Syrian ambassador says it all in just one paragraph.

BE SURE TO PASS THESE ARTICLES TO FRIENDS AND KIN. A LOT DEPENDS ON THIS. DO YOUR PART.

Syria's UNO ambassador, Bashar Jaafari: Speaking truth to power, but can sociopaths really listen?


If published in the New York Times, which daily dedicates acres of newsprint to fluff and outrageous warmongering lies of utility only to the world plutocracy it serves (later amplified by the rest of the prostituted mainstream media), statements like Amb. Jaafari's would go a long way to restore sanity and honesty in the affairs of nations. It would take less than one inch in any of the broadsheet's pages. Yes, the truth is simple, direct and concise. It does not require tons of artifice and embellishment. But it won't happen. For the simple reason the New York Times—as we all know so well— and its fellow capitalist media are not really news media but —in regard to all topics of vital interests to humanity—propaganda platforms in the west's Ministry of Truth.

BONUS FEATURES

UNSC meets to discuss reports of chemical attack in Syria

 

Russia and U.K. clash at United Nations Security Council

 

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

black-horizontal

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

[premium_newsticker id=”211406″]



The CIA’s Big Lie for Gina Haspel

BE SURE TO PASS THESE ARTICLES TO FRIENDS AND KIN. A LOT DEPENDS ON THIS. DO YOUR PART.


The Central Intelligence Agency is rolling out the “big lie” on Capital Hill in order to gain confirmation for Gina Haspel as its director.  Haspel became the CIA’s deputy director in February 2017 when then CIA director Mike Pompeo, who has endorsed torture and abuse, ignored the Senate Intelligence Committee’s authoritative report on torture and named one of tortures strongest advocates within the National Clandestine Service.  The director of the Senate’s report, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D/CA) actually blocked Haspel’s appointment to become deputy director for operations in 2013 because of Haspel’s links to torture and abuse.

Haspel, who is known as “Bloody Gina” to some of her Agency colleagues, was a leading protagonist for the torture program on the seventh floor of CIA’s headquarters building.  She was a deputy and protege to Jose Rodriguez, the CIA’s notorious former deputy director for operations and former director of the Center for Counterterrorism.  If the CIA’s torture and abuse program had a godfather, it was Rodriguez.  Haspel was a devoted acolyte.


CBS whitewashes Haspel, via unrepentant spook-in-residence Mike Morrell. 


  • Caution: You are now entering an imperial disinformation zone •

Published on May 2, 2018

CBS News senior national security contributor Michael Morell spent more than 30 years at the CIA, where he served as both deputy and acting director. Now, he's also a podcast host. On "Intelligence Matters," Morell talks to leading voices in national security and foreign policy. Morell joins "CBS This Morning" to discuss the series, Gina Haspel's CIA director nomination, and how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to influence the U.S. public on the Iran nuclear deal.

• You are now leaving the disinformation zone •   

As a result, Haspel became the commander of the Agency’s secret prison in Thailand in 2002, where she oversaw the waterboarding of Abd al-Rahim al-Nishri, who took part in the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.  Abu Zubaida was waterboarded at this prison 83 times, although Haspel was not the commander at the time.  After the prison closed, Haspel returned to the Counterterrorism Center as an operations officer.

When Rodriguez realized that the CIA’s 92 torture tapes would reveal the sadistic extent of the torture program, he realized that it would be less risky to destroy the tapes than to expose the tapes to public scrutiny at home and abroad.  Haspel was a strong advocate for destroying the tapes, and it was Haspel who prepared the cable to the prisons that ordered the destruction. The absence of accountability in the Obama administration paid off for both of them.

Thus, Rodriguez and Haspel were major players in the most shameful period in the CIA’s history, but neither one received serious punishment.  Rodriguez was given a minor administrative reprimand, which was meaningless, and Haspel got off scot-free.  The Department of Justice investigated their conduct, but charged no one with an obvious obstruction of justice despite the fact that the White House and a federal judge had ordered that the tapes be protected.

CIA officials want Haspel to be confirmed because they fear that an alternate to her, such as Senator Tom Cotton (R/AR), would be even worse.  Therefore, they are corroborating the “big lie” that Rodriguez and Haspel introduced to justify the destruction of the tapes.  They maintained that the tapes had to be destroyed in order to protect the identities of the torturers.  In fact, the torturers wore hoods that covered their faces.  The tapes would have revealed the sadistic conduct of CIA officers and contractors, but not their identities.

Currently CIA officers are repeating this false story to congressional staffers to absolve Haspel of any wrongdoing.  Even worse, CIA careerists such as former deputy director Mike Morell are releasing declassified documents to the Senate intelligence committee to vouch for Haspel’s qualifications.  The CIA did the same for Robert M. Gates during his controversial nomination hearings in September 1991, violating the CIA charter against politicizing intelligence information for a congressional committee.

Morell’s memorandum, written in 2011 as the result of a disciplinary review, “found no fault with the performance of Ms. Haspel” because she drafted the cable “on the direct orders” of her superior and did not release it herself.  Obviously, Morell knows nothing of the Nuremberg principles that support punishment for officials who carry out illegal orders.  He made no mention about her leadership at the Agency’s most notorious secret prison in the war on terror.

Sadly, Senator Feinstein is now referring to Haspel as a “good deputy director” who has the “confidence of the Agency.”  Meanwhile, editorials in the mainstream media, including The New York Times and the Washington Post also support confirmation as long as Haspel “forcefully renounced the use of torture.”  President Donald Trump’s support for Pompeo and Haspel is particularly ironic since he previous compared the CIA to Nazi Germany’s Gestapo.  Well, the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation program” was right out of the Nazi playbook.

Now it’s up to the Senate to do the right thing.  Institutions, particularly secret institutions, are unwilling to admit to transgressions, and the CIA has been a leading transgressor over the years.  The CIA, however, can erect classification barriers, claim national security protection, and control the message.  Unfortunately, congressional oversight is primarily observed in the breach.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA and National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism. His latest book is A Whistleblower at the CIA. (City Lights Publishers, 2017).  Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

black-horizontal

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

[premium_newsticker id=”211406″]



What Can Be Done?

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Dear reader: Imperative that you circulate this article with ANY European contact(s) you may have, for obvious reasons. Translate it for them if you must. 


Incredibly, consumerist affluence—now coming to an end—made many Europeans forget the awful price of war in their own homeland. And their cretinous tolerance of utterly corrupt Washington-controlled politicians is dooming them to another catastrophe, this time a thousand times worse.

It is up to Europe whether or not the Earth dies in nuclear Armageddon. 

European governments do not realize their potential to save the world from Washington’s aggression, because the western Europeans are accustomed to being Washington’s vassal states since the end of World War 2, and the eastern and central Europeans have accepted Washington’s vassalage since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Vassalage pays well if all the costs are not counted.

By joining NATO, the eastern and central Europeans permitted Washington to move US military presence to Russia’s borders. This military presence on Russia’s borders gave Washington undue confidence that Russia also could be coerced into a vassal state existence. Despite the dire fate of the two finest armies ever assembled—Napoleon’s Grand Army and that of Germany’s Wehrmacht—Washington hasn’t learned that the two rules of warfare are: (1) Don’t march on Russia. (2) Don’t march on Russia.


Merkel, May and Macron—the damned "Ms" in power. For malignancy? These political scum need to be urgently replaced by true moral, visionary and sovereign leadership. People ready to decouple European foreign policy from Washington's deranged hegemonist designs.


Because of Europe’s subservience to Washington, Washington is unlikely to learn this lesson before Washington marches on Russia.

Washington in its hubristic idiocy has already begun this march piecemeal with the coup in Ukraine and with its attacks on Syrian military positions. As I wrote earlier today https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/04/30/syrian-cisis-escalates/ Washington is escalating the crisis in Syria.

What can stop this before it explodes into war is eastern and central Europe’s decision to disengage as enablers of Washington’s aggression.

There are no benefits to Europe of being in NATO. Europeans are not threatened by Russian aggression, but they are threatened by Washington’s aggression against Russia. If the American neoconservatives and their Israeli allies succeed in provoking a war, all of Europe would be destroyed. Forever.

What is wrong with European politicians that they take this risk with the peoples that they govern?

Europe is still a place of beauty constructed by humans over the ages—architecturally, artistically, and intellectually—and the museum should not be destroyed. Once free of Washington’s vassalage, Europe could even be brought back to creative life.


If Europe had any sense, any leadership, it would tell Washington good-bye. What is the value to Europe of Washington’s hegemony over the world? How do Europeans, as opposed to a handful of politicians receiving bags full of money from Washington, benefit from their vassalage to Washington? Not one benefit can be identified. Washington’s apologists say that Europe is afraid of being dominated by Russia. So why aren’t Europeans afraid of their 73 years of domination by Washington, especially a domination that is leading them into military conflict with Russia? 


Europe is already suffering economically from Washington’s illegal sanctions against Russia forced upon Europeans by Washington and from the millions of non-European refugees flooding the European countries fleeing from Washington’s illegal wars against Muslim peoples, wars that Americans are forced to fight for the benefit of Israel.

What do Europeans get for the extreme penalties imposed on them as Washington’s vassals? They get nothing but the threat of Armageddon. A small handful of European “leaders” get enormous subsidies from Washington for enabling Washington’s illegal agendas. Just take a look at Tony Blair’s enormous fortune, which is not the normal reward for a British prime minister.

Europeans, including the “leaders,” have much more to gain from being connected to the Russia/China Silk Road project. It is the East that is rising, not the West. The Silk Road would connect Europe to the rising East. Russia has undeveloped territory full of resources—Siberia—that is larger than the United States. On a purchasing power parity basis, China is already the world’s largest economy. Militarily the Russian/Chinese alliance is much more than a match for Washington.

If Europe had any sense, any leadership, it would tell Washington good-bye.

What is the value to Europe of Washington’s hegemony over the world? How do Europeans, as opposed to a handful of politicians receiving bags full of money from Washington, benefit from their vassalage to Washington? Not one benefit can be identified. Washington’s apologists say that Europe is afraid of being dominated by Russia. So why aren’t Europeans afraid of their 73 years of domination by Washington, especially a domination that is leading them into military conflict with Russia?

Unlike Europeans and Russians, Americans have scant experience with wartime casualties. Just one World War 1 battle, the Battle of Verdun, produced more casualties than the battle deaths that US has experienced in all the wars of its existence beginning with the Revolutionary War for independence from Britain.

The World War 1 Battle of Verdun,which took place prior to the US entry into the war, was the longest and most costly battle in human history. An estimate in 2000 found a total of 714,231 casualties, 377,231 French and 337,000 German, for an average of 70,000 casualties a month; other recent estimates increase the number of casualties to 976,000 during the battle, with 1,250,000 suffered at Verdun during the war.

In contrast, US casualties for World War 1 after US entry were 53,402 battle deaths and 200,000 nonmortal woundings.

Here is the list of US battle deaths from the War of Revolution through the “global war on terror” as of August 2017:

American Revolution: 4,435
War of 1812: 2,260
Wars against native Americans (1817-1898): 1,000
Mexican War: 1,733
War of Northern Aggression :
North: 104,414
South: 74,524
Spanish-American War: 385
World War 2: 291,557
Korean War: 33,739
Vietnam War: 47,434
Gulf War: 148

This comes to 561,629 battle deaths

If we add the battle deaths of the global war on terror as of Aug. 2017—6,930—we have 568,559 US battle deaths in all US wars. See: https://www.infoplease.com/us/american-wars/americas-wars-us-casualties-and-veterans

That compares to 714,231 casualties, from which I am unable at this time to separate battle deaths from nonmortal wounds and maiming from a single World War 1 battle that did not involve US soldiers.

In other words, except for the [combatants in the civil war] and native Americans, who endured enormous war crimes, the US has no experience of war. So Washington enters war with ease. The next time, however, will be Armageddon, and Washington will no longer exist. And neither will the rest of us.

US deaths in World War 1 were low because the US did not enter the war until the last year. Similarly in World War 2. Japan was defeated by the loss of her navy and air force and by the firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities, which required few US battle deaths. The nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were gratuitous and took place when Japan was asking to surrender. Approximately 200,000 Japanese civilians died in the nuclear attacks and no Americans except prisoners of war held in those cities. In Europe, as in World War 1, the US did not enter the war against Germany until the last year when the Wehrmacht had already been broken and defeated by the Soviet Red Army. The Normandy invasion faced scant opposition as all German forces were on the Russian front.

If there is a World War 3 the US and all of the Western world would be immediately destroyed as nothing stands between the West and the extraordinary nuclear capability of Russia except the likelihood of complete and total destruction. If China enters on Russia’s side, as is expected, the destruction of the entirety of the Western World will be for all time.

Why does Europe enable this scenario? Is there no humanity, no intelligence left anywhere in Europe? Is Europe nothing but a collection of cattle awaiting slaughter from the machinations of the crazed American neocons? Are there no European political leaders with one ounce of common sense, one ounce of integrity?

If not, doom is upon us as there is no humanity or intelligence in Washington.

Europe must take the lead, especially the central Europeans. These are peoples who were liberated from the Nazis by the Russians and who have in the 21st century experienced far more aggression from Washington’s pursuit of its hegemony they they have experienced from Moscow.

If Europe breaks away from Washington’s control, there is hope for life. If not, we are as good as dead.

 


PCR with feline children.

About the Author
  Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

 

 

 

 Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.




Parting shot—a word from the editors

The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

[premium_newsticker id=”211406″]

 




New York Times columnist promotes “women who aggressively seek money and power”

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

“I Want to Be Rich and I’m Not Sorry”

By David Walsh, wsws.org
30 April 2018

On April 28, an opinion piece appeared in the New York Times headlined, “I Want to Be Rich and I’m Not Sorry,” by Jessica Knoll, a novelist who lives in Los Angeles. Knoll is the author of two novels, Luckiest Girl Alive (2015) and the forthcoming The Favorite Sister.

In her column, Knoll writes that she was sexually assaulted by classmates at 15. She goes on, “I decided I could not consider myself successful unless I was somebody powerful, somebody nobody could hurt. Success became a means to wrest back control, literally to increase my value. There is a metonym for that: money.”

The novelist spells out her credo: “Success, for me, is synonymous with making money. I want to write books, but I really want to sell books. I want advances that make my husband gasp and fat royalty checks twice a year. I want movie studios to pay me for option rights and I want the screenwriting comp to boot. … Now I am working toward producing, directing or running my own show. TV is where the money is, and to be perfectly blunt about it, I want to be rich.”

Knoll notes that “less than 12 percent of the world’s billionaires are women, and almost three-quarters of that dismal stat inherited their fortunes,” and argues that “to close the wealth gap, we have to come at it from every angle.”


American culture is simply ethically rotten to its capitalist core, and it could not be otherwise. As Walsh says, "that the Times should carry such an open appeal for women to be single-mindedly greedy and power-hungry and identified that program with contemporary feminism and the #MeToo movement was revealing."

It does not occur to Knoll that the phrase “the wealth gap” was introduced—and continues primarily to be used—to describe the divide between social classes, between the rich and everyone else. The writer is so wealth-obsessed and self-centered that she can only conceive of a “gap” as something existing between herself and those (temporarily) more financially successful!

In any event, as she seems to see it, Knoll’s particular contribution, through her writing, is to help women overcome any embarrassment about the pursuit of wealth. “Only in fiction have I been able to create women who aggressively seek money and power the way men seek money and power. Women who will kill to protect their measly slice of the pie.”

She concludes, “I want to make the kind of money that allows me to jet to Mexico on a Tuesday, to meaningfully contribute to nasty politicians, to afford a shark of a lawyer if any man ever lays a finger on me again. If anyone calls that obnoxious, I want to do what men do, and shrug.”

The New York Times has its own obvious motive for publishing such a wretched column. This conforms to their vigorous support for the #MeToo movement and every other selfish push by upper middle class women for advancement. Knoll’s column suits their notion of “female empowerment.”

The campaign in favor of women millionaires and billionaires is an ongoing effort by the Times. On March 10, the newspaper featured a column by Susan Chira, a senior correspondent and editor on gender issues at the Times, entitled, “Money Is Power. And Women Need More of Both.” Chira also referred to the small number of female billionaires, only 227.

As we noted at the time, that the Times should carry such an open appeal for women to be single-mindedly greedy and power-hungry and identified that program with contemporary feminism and the #MeToo movement was revealing. It was refreshing in the face of the innumerable attempts by the pseudo-left organizations and various commentators to portray the sexual misconduct campaign as something progressive.

Knoll takes this one step farther, by arguing that the appropriate response to sexual assault is to become rich, powerful and selfish.

The novelist passes on this repugnant view to her readers, but she did not grab it out of the blue. This is the product of decades of intellectual debasement in America, the creation of an anti-culture that bows down before money and fame. In fact, money is viewed as the antidote to every problem, the “truly creative power,” as Karl Marx termed it in 1844, “the general confounding and confusing of all things—the world upside-down—the confounding and confusing of all natural and human qualities.”

In this case, Knoll imagines that by becoming “somebody powerful, somebody nobody could hurt,” she is gaining a measure of vengeance, or at least self-protection. In fact, she is affirming the values of a system whose brutality and social alienation led to her attack in the first place.

If Knoll is telling the truth about her sexual assault, it only makes her present opinions all the more repellent. It takes a specific type of malignant social atmosphere to persuade a victim of the cruel indifference to suffering of others that the answer to such behavior is further cruel indifference to suffering.

For a would-be artist, such an outlook is fatal. No one has ever created a significant, enduring work on the basis of the vigilante-revenge outlook of Death Wish or a Clint Eastwood film. It is too shallow, too selfish, too self-serving, it cannot provide the necessary sustenance for a serious look at human behavior and psychology.

It is a sad fact that Knoll appears to see her own pain, but no one else’s.

The great artists of the past, male and female, have not proceeded in this manner. Out of poverty, humiliations and distress, figures such as Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë and Vincent van Gogh developed enormous compassion for their fellow creatures and portrayed them in that light. Their compassion grew in proportion to their difficulties. Suffering may not be the “sole origin of consciousness,” as the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky insisted, but it is certainly one of them.

The German painter and lithographer Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945), who lost a son in World War I, wrote in her diary: “It is my duty to voice the sufferings of humanity, the never-ending sufferings heaped mountain-high. This is my task, but it is not an easy one to fulfil.”

The English novelist George Eliot (1819-1880) commented in a letter, “My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy.”

Now, the New York Times extols the virtue of wealth and selfishness and social indifference. We call it foul, whether Knoll and the Times editors shrug or not.


About the Author

 ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

black-horizontal
[premium_newsticker id=”211406″]




Caveat Emptor: MSNBC and CNN Use CIA Apologists for False Commentary

BE SURE TO PASS THESE ARTICLES TO FRIENDS AND KIN. A LOT DEPENDS ON THIS. DO YOUR PART.


McLaughlin

 by   MSNBC prides itself for progressive reporting on national security issues but continues to use apologists for the Central Intelligence Agency in reporting on key intelligence issues.  The network’s reliance on former deputy director of the CIA John McLaughlin is an excellent example of the skewed and tailored information that it offers to viewers on matters dealing with CIA.  McLaughlin, a former colleague of mine at the CIA who I remember as an amateur magician, regularly pulls the wool over the eyes of such MSNBC veterans as Andrea Mitchell.

The most recent example took place over the past several days, when McLaughlin made the case for confirmation of Gina Haspel as the first woman to become director of the CIA.  McLaughlin and former CIA directors Leon Panetta and John Brennan referred to Haspel as a “seasoned veteran” who had the support of senior CIA leaders.  Perhaps MSNBC should acknowledge the fact that Deputy Director McLaughlin was Haspel’s boss during this terrible period in American history.

Haspel arrived at the CIA in the late 1980s as I was preparing my resignation, but I know from  former colleagues that she is also known as “bloody Gina” for her role as a clandestine operative who was a cheerleader for torture and abuse.  Her role as a commander of a secret prison in Thailand where waterboarding was practiced and her support for destroying the 92 secret tapes that revealed the sadistic practices of the CIA are well known.  These practices went far beyond the practices that were sanctioned in the unconscionable memoranda from the Department of Justice on the euphemistically labeled “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.”

McLaughlin’s role at the CIA is less well known.  Although CIA director George Tenet is infamous for telling President George W. Bush in December 2002 that it would be a “slam dunk” to provide intelligence to take to the American people to support the invasion of Iraq, it was McLaughlin who actually delivered the “slam dunk” briefing at the White House in January 2003.  The briefing was based on the phony National Intelligence Estimate that McLaughlin endorsed in October 2002 along with the infamous White Paper that the CIA delivered to the Congress on the eve of the vote to go to war against Iraq. The White Paper was a violation of the CIA’s charter that prohibits the use of information to influence public opinion. (SIC)

McLaughlin then doubled down in January 2003 when he provided false intelligence and false assurances to Secretary of State Colin Powell who regrettably used CIA’s so-called intelligence in his speech to the United Nations in February 2003 to make the case for war to an international audience.  The Bush administration would have gone to war even if the CIA had gotten the intelligence right, but it is conceivable that honesty from Tenet and McLaughlin and a strong CIA stand could have created more opposition to the war from Congress, the media, and the public. McLaughlin regularly tells his MSNBC audiences that CIA officials tell “truth to power.”  Well, he certainly didn’t at a particularly important point.

More recently, McLaughlin led the CIA’s attempt to discredit the authoritative Senate intelligence committee report on the CIA’s program of torture and abuse.  Like the White Paper in 2002, the CIA report violatedf the CIA charter against influencing public opinion in the United States. In the report titled “Rebuttal: The CIA Responds to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Study of Its Detention and Interrogation Program’” McLaughlin was joined by such CIA apologists as Tenet, former directors Porter Goss and Michael Hayden, and former deputy director Michael Morell.  There were other apologists involved in the project such as Philip Mudd, who comments regularly on CNN, and Jose A. Rodriguez, the godfather of torture and abuse, who was permitted to publish a book that denied there was torture and abuse.

In “Rebuttal,” McLaughlin and the others lie about the information it obtained from 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, and ignore the fact that the information obtained from waterboarding KSM was already available. The apologists also misrepresented the number of detainees in CIA custody, and “Rebuttal” corroborates other lies as well. McLaughlin and Brennan still maintain that the CIA never lied to policymakers about the information obtained from the use of torture.  Thus, we have one of the biggest lies of all from a former deputy director of the CIA and a former director of the CIA, respectively, who regularly “inform” the American people on cable television.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a professor of government at Johns Hopkins University.  A former CIA analyst, Goodman is the author of Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA, National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism, and Whistleblower at the CIA: An Insider’s Account of the Politics of Intelligence.  His forthcoming book is American Carnage: Donald Trump’s War on Intelligence.  Goodman is the national security columnist for counterpunch.org

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

black-horizontal
Things to ponder

While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.

Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report

[premium_newsticker id=”211406″]