The Rear-Guard Defense of Torture

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Rear-Guard-Defense-of-by-Ray-McGovern-Accountability_Defense_Policy_Torture-140812-556.html



John Rizzo of the CIA

The Rear-Guard Defense of Torture
Ray McGovern
OpEdNews Op Eds 8/12/2014 at 16:38:32

John Rizzo, the CIA's former Acting Counsel General, is feeling the heat for his role in blessing what President Barack Obama has now admitted was "torture" during the Bush/Cheney administration. Rizzo went on friendly Fox News to charge that the (still withheld) Senate Intelligence Committee investigation report on torture reflects a "Star Chamber proceeding" and accused some lawmakers of "craven backtracking," claiming that they had been briefed on the interrogation program years ago.

Rizzo also revealed that he and other former CIA officials implicated in the torture scandal have found an ally of sorts in current CIA Director John Brennan, who was a senior aide to CIA Director George Tenet when the torture practices were implemented and who is now leading the rear-guard defense against the Senate report.

"He's been with us 'formers' during this period. He has been the honest broker," Rizzo told Fox News. "He has done the best he can. He is in an extraordinarily difficult position."

Rizzo's audacity in defending torture should have prompted some kind of reaction like the one that finally called Sen. Joe McCarthy to account: "Have they no sense of decency, at long last? Have they left no sense of decency?" But Rizzo, like other defenders of the "war on terror" torture policies, has yet to face any meaningful accountability. Rather, some like Rizzo remain respectable figures.