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[Photo Shutterstock/Hart Williams]
Here is the standard version of “The Empire Strikes Back”:
CIA Interrogations Saved Lives
Wall Street JournalThe Senate Intelligence investigators never spoke to us—the leaders of the agency whose policies they are now assailing for partisan reasons. — The Senate Intelligence Committee has released its majority report on Central Intelligence Agency detention and interrogation in the wake of 9/11.
Who is ‘us’? Gladjaasked:
Updated Dec. 9, 2014 6:51 p.m. ET
The Senate Intelligence Committee has released its majority report on Central Intelligence Agency detention and interrogation in the wake of 9/11. The following response is from former CIA Directors George J. Tenet, Porter J. Goss and Michael V. Hayden (a retired Air Force general), and former CIA Deputy Directors John E. McLaughlin, Albert M. Calland (a retired Navy vice admiral) and Stephen R. Kappes :
[Photo illustration Shutterstock/Hart Williams]
They are upset because their “honor” has been besmirched:
What is wrong with the committee’s report?
First, its claim that the CIA’s interrogation program was ineffective in producing intelligence that helped us disrupt, capture, or kill terrorists is just not accurate. The program was invaluable in three critical ways:• It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.
• It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives.
• It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it.
Basically this argument comes down to the old saw about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. They claim torture got good information. Others have consistently claimed that the “good information” from KSM came when the torture stopped and classic “friendly” interrogation techniques were used.
And we are again at the Ferguson, Missouri Debate Standoff: He says monster, they say unarmed kid.
The full-court press is on, happily aided and abetted by that Super Patriot, Rupert Murdoch and, naturally,
Our view on this is shared by the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Republican minority, both of which are releasing rebuttals to the majority’s report. Both critiques are clear-eyed, fact-based assessments that challenge the majority’s contentions in a nonpartisan way.
Those who still believe in the concept of reasoned debate will note that this is an appeal to authority, and the “clear-eyed” assessments are merely included by fiat, but not by citation.
In other words: My fellow bloggers are presenting clear-eyed rebuttals to this specious nonsense.
But I am not here to praise the Caesar Word Salad. I am here to bury it.
Nowhere in the article does it mention that torture is WRONG.
[Photo: Shutterstock]
Everyone argues about its ineffectiveness, and these turds argue about its effectiveness, but nowhere is it mentioned that torture is WRONG.
Got that?
W.R.O.N.G.
George Washington forbade it in the face of the British Prison Ships and their torture during the Revolution and we have REMAINED constant to that MORAL assessment ever after.
Because it was WRONG.
Only when Georgie Bush and Dickie Cheney decided that they were a moral law unto themselves, redefining the presidential Prime Directive (protect and defend the CONSTITUTION and the laws) to “keeping the American People Safe” did torture happen, and contemporaneously was it pretended that there WAS no torture.
Now, that flaccid mask of defense has dropped, and our own KGB, the former directors of the CIA, pretend that it was EFFECTIVE.
Nowhere do they pretend that it was morally right. No: so amoral are these pukes that they rely instead on the echo chamber.
And this:
The president approved the program. The attorney general deemed it legal.
Right. That and two bucks’ll get you a frappuccino.
They didn’t say “right.” They said “other people said it was legal.”
End of argument. We were told it was legal, and we claim (highly dubiously) that it was “effective.”
Oh, and it saved all kinds of lives, and stopped all kinds of plots, and HEY! AS LONG AS IT WORKED WHO CARES ABOUT MORALITY OR ETHICS?
Easy peasy: I do.
Which is why I have chosen to retire from the political sphere for the time being. Morality, facts and “right and wrong” do not matter to these people.
The division could not be more stark.
Torture remains wrong.
[Photo: Shutterstock]
The former directors of the CIA remain full of fecal matter, which is the only matter that seems to matter to them in defending themselves.
Jeremy Bentham’s Hedonistic Calculus does not apply here. Simple American morality does:
Torture is wrong.
Perhaps in all this blather, one of these “good Christians” would like to address that.
Don’t hold your breath.
Courage.
- Hart Williams’ story collection will be available shortly.
A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog, His Vorpal Sword (no spaces) dot com.