The CIA's Dark Shadow in America

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/cias-dark-shadow-america



Little more than a week after 9/11, Cofer Black gave instructions to his CIA team before their mission. "I don't want Bin Laden and his thugs captured, I want them dead … I want to see photos of their heads on pikes. I want Bin Laden's head shipped back in a box filled with dry ice. I want to show Bin Laden's head to the president. I promised him I would do that."

A month later, at a meeting sponsored by Schwab Capital markets, CIA executive director "Buzzy" Krongard laid out for investors what such a war would entail. "[It] will be won in large measure by forces you do not know about, in actions you will not see and in ways you may not want to know about," he said.

Back then there wasn't a treaty that couldn't be violated, a principle waived or a definition parsed in the defence of American power and pursuit of popular revenge. To invoke the constitution, the Geneva convention or democratic oversight was evidence that you were out of your depth in the new reality. Laws were for the weak; for the powerful there was force. This was not just the mood of a moment; it has been policy for more than a decade.

Obama's arrival offered a shift in focus and style but not in direction or substance. "I don't want [people at the CIA] to suddenly feel like they've got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders," he said shortly before his first inauguration. It was never difficult to see what could go wrong with this approach. But it has, nonetheless, been shocking to see how wrong things have gone. As covert operations were shielded from oversight, so human rights violations became not just inevitable but routine.

[malaise]

1. K & R

Truthfully Obama should have removed every vestige of the Bushco administration and put men and women on trial. The sad truth is that the obsession with 'empire' and post 9/11 security superseded the necessity of making men and women pay for violating the Constitution, the Geneva Convention and a plethora of national and international obligations.

Bush and Cheney should be locked up in the Hague along with a good number of persons who were complicit in crimes against humanity.

[xchrom]

2. +1