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CIA vs. Pelosi
Comments on the Pelosi fight with the CIA took over several threads here – so lets give it a dedicated one.
My view:
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Did Pelosi know that torture was going on?
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Likely yes, but not through official sources. The informal sources did not provide hard proof. As the minority leader withe the public and the media supporting Bush what could she do?
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Was Pelosi officially briefed on torture?
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Likely yes, but in very obfuscated ways – 'we probably could use this technique …'.
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Did the CIA brief her on specific 'methods' used on specific persons?
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Likely not.
Consider:
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The CIA is professional in the business of lying.
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The CIA did lie (and still lies) about abducting and torturing people.
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The current Panetta/CIA uttering about having briefed Pelosi are non-denial denials.
This is not a case about Pelosi. That's just an artificial sideshow.
But in total I welcome this fight and the discussion. It makes the torture issue more public and will lead, in one way or another, to a wider public opening of the whole case.
Obama's argument that publishing more torture pictures would incite more resistance to the U.S. military is stupid. The people who have been tortured know. They tell their stories all the time (just not in our media). Their sons, fathers, uncles and cousins know. Their experience gets broadcast on Al Jazeera.
The pictures will not change that. Publishing the pictures will not change the knowledge the people have. It will shock for a moment but the fact that they get published will also convince that the U.S. can indeed turn away from erroneous paths. The only way for the U.S. to redeem itself in the eyes of many, many people is to let the truth out and to publicly repent its deeds.
That could be done through:
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A truth commission (likely a whitewash and thereby bad)
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A Congress investigation (too political)
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An independent counsel investigation (difficult minefield – depends on person)
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Individual court cases (good but too slow).
Whatever. It will be impossible to keep the story under wraps and will be impossible,
as the Republicans try, to redefine it. The evidence is out there and the number of witnesses is just too big.
My favorite solution?
An investigation by an independent counsel with full legal powers and dedicated to the issue. Real legal consequences for all involved. Nominated lead person: Patrick Fitzgerald.
The Pelosi-Cheney Palooza Torture Tour.
She wanted to play w/the beltway bullies, it’s been the dream of her ever-contrapuntal life.
In ‘recovery’ circles, they call denial a form of sickness, or survival. Better, a form of sickness OF survival. Denial is an illusionary system, but a powerful tool. Using this tool makes reality more palatable.
Our society/system is sick, soul sick. Soul sick in the way an addict/junkie is sick. And lets face it, our society has become an addict. In The Birth and Death of Meaning A Perspective in Psychiatry and Anthropology Ernest Becker wrote, “If everybody lives roughly the same lies about the same things, there is no one to call them liars. They jointly establish their own sanity and call themselves normal.” Perhaps this explains the Dkos crowd and the possibly the rest of the Coke and Pepsi SYSTEM? Are they also useful idiots? Or being lead around like abuse survivors w/collective PTSD? Abuse survivors often get stuck in archetypal ‘magical thinking’. Further, I’d say not only have the citizen of this republic been abused, they have also come to enjoy their abuse. They subconsciously feel they deserve it.
Anne Wilson Schaef asked, in her decades old book, THE ADDICTIVE ORGANIZATION What are the implications IF organizations continue to function “addictively? I think we are beginning to know what we know.
Anne Wilson Schaef has shown how an Addictive Organization such as our whole political system works. Her theories explain a great deal about the way it functions for the Corporate wing.
For example, DKos banning someone for recommending a book. Yes, you read that right. Talk about denial, Someone wrote a diary at Dailykos simply about a book and was banned.
Sat May 16, 2009 at 01:09:42 AM PDT
Now, before you get your panties in a bunch, this is about a new book, titled “The Ground Truth: The Story Behind America’s Defense on 9/11”. http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/titledetail.cfm?titleNumber=1098832
And before you get all outraged (The FAQ! The FAQ!), here is the author of the book, John Farmer:
John Farmer served as Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, where his areas of responsibility included assessing the national response to the terrorist attacks and evaluating the current state of national preparedness for terrorist attacks and natural disasters, he also served as attorney general of New Jersey (1999-2002), as chief counsel to Governor Whitman, and as a federal prosecutor. He recently served as a subject matter/rule of law expert on security to the special envoy for Middle East regional security. He is currently a partner of a New Jersey law form and an adjunct professor of national security law at Rutgers University Law School. His editorials and articles have appeared in “The New York Times” and elsewhere
And my diary title are the words of Farmer’s publisher, Houghton Mifflin.
I wrote a couple of nights ago, here —
‘9/11 Commission Report — Info Obtained Through Torture” (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/14/731262/-9-11-Commission-reportinfo-obtained-through-torture )
— as to how much of what was published in the 9/11 Commission report was obtained through torture, and is therefore completely without credibility.
Scandalous enough, right?
Well, it gets worse.
The above described James Farmer has just come out with his new book. It was released April 14. I have not read it (I just heard about it maybe ten minutes ago) and it is difficult to find any reviews of it by any mainstream book reviewers (gee, what a surprise!).
But according to the publisher, it’s quite a bombshell:
Description:
As of the 9/11 Commission’s one of the primary authors report, John Farmer is proud of his and his colleagues’ work. Yet he came away from the experience convinced that there was a further story to be told, one he was uniquely qualified to write.
Now that story can be told. Tape recordings, transcripts, and contemporaneous records that had been classified have since been declassified, and the inspector general’s investigations of government conduct have been completed. Drawing on his knowledge of those sources, as well as his years as an attorney in public and private practice, Farmer reconstructs the truth of what happened on that fateful day and the disastrous circumstances that allowed it: the institutionalized disconnect between what those on the ground knew and what those in power did. He reveals — terrifyingly and illuminatingly — the key moments in the years, months, weeks, and days that preceded the attacks, then descends almost in real time through the attacks themselves, revealing them as they have never before been seen.
Ultimately Farmer builds the inescapably convincing case that the official version not only is almost entirely untrue but serves to create a false impression of order and security. The ground truth that Farmer captures tells a very different story — a story that is doomed to be repeated unless the systemic failures he reveals are confronted and remedied.
It goes on …..
I’m just amazed. Yes, I know perhaps I shouldn’t be, but if you read about this book, you realize that it’s finally coming out that the 9/11 Commission actually did CONSPIRE to lie about what they knew.
And who bans that? Dailykos of all people, even though the guy who wrote it was a Commission insider.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but how fucking stupid is that?
They also banned another guy, TocqueDeville, who is one of the only good writers over there.
The lid is starting to blow on this whole thing, the torture, 9/11, conspiracy, all of it, and this is how people are responding?
I know, I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s so …. of them to simply deny FACTS. To shut down whistle-blowers.
I mean, fucking Dick Cheney could put out a fucking FULL CONFESSION and they would simply BAN IT. And if Dailykos would ban it you can bet the rest of the media would, too.
Man. Maybe all the bullshit about Kos being CIA is true.
Ive been saying it loudly since 2005: With a few minority exceptions, MOST if not ALL liberal slanted news/blog/media sites HATE 9/11 Truth and censor anything that challenges the official story. To this day, I find so called leftists allegedly opposed to wars and Bush get the most pissed off and irritated
by people who question 9/11. The Fox News crowd just kind of laughs, but for some reason the left reallllly hates that and is very quick to throw out the “conspiracy theorist” label. Did you see the Huffington Post “Conspiracies take precious time away from real issues” bullshit piece?
Richard Clarke, Colin Powell and Joe Biden could come out on national tv and say 9/11 was not as we were told, and the left leaning press would censor it and anyone who talked about it.
I mean its shocking, Ive found more 9/11 truth articles on Fox News(Israeli involvement, Able Danger, etc) than I have on MotherJones, Common Dreams, etc.
…at least a few leftists are starting to break ranks on the pro Afghan war position.
(And the reason I attack the left more than the right; is because we already know the right is a laughable cesspool.
guy who wrote this book in question. He’s a total insider, an actual whistleblower, if you will.
And he gets censored at a “liberal” blog?
I sometimes think that places like Dailykos are perfect “salt licks” for liberals, you know? I mean if you wanted to create a place to attract liberals, so you could identify them, a place like that would be perfect.
For the gov’t, it’s pretty freaking easy to do that. We look at the news to see what we are supposed to think. That’s now called (in the ‘hip’ circles) prop-agenda, coined by Brian Eno. “The problem is not propaganda but the relentless control of the kind of things we think about…”
Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 18 2009 11:41 utc | 14
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