Many well-meaning Americans are shocked by the torture disclosures in a Senate report and can’t believe U.S. officials would sanction acts such as waterboarding and “rectal feeding.” But the uglier truth is that the CIA has long taught and encouraged…
Category: The Bush-43 Administration
Clashing Face-to-Face on Torture
Exclusive: It’s rare on TV when you see two former senior U.S. officials clashing angrily over something as significant as torture. Usually decorum prevails. But ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern wasn’t going to let the ex-House intelligence oversight chief get away…
The CIA’s Bureaucracy of Torture
Bureaucratic inertia the CIA’s desire for bigger budgets and then its fear of negative consequences helped drive the torture program from its frantic start to its belated finish, as Gareth Porter explains.
How ‘Awesome’ Is America?
Exclusive: America has an extraordinary capacity to submerge unpleasant truths about its past and present, from African-American slavery and Native-American genocide to bloodbaths in Vietnam and Iraq. Now faced with clear evidence of torture, one cheerleader simply says the U.S. is…
America’s Illusion of Free Will
The mainstream U.S. news media’s narrow parameters, especially on foreign policy issues, give the American people little opportunity to engage in meaningful debate or to influence outcomes. Typically, public perceptions are managed and consensus is manufactured, as Lawrence Davidson writes.
What’s the Next Step to Stop Torture?
Exclusive: The grim details about the CIA’s torture techniques from waterboarding to “rectal rehydration” have overwhelmed the final defenses of the torture apologists. Now the question is what to do with this evidence and how to make sure this behavior…
Obama and the Truth Agenda
Exclusive: The euphemism, “enhanced interrogations,” is finally fading amid truth-telling that President George W. Bush authorized — and the CIA engaged in — torture of “war on terror” detainees. The lack of a backlash to the stomach-turning new details also suggests that Americans…
Torture Report Exposes Sadism and Lies
The stunning Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture and other sadistic treatment meted out to “war on terror” detainees has shredded the credibility of CIA apologists who claimed the “enhance interrogations” were carefully calibrated and humane, as ex-CIA analyst Melvin A.…
Rescuing Diplomacy in an Age of Demagogy
“Information warfare” is a new centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy, with demonizing an “enemy” the predictable first step sometimes toward actual war, as we’ve seen with Russian President Putin over Ukraine. But this propagandistic approach raises troubling philosophical questions about…
How ‘Allies’ Manipulate the Superpower
Reputed U.S. allies in the Mideast are pushing the Obama administration, step by step, into a “regime change” operation in Syria, despite its illegality and risks that a power vacuum would be filled by al-Qaeda or the Islamic State, as…