Former CIA Spy Jose Rodriguez’s Truly Sociopathic ’60 Minutes’ Interview

[Luminous Animal]

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2012/04/30/former-cia-spy-jose-rodriguezs-truly-sociopathic-60-minutes-interview/?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

What is made very clear in the “60 Minutes” segment is that torture techniques were legalized. President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and the entire Justice Department have decriminalized torture by refusing to prosecute former Bush administration officials like Rodriguez. And, there were rules for how the torture program be administered and protected. The sadism was pre-meditated and planned out meticulously to give people involved cover to avoid jail if something went wrong.

Rules were followed just like rules are followed by the Obama administration when they carry out drone attacks on people in countries where the US has no declaration of war. Rodriguez does not like that Obama uses drones to kill potential prisoners and incredulously says, “How can it be more ethical to kill people than to capture them?” This is what Bradbury said during a congressional hearing. And this is what the Wall Street Journal was critical of in a recent editorial. (They called the victims of drone attacks “missing detainees” because they can’t be dragged to Guantanamo, Bagram or some CIA black site to be waterboarded.)

....

FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, former CIA officer Kevin M. Shipp, former CIA agent “Ishmael Jones,” Lt. Col Anthony Shaffer, former CIA agent John Kiriakou (who is now facing prosecution for talking about his role in waterboarding) and soon-to-be-former State Department employee Peter van Buren are all individuals, who have seen prepublication review boards censor their books or refuse to allow their books to be published. They are all individuals who dared to be critical and have been suppressed.

Rodriguez, on the other hand, can say whatever he wants because he upholds the Covenant. He followed the Rules. The Rules are limited to what was agreed upon by the parties involved in the development process and any other Rules from outside bodies such as domestic or international legal bodies are moot. The Rules do not include disclosing information that could invite scrutiny or lead members of the public or press to second-guess decisions that were made. The Rules give him the confidence to say he is “very secure” in what he did.

[OnyxCollie]

1. K&R. nt

[Uncle Joe]

2. They're trying to create a narrow political box from which all debate must reside,

the choice of evil vs the choice of evil, take your pick.

"Rules were followed just like rules are followed by the Obama administration when they carry out drone attacks on people in countries where the US has no declaration of war. Rodriguez does not like that Obama uses drones to kill potential prisoners and incredulously says, “How can it be more ethical to kill people than to capture them?” This is what Bradbury said during a congressional hearing. And this is what the Wall Street Journal was critical of in a recent editorial. (They called the victims of drone attacks “missing detainees” because they can’t be dragged to Guantanamo, Bagram or some CIA black site to be waterboarded.)

It’s a Machiavellian critique of Obama’s national security policy and one that is hard to answer. Obviously, two sociopathic policies are in conflict here: one policy involves breaking, as Winson is broken in George Orwell’s 1984, and the other does away with the mess created (renditions, secret detentions, enhanced interrogations, secret prisons, detention at Guantanamo, etc) and simply takes capital punishment to a new level."

Regarding use of the weasel word "sensation" if somebody strangles you and then stops at the last minute, you're being strangled while they're doing it, you're not feeling the "sensation" of being strangled as if you were participating in a game or movie that vibrates and produces loud sounds with explosions.

Water-boarding is water torture and you are indeed drowning someone, if you weren't actually drowning someone when doing it, you wouldn't need to stop for fear of killing them.

Thanks for the thread, Luminous Animal.

[Festivito]

4. Either way we get no useful information.

There are better ways. But, mired in our torture era, we cannot shake free to use better ways.

[avebury]

3. K&R nt

[Luminous Animal]

5. Kick.