rssJohn Brennan: Extremely Powerful. Torture Cover-Ups: Extremely Deluded
Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 1:09 pm
- 3 Comments
Adam Serwer at TAPPED, reading reports of how White House aide John Brennan is pushing to stop declassifications of torturous CIA interrogations, observes:
Brennan may have withdrawn his name from consideration as head of the CIA, but he’s clearly winning the battle over who has more influence with the president. Civil libertarians didn’t beat Brennan. He beat them.
Just saying: who called this? Back in January? Huh? All right then.
Substantively, those who are arguing against disclosure — in response to an American Civil Liberties Union court challenge, remember — mount a weak case. As The Wall Street Journal puts it:
But top CIA officials and some in the White House argue that disclosing such secrets will undermine the agency’s credibility with foreign intelligence services. They also say revealing operational details will embroil officers in probes of activities that were cleared by Justice Department lawyers at the time.
Of course, what the ACLU wants are those Justice Department memos as well, so it’s clear that these are techniques that the Bush Justice Department ordered. As for embroiling them in probes, there’s already a congressional probe brought by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). The broiler’s already on. And what credibility problem exists if the CIA, acting per President Obama’s orders, no longer tortures people? Going further on that point, the CIA is the most prestigious intelligence agency in the world. Other intelligence services, with puny budgets by comparison, want to bandwagon with it, not against it. That intractable power dynamic is the surest hedge against any “credibility” concern.
And let’s also not lose the forest for the trees. Thanks to Mark Danner at The New York Review of Books, we already have a taxonomy from the International Committee of the Red Cross of what sorts of torture detainees endured at the CIA’s hands. Al-Qaeda already has its propaganda tool. The only way it could add to that propaganda line would be if the Obama administration sowed doubt through excessive secrecy that it really was repudiating the torture policies of the Bush administration.
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3 Comments
Comment posted April 15, 2009 @ 10:37 am
Credibility like trust can be likened to an ice cube. Once it melts its hard to put back together.
But when it comes to torture I am sure the CIA knows, KNOWS, that:
1. No matter what some prostitute lawyer says it is illegal
2. No matter what some torture advocate says it rarely if ever produces reliable intel
3. When you take directions from a politician, such as Addington or Cheney or whoever, you are hitching your future to a puff of smoke.
4. The torture advocates saw a political window that would allow it and so they did it.
5. The idea that the CIA is going to lose credibility with the intelligence community because the government punished those that authorized torture is a fig leaf. Everyone, I would bet, said at some time, “If the lid comes off there will be a huge scream.” But they convinced someone that it was worth it. They capitalized on the fear of the decision makers that if there was another 9/11 the intelligence community would be blamed for not discovering it in advance.
I contend that that kind of thinking could be applied to twist the conscience and morals, it could be used to politically blackmail, it could be used to intimidate the folks in this world who have lost their moral compass.
All this simply points to the fact that STRONG MORAL leadership must be in charge, when an agency or department has such power.
Torture is a crime. Punish those that authorized it. Then punish those that did it.
If this is done we should be free of the temptation in the future for a long time. Without punishment we will be a nation that says, “Do as I say, not as I do.” With punishment we might be embarrassed internationally, (I doubt it as they already know anyway) but we can say it was an aberration that will never happen again.
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Comment posted April 15, 2009 @ 5:37 pm
Credibility like trust can be likened to an ice cube. Once it melts its hard to put back together.
But when it comes to torture I am sure the CIA knows, KNOWS, that:
1. No matter what some prostitute lawyer says it is illegal
2. No matter what some torture advocate says it rarely if ever produces reliable intel
3. When you take directions from a politician, such as Addington or Cheney or whoever, you are hitching your future to a puff of smoke.
4. The torture advocates saw a political window that would allow it and so they did it.
5. The idea that the CIA is going to lose credibility with the intelligence community because the government punished those that authorized torture is a fig leaf. Everyone, I would bet, said at some time, “If the lid comes off there will be a huge scream.” But they convinced someone that it was worth it. They capitalized on the fear of the decision makers that if there was another 9/11 the intelligence community would be blamed for not discovering it in advance.
I contend that that kind of thinking could be applied to twist the conscience and morals, it could be used to politically blackmail, it could be used to intimidate the folks in this world who have lost their moral compass.
All this simply points to the fact that STRONG MORAL leadership must be in charge, when an agency or department has such power.
Torture is a crime. Punish those that authorized it. Then punish those that did it.
If this is done we should be free of the temptation in the future for a long time. Without punishment we will be a nation that says, “Do as I say, not as I do.” With punishment we might be embarrassed internationally, (I doubt it as they already know anyway) but we can say it was an aberration that will never happen again.
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