Charles P Pierce Dissects the Torture Report-What it Says, What it Means and What Comes Next

The Joint Chiefs of Staff have a responsibility for the defense of the nation in the Cold War similar to that which they have in conventional hostilities. They should know the military and paramilitary forces and resources available to the Department of Defense, verify their readiness, report on their accuracy, and make appropriate recommedations for their expansion and improvement. I look to the Chiefs to contribute dynamic and imaginative leadership in contributing to the success of the military and paramilitary aspects of Cold War programs.
-- John F. Kennedy, National Security Action Memo No. 55, June 8, 1961.

He wanted, as he said, to splinter the CIA into a million pieces and scatter it to the four winds, did John F. Kennedy. Many people believe that this desire stemmed from Kennedy's having been lied to by the intelligence community regarding the Bay of Pigs invasion, which had occurred in April of 1961, and that that fantasy-turned-fiasco undoubtedly played a role in Kennedy's thinking, but that was not the first time that the CIA had lied to the new president. Right at the end of his second term, President Dwight Eisenhower had ordered the CIA to do away with Patrice Lumumba, the elected prime minister of the Congo, and a dreadful inconvenience for western interests in that benighted former Belgian colony. By the time Kennedy took office, Lumumba already had been tortured, killed, and dissolved in a vat of acid, his bones ground to dust, a result of a CIA-backed operation in conjunction with the Belgians, but Kennedy didn't know it. In fact, he was still planning on working with Lumumba. In Steven Kinzer's invaluable book about Allen and John Foster Dulles, we find that, yes, the CIA had gotten its way by giving the old okey-doke to the people who were alleged to be in charge of the American government.



Kennedy had the right idea. Did it get him killed? I am still largely agnostic on it but, if it did, I wouldn't be at all surprised, just as I was not surprised by what Senator Dianne Feinstein read aloud on the Senate floor today, even though, behind every syllable of every word, a death knell sounded for the American idea. The concept of American exceptionalism based on anything as delicate as the rule of law -- in fact, any concept of American exceptionalism based on anything but brutish force -- has been rendered a sad and superannuated farce. Founding Fathers? Constitutional government? The bell has finally tolled for thee, motherfkers.

What was released was so breathtakingly awful, so transcendently wicked, that it's hard to keep in mind that what was read in the Senate today was merely the introduction to a heavily redacted, 528-page summary of a 6000-page congressional report into American savagery overseas. What we are being presented with is the Readers Digest Condensed Version of what was done to people in our name and on our dime. "I Am Joe's Frozen Corpse." What is in the other 5000-odd pages must be beyond belief.

part 1
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Torture_Report_And_What_It_Says

part 2
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Torture_Report_And_What_It_Means

part 3
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Torture_Report_And_What_Comes_Next