold-eyed David Addington was kept entirely in the dark by the wicked CIA, which was wildly exceeding its mandate, which presumes there ever was a mandate given to it by these people, which is ludicrous. The way you know it's ludicrous is that George W. Bush, and Richard Cheney, and a whole host of others whose participation in the torture program is completely damning, are now acting out of spectacular ingratitude and excoriating the report that allowed them largely to walk away from their crimes in office. But it's not simply because they are sociopathic liars, many of them, that they are doing this. It is also because they know, by defending the CIA and the criminals within its ranks, they are defending themselves as well, not against the Congress, or against a possible invitation to the Hague, but against the CIA itself. I have to imagine that there are a whole host of field agents out there that are pretty cheesed off about having been hung out to dry this way. I have to imagine that there are a whole host of field agents out there, the ones like that person who was cited in the report, who were destroyed by what they were ordered to do, who are wondering why the demons come out at night for them while the likes of David Addington are sleeping soundly in their beds. And this is one thing of which I am sure, as this awful day comes to a close. Some day, some way, unless it is fundamentally transformed, the CIA will have its revenge on the people who strung it up as a scapegoat today. It is often wrong, but it is never forgetful.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Torture_Report_And_What_Comes_Next
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dixiegrrrrl

(60,010 posts)
1. I am close to tears.
Tue Dec 9, 2014, 07:05 PM
Dec 2014

Unless a million people march up to the Congress and the White House demanding teh war criminals be arrested,
there will be no obvious justice.

Today people find out how hollow and empty the our Government really is, one that has been built on a tower of teetering lies.

I wonder how many folks here were really surprised at this report?

phantom power

(25,966 posts)
3. I wonder how many people think the report is even a bad thing?
Tue Dec 9, 2014, 07:12 PM
Dec 2014

There's been a lot of pop-culture socialization to the idea that torture is totally effective and OK, if the guys in the white hats are doing it. Starting right after 9/11, with the '24' series, and continuing til today. And then there's the conservatives, who have zero empathy for anybody non-white, non-christian, non-american or non-wealthy, and who would think torturing some some brown foreigners is totally OK whether they've been socialized or not.

Ruby the Liberal

(26,216 posts)
13. I surfed over to a RWNJ site today
Tue Dec 9, 2014, 08:54 PM
Dec 2014

The meme(s) were all over the map. Everything from 'impeach Obama' to 'libtars hate America and want us all dead'. They couldn't even figure out the subject of the study much less confusing and pesky details like dates and timelines.

Morons.

 

msanthrope

(37,549 posts)
16. It is a bad thing. But not in the way the right wing thinks. It's horrible...what was done.
Tue Dec 9, 2014, 09:01 PM
Dec 2014

That's the bad thing. And now, we reap the whirlwind.

Blanks

(4,835 posts)
7. The timing is interesting...
Tue Dec 9, 2014, 07:46 PM
Dec 2014

This comes out just weeks before the republicans take over the senate. I'm not sure what to make of that.

It's been well known for years. I guess if it doesn't come out now it never will.

dixiegrrrrl

(60,010 posts)
8. And during holidays.
Tue Dec 9, 2014, 07:57 PM
Dec 2014

I am pretty sure the Republicans would have kept it all bottled up.
But the Dems sure could have done a LOT more.
There were those who wanted Feinstein to read the report into the Congressional Record, the whole thing.
I wish she had.

Blanks

(4,835 posts)
9. Hopefully there will be at least enough of a stink...
Tue Dec 9, 2014, 08:05 PM
Dec 2014

That anyone who has a last name of Bush and considers running for national office is subjected to a character analysis so that people realize this is what another Bush administration would look like.

Volaris

(10,260 posts)
15. The incoming Congress will blame Obama for the fallout, and use it as another excuse to impeach.
Tue Dec 9, 2014, 08:59 PM
Dec 2014

Morans.

aint_no_life_nowhere

(21,925 posts)
10. CIA legal counsel John Rizzo was just on Blitzer
Tue Dec 9, 2014, 08:15 PM
Dec 2014

Blitzer played a clip of Feintein's comment to him and he refuted it. He said Chimpco was fully informed of all the details of the torture methods (he doesn't call them torture) because he's the one who briefed them. He said that White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez was fully informed and that Cheney was at the meetings chaired by Condi Rice where he described the torture in detail. He said they knew about it even when the torture was merely proposed and before it began.

Could it be that Feinstein herself was also fully briefed? Why is she giving Bush/Cheney cover?

dixiegrrrrl

(60,010 posts)
12. How nice of him to witness that all the war criminals were in on it.
Tue Dec 9, 2014, 08:31 PM
Dec 2014

Gonzalez ad Condi, sycophants that they are, must have felt so good sitting at the big boy's table.
Come to think of it, Bush musta felt good about that too.

CJCRANE

(18,184 posts)
14. I'm sure I read a report several years ago that they used to have meetings in the WH
Tue Dec 9, 2014, 08:58 PM
Dec 2014

where they brainstormed (or at least discussed) possible techniques and even used "24" as inspiration.

IIRC Cheney chaired the meetings (I may be wrong on that but I'm sure I read about it here on DU).

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