Crimes not crimes when clandestine — rights abusers, mass marketers conspire in dodging culpability

Criminals justify their crimes, purging themselves in prime time broadcasts, on powerful print pages

By Carolyn Bennett (editing, commentary)

I’m CIA, Bobby. Officially I don’t exist.…  My profit’s my reward— for selfless service to god and country.” [Before drilling 7 gun shots into two gagged, tied up internal affairs FBI officials]

“This isn’t about sides, this is about confusion. This is about creating enemies where there aren’t any. …”   [Film “White Sands”]

Art imitates life

This week’s notorious” author spy (retired)

Democracy Now! pushed a clip from CBS’s 60 Minutes with former CIA clandestine operations and lead interrogator Jose Rodriguez headlined: “Ex-CIA Interrogator says [U.S. President Barack] Obama’s Policy is to ‘Kill All Prisoners.’”

TARGETED ASSASSINATION (execution without arrest, charge or trial)

U.S. CIA assassination drone

Commenting on a system he was part of and from which he retired and wrote his book, Rodriguez said: “‘We don’t capture anybody any more … the default option of this Administration has been to kill all prisoners. Take no prisoners.…  How could it be more ethical to kill people rather than capture them? I never understood that one.’”

A Wikipedia profile says Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. is known for being the Director of the National Clandestine Service (D/NCS) of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) — the top Human Intelligence operations post in the United States government.  Rodriguez was the last CIA Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) before that position was expanded to D/NCS in December 2004, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Rodriguez_(intelligence_officer

Former U.S. President (#37)
Richard M. Nixon

Daily Beast reported WATERBOARDING, yes, and lie about it and cover it up

Former CIA official Jose Rodriguez “defends the waterboarding program and says he was right in 2005 to order the destruction of videotapes of the harsh interrogation sessions, in which suspected Al Qaeda terrorists were held down and subjected to a simulated drowning.”

U.S. Presidents 43 and 44
George W. Bush
Barack H. Obama

Criminals’ CONFLICTING STORIES

When Congress member claims deniability, call her a liar

While a ranking member of the House intelligence committee after September 11, 2001, she was fully informed about the use of waterboarding, says the Ex-CIA employee. “‘[House Democratic leader Nancy] Pelosi said that we only briefly mentioned waterboarding and left the impression that it had not been used [but] … I know she got it.’”

Former Speaker of
U.S.. House of Representatives
How many more atrocities 

DRONES yes/no (having it both ways)

“‘Drones can be a highly effective way of dealing with high-priority targets,’ Rodriguez writes, ‘But they should not become the drug of choice for an administration that is afraid to use successful, legal and safe tactics of the past. … There is no opportunity to interrogate or learn anything from a suspect who is vaporized by a missile launched by a keystroke executed thousands of miles away.’”

Committing crime is okay

Legacy:
Nixon government
Obama government

If clandestine

If government officials can claim to have gotten what you wanted by committing the crime

Christian Science Monitor (2011) reports former intelligence officials’ saying, “‘We are concerned about the suggestion by some that the use of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques led U.S. forces to Osama bin Laden’s compound.’”

Retired Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who interrogated generals under the command of Saddam Hussein and evaluated U.S. detention operations at Guantánamo, reportedly said Osama bin Laden “could have wrapped himself in an American flag and had a white flag in both hands” but “if [special operators] were told to go in and kill this guy — and they clearly understood the marching orders — he would have “still been killed.”

A group of former intelligence officials, including Herrington, released a statement in 2011 disagreeing with former George W. Bush officials’ (among them Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s television assertion that anyone saying waterboarding does not produce enormous valuable intelligence is not facing the truth) crediting themselves with criminal methods effecting the Obama government’s hunt down and assassination of Osama bin Laden.

Targeted Assassination

EVEN WHEN THE COVER SLIPS and barbarity of soldiers, embracing the pattern set by their masters, reaches sunlight, U.S. officialdom (government and mass media) denies wrongdoing and culpability, and no court holds higher ups to account for their crimes.

On the World Socialist Web Site David Walsh ended an article published on April 19, 2012:

How many individual atrocities have to take place before it becomes clear that an entire operation is criminal to its core?

Greenpeace image

“After the exposure of each U.S. atrocity—including the slaughter of civilians, the abuse and torture of prisoners, the mutilation of corpses for trophies, Marines urinating on the Afghan dead, the desecration of the Koran—American officials express dismay and describe the incidents as the actions of ‘individuals’ who have perverted a righteous cause. This is a lie. 

First, considering the unprecedented level of censorship of the war in Afghanistan, the episodes that come to light are undoubtedly only the tip of the iceberg. It can be asserted without hesitation that these sorts of crimes occur on virtually a daily basis. The exposure of the Qalat desecrations depended entirely on one soldier’s courageous act.

Second, the incidents that have been publicized make clear a pattern of barbaric behavior on the part of U.S. and allied troops. This flows inevitably from the predatory character of the war and the situation in which American and other occupying forces find themselves: resented and hated by the Afghan population (the brigade lost 35 members during the year-long deployment, 23 of them to homemade bombs or suicide bombers), the soldiers’ increasing demoralization finds expression in acts of brutality.

How many individual atrocities have to take place before it becomes clear that an entire operation is criminal to its core?

Hang legal and moral questions

The “asserted” end (often itself untrue) justifies the means. Right and wrong are no more than “colored bubbles.”

As defined by a clever Clinton on matters of less import, crime and punishment, law and order, right and wrong all depend who does the crime and how, whose political party or what individual (backed by what private interest) holds the seat of power when crimes are committed; and or whether a criminal is in office committing the crime or out of office writing a book about having committed a crime.

This collective failure to call a crime a crime and to prosecute it as such results from the fact that there are powerful conspirators in the act and cover up of high crimes: from government officials to “educators” to book writers to mass communications industries (newspapers, broadcasters, hard copy and electronic publishing, web makers and masters) promoting purgative tomes of “truths,” half-truths, cover-ups, and protracted lies.

Sources and notes

Transcription from ending scenes of “White Sands” film, a speech by Gorman Lennox (Mickey Rourke)

“White Sands” [not what it seems] is a 1992 Roger Donaldson-directed film starring Willem Dafoe as New Mexico Deputy Sheriff Ray Dolezal; Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as well-heeled finder of money for any “causes” for her kickback on front or back end, whichever is more profitable; and Mickey Rourke as “I’m C [BLINKING] I A…” arms trafficker mayhem-maker, murdered for profit

White Sands at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105813/; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sands_(film)

Democracy Noq headlines April 30. 21012, http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/30/headlines#43011

“CIA Veteran Jose Rodriguez Defends Waterboarding in New Book,” April 29, 2012,

CIA veteran Jose Rodriguez answers critics of the agency’s harsh interrogation techniques—and defends his decision to destroy the tapes. Philip Shenon on his explosive new book

©2011 The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company LLC

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/29/cia-veteran-jose-rodriguez-defends-waterboarding-in-new-book.html

Wikipedia Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr.  profile Being the Director of the CIA/National Clandestine Service.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Rodriguez_(intelligence_officer)

“Military interrogators: Waterboarding didn’t yield tips that led to bin Laden — Several former military interrogators refute assertions that waterboarding and other ‘enhanced’ methods provided intelligence that led the U.S. to bin Laden. Some lament lost opportunity to grill Al Qaeda's leader” (Anna Mulrine, CSM Staff writer),/ May 5, 2011, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2011/0505/Military-interrogators-Waterboarding-didn-t-yield-tips-that-led-to-bin-Laden

“Photos of U.S. troops defiling corpses expose Afghan war’s savagery” (David Walsh), April  

19, 2012, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/apr2012/afgh-a19.shtml

Images

“High Crimes” was 2002 film (starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman) portraying an case of U.S. military massacre of Latin American villagers, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0257756/

Nancy Pelosi image at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediarepublic/category/politics/

When the president does it, Nixon-Obama

http://fullmetalpatriotblog.com/2011/10/government-accountability-office-reports-executive-office-of-the-president-violated-federal-law/

File:Waterboarding From The Inquisition To Guantanamo.jpg

commons.wikimedia.org

stoptorture.png

blogs.law.harvard.edu
DoNoHarm.jpg
flashreport.org
no_war.jpg
greenpeace.org.uk
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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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