Ray McGovern: EXTRA! Read all about it in the Washington Post: Torture worked; Cheney vindicated.

[Emit]

WPost Helps CIA Defend Torture

By Ray McGovern
August 30, 2009

EXTRA! Read all about it in the Washington Post: Torture worked; Cheney and torture practitioners vindicated.

It seems coverage of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” has been put back on track by the editors of the Washington Post and their “sources” who are determined to highlight the supposed successes of waterboarding and other forms of torture.

Frankly, I was wondering when this return to form would happen at the Post. I was surprised to see Post journalists recently lose their grip, so to speak, and fall into the practice of reporting real facts — like the sickening revelations in the long-suppressed CIA Inspector General’s report on torture.

~snip~

Hooded, threatened with cocked guns and electric drills, deprived of sleep for long periods, beaten, dressed in diapers, forced into painful stress positions, locked in tiny boxes and subjected to the near-drowning of waterboarding, the terrorism suspects were supposed to be terrorized into what the CIA psychologists called “learned helplessness.”

And to read the Washington Post’s account, it all worked, transforming alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed from a “truculent enemy” into what the CIA considered its “preeminent source” on al-Qaeda.

The Post made the story of this transformation – “How a Detainee Became an Asset: Sept.11 Plotter Cooperated After Waterboarding” – its Aug. 29 lead story on Page One. To drive home the central point, the Post declared that “this reversal occurred after Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning and prolonged sleep deprivation, among other harsh interrogation techniques.”

But the story contained some weird contradictions that might have given pause to a less credulous – or less biased – newspaper. ...

~snip~

... The story is written as if the Post writers Peter Finn, Joby Warrick and Julie Tate are seeking expiation for their sins of writing fact-and-document-based stories in recent days.

The Post management, it seems, is determined to return to its past practice of acting as stenographers for the CIA’s PR machine.

Cont'd: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/083009a.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. Here's one of the most interesting parts of Ray McGovern's article...

"It turns out that many of these 'ex-CIA officials,' cited in the Post article, are folks with the most to lose if Attorney General Eric Holder starts unraveling the sordid tale of torture, assassination, kidnapping, you name it over which they had purview and in which they were involved.

The Post article was accompanied by a photo of A.B. 'Buzzy' Krongard, who laments that 'morale at the agency is down to minus 50.'

To their credit, I suppose, Pincus and Warrick do note that Krongard was the 'third-ranking CIA official at the time of the use of harsh practices,' but there is no specific statement that Krongard and other worriers about CIA morale just might have some huge self-interest in discouraging investigations.

Post readers are not alerted, for instance, to Krongard’s history as the official who gave Blackwater, the ex-CIA-official-dominated firm sometimes called Assassination Inc., its initial contract, nor that he joined Blackwater’s Board of Directors after retiring from the CIA. Nor that with the help of his brother, the State Department’s Inspector General, he helped block congressional inquiries into alleged Blackwater illegalities.

Instead, the Post treats Krongard as a reliable source and the Obama administration’s release of torture-related documents as a policy blunder.

“'One former senior official said President Obama was warned in December that release of the Justice Department memos sanctioning harsh interrogation methods would create an uproar that could not be contained,' the Post reported, quoting the official as saying:

“They (the White House) thought that it would be a two-day story; they were wrong.”

“'Warning' the President of the United States! Who’s running this country, anyway?"

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/083009a.html

-----------------------------------------------------

The first interesting part is reconfirmation that the Washington Paste is a tool of the worst elements in the CIA. This has been evident for quite some time, but it's important to keep ripping the veil back and understanding what we can of how this works. WaPo's use of the completely unreliable source, as if he were reliable, is a case in point. Their agenda is lawlessness, torture and mass death in service to our Corporate Rulers and various war profiteers--in short, fascism. We should never forget this about the Washington Past. Be especially wary of the psyops and disinformation in their 'news' stories. They mean you and most Americans--not to mention other peoples around the world--ill. Very ill, indeed.

The second interesting part is the allegation that the Obama White House thought this would be "a two-day story." Think about this. If true, it means that the Obama White House intended the release of the Report as a method of killing accountability for the torture.

Do I think this is true? I don't know. But I think it points to deeper realities that are very hard to see. Among them is the evident immunity that has been granted to the Bush Junta principles for these and other monstrous crimes including slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent people to steal their oil, massive looting of the federal government and literally ripping up the Constitution and the rule of law. It could be that this is the beginning of holding them to account, but if the Obama White House truly intended the torture Report as a "two-day story," then they have no intention of holding anyone to account, let alone the "deciders" who gave the orders.

The deeper reality that is hard to see may involve either willing or unwilling limitations on Obama's power as president--deals he made or agreed to so as not to be Diebolded and 'Swift-boated' in 2008, and/or unconstitutional curtailments of his power and authority being exercised by our Corporate Rulers and their secret government. Leon Panetta is an interesting figure in this respect. I think it is a total cover story that he was a "civilian" when Obama appointed him head of the CIA. He was a member of Bush Sr's "Iraq Study Group," for one thing--the group that Bush Sr formed to get Bush Jr out of hot water with the CIA over the Plame/Brewster-Jennings outings, and to rescue him from Cheney/Rumsfeld's plan to nuke Iran. The BS about Panetta being a "civilian" was a little blip in the 'news' early on, then it vanished. Don't you think the Pukes in Congress would have been all over this, if it were true (a civilian heading the CIA)? Not a peep of them. He sailed right through.

I think there was tremendous turmoil inside of our government and among its "powers that be" round about 2005 (circa Katrina). I think Bush Jr, Cheney and Rumsfeld were promised immunity for all their crimes in exchange for not nuking Iran (a war into which China and/or Russia was threatening to enter, on Iran's side), and everything that has happened since has flowed from that behind-the-scenes struggle, including ending the dispute between Bush/Rove vs Cheney/Libby on who would take the rap for the Plame outings, Rumsfeld's resignation (obsessed with nuking Iran; the worst malefactor in the Bush Junta; military brass in rebellion against him), the Democrats (including many "Blue Dogs") being permitted to win the 2006 elections (but not stop the Iraq war), Pelosi's odd announcement, "Impeachment is off the table" (WHAT "table"?), the abandonment of McCain (couldn't be trusted not to nuke Iran), and the vetting of the Democratic candidates and exclusion from the White House of any who wouldn't agree to "the Deal" or were judged as too unlikely to agree to it.

Panetta--an old CIA hand, with a foreign policy school all his own in Monterey, CA, near the Navy spy school--was brought in to heal the wounds inflicted by Cheney/Rumsfeld (who were literally at war with the CIA), to protect "the Deal" and maybe to protect Obama from Bushwhack moles. One of the corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies the other day reported that there was a shouting match between Panetta and White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel (a position that Panetta himself held in the Clinton White House), about releasing the torture Report and opening an investigation. It's a good bet that Emmanuel is also CIA. Was this shouting match a theatrical performance (say, to cover Panetta's ass with his CIA colleagues), or was it real? (Or did it even happen?--there's is no trusting our corpo/fascist press.) Panetta's first words as CIA head were "no one in the CIA is going to be prosecuted." Now prosecution seems to threaten. Is this really Rahm Emmanuel allowing the Attorney General some independence--and if so, is Eric Holder (Chiquita International's death squad attorney) likely to violate secret government deals all on his own, putting the Obama White House and Obama himself in peril? Or is something else going on? Say, Emmanuel trying to get around Panetta and remove CIA personnel whom he doesn't trust? Or a shadow-play--play-acting at an investigation? (The result will be wrist-slaps and quiet retirements to lush island estates in the Caribbean?)

And if the whole thing is a shadow-play--not a serious investigation that would, inevitably, lead to the top "deciders"--why is this necessary? The answers could be quite complicated and could involve international pressure, foreign policy initiatives that are failing, possible World Court proceedings, 'white hat' CIA who want the torturers and Bushwhack moles removed and possibly their allies in Congress.

Or, deeper still, this could be a continuing Bushwhack plot to destroy the CIA--blame it for everything, tear it apart--and/or part of a scenario to destroy Obama and restore the Bush Junta in 2012? Cheney/Rumsfeld tried to blame the CIA for their WMD lies about Iraq ("bad intelligence"--har, har), with Rumsfeld meanwhile running his own shop, the "Office of Special Plans," to manufacture WMD evidence. It is in their interest that the CIA be blamed for the torture as well. Maybe this is their shadow-play. It would certainly fit Rumsfeld's twisted mind, and Cheney's, to use those who are against torture to further destroy any internal controls in our government and to "divide and conquer" by pitting a Democratic president against the CIA. In fact, it would be just like them to do this. They get the secret torture report released, through their own levers of pressure (holds over people, blackmail, kneecapping, bribery) in order to cause this fracas, knowing that they themselves are immunized from it, and can now pontificate on the benefits of torture.

Given our secret government, which has long been running things in the interest of global corporate predators and war profiteers, it is impossible for us to know for sure--except maybe 40-50 years later (and even then, big secrets remain)--what is going on within the different factions of our actual government. But one thing is clear: none of these power players is motivated by devotion to democracy. The games we see in the corpo/fascist media--the things we are permitted to see--are NOT democracy. Cheney in jail would be democracy. Rumsfeld in jail would be democracy. And, believe me, that ain't going to happen. Instead, we have Cheney blathering in the media advocating torture! And we have Rumsfeld...well, who knows? Personally I think he is engaged in planning Oil War II-South America.

Our battered, broken democracy does not have the power to put them in jail. We don't even have the power to guarantee our President a real election in 2012. The counting of our votes has been entirely privatized, and is now run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by a handful of rightwing corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls. The corpo/fascist media can spin any kind of "Alice in Wonderland" narratives they want to, but it will never be democracy. It is shadows and spin and lies and disinformation. A phantasm of democracy, in which torturers are treated as respected figures, who get to argue for torture, and are free to go about and to live in luxury, while their heinously abused victims commit suicide or are long dead and rotting in secret graves. What they were really tortured for, we will never know. But we can be sure of this, given who was in charge: it was NOT to "keep us safe."