Ex-CIA Agent, Whistleblower John Kiriakou Sentenced to Prison While Torturers He Exposed Walk Free

[No Elephants]

Ex-CIA Agent, Whistleblower John Kiriakou Sentenced to Prison While Torturers He Exposed Walk Free

Former CIA agent John Kiriakou speaks out just days after he was sentenced to 30 months in prison, becoming the first CIA official to face jail time for any reason relating to the U.S. torture program.

Under a plea deal, Kiriakou admitted to a single count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by revealing the identity of a covert officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it.

Supporters say Kiriakou is being unfairly targeted for having been the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the Bush administration’s use of waterboarding. Kiriakou joins us to discuss his story from Washington, D.C., along with his attorney, Jesselyn Radack, director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project.

"This ... was not a case about leaking; this was a case about torture. And I believe I’m going to prison because I blew the whistle on torture," Kiriakou says. "My oath was to the Constitution. … And to me, torture is unconstitutional.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/30/ex_cia_agent_whistleblower_john_kiriakou

What is wrong with these people?

Next thing you know, someone's going to claim drone killings are unconstitutional.

Swore an oath. Big deal. So did everybody else who works for the federal government. You don't see them complaining about torture, do you?

Some people just don't get the whole looking only forward thing.

If I knew how to tell fake fundraising websites from real ones, I would contribute. This site seems legit? http://www.defendjohnk.com/howtohelp.html

[Enthusiast]

1. Apparently I was going through life in a fog.

I thought we were the good guys.

Then Bush stole the election, staged or allowed 911, faked reasons for the Iraq War, tortured people just like the Imperial Japanese and the Nazis and destroyed the world economy while they pocketed billions as a reward.

I knew then and there, we were no longer the good guys. I'm a fairly bright boy. I couldn't miss all that bad stuff. But there was light on the horizon, Barack Obama. He was here to save us from the guys that should have been wearing black hats, the Fascists. But I found out we really are the bad guys, really and THOROUGHLY.

"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."

Frank Zappa

[No Elephants]

2. We were all brainwashed early on. Very gently, not with torture. By people we

loved, trusted and admired. Parents, school teachers, Sunday School teachers, etc.

Not because they were evil, either, but because they believed. too.

And then, there were our textbooks and our cities and towns and the parade and the fireworks and all that stuff kids adore.

And so on.

When I was in high school, a history teacher told us that our captured troops were rather easily broken during the Korean War during interrogation sessions because they had never learned the truth about the uglier side of the U.S., such as slavery, exploitation and slaughter of original Americans. etc.

So, when shown proof of these things in writings by Americans, they felt they had been sold a bill of goods. And they no longer trusted anything that they had ever been told about America. And, from what America learned of that experience, textbooks were changed to discuss these things.

Yes, but only to a point. We were led to believe that all that was in the past. Moreover, some things, are still glossed over. Like how greedy and racist and misogynistic our founders and the Framers were. Thomas Jefferson with his "self-evident truths" and God and equality owning 800 slaves, one of whom was his young mistress (his deceased wife's half sister) and several of whom were his children by his mistress, is a prime example. Just imagine what textbooks and lesson plans were like in 1928!

There is even a quote by Jefferson that appears again and again on Democratic message boards that is anti-corporation. Only trouble is, no one has been able to find any record of Jefferson's ever having said or written it. So the b.s. that those people were 99%ers or at least shared the values and goals of 99%ers persists. Why? Because many of us were taught and believed that those people walked on water and we still want to believe it.

We were given a worldview early on. We were comfortable with it and comforted by it. So was everyone we knew. There was no reason to look beyond it.

So, as humans then tend to do, we discounted every fact that didn't fit within it. And, if we couldn't discount it, we either ignored it entirely or re-shaped it to fit the story we had in our minds and hearts and viscera.

It's human nature, for some reason. Remember, people who believed the world was flat had been watching the sun sink below the horizon every evening for all their respective lives for many thousands of years. But, who you gonna believe? The greatest minds and teachers of the ages or your own lying eyes?

[Enthusiast]

3. Very well said.

There was also all that manifest destiny stuff that has yet to expire.

[No Elephants]

4. Our manifest destiny was to occupy the entire continent wasn't it?

Canada! (Said like Seinfeld said "Newman!)

[Enthusiast]

5. Oh, the ultra righties

are making inroads into Canada. We must end their communist health care system that deprives honest citizens of rightful profit.