FEINSTEIN
AND COHORTS NEGLIGENTLY
RELEASE INFORMATION
THAT COULD
JEOPARDIZE AMERICAN LIVES
SENATE
SELECT COMMITTEE FOR INTELLIGENCE CHAIRMAN
DIANNE
FEINSTEIN PROVES TO BE UNSUITABLE TO REMAIN
IN THE
SENATE AFTER WHAT SOME SAY IS AN ACT
OF TREASON
TAGS:
SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE REPORT ON TORTURE, SENATOR DIANE FEINSTEIN
GROSS
NEGLIGENCE PUTS AMERICAN LIVES AT RISK, THE WAR ON TERROR, THE “TORTURE”
REPORT
IN CONTEXT, SEPTEMBER 11, 2001-A WAR NOT OF OUR CHOOSING,
CIA,
SPECIAL FORCES, BLACK SITES, ENEMY COMBATANTS, NATIONAL SECURITY,
NO
REASON TO RELEASE THIS INFO AT THIS TIME, A $50 MILLION DEMOCRATIC WITCH HUNT
(Wednesday December 10, 2014, NY,
NY) In a city that never seems to cease
shocking and dismaying us, yesterday in Washington, DC was among the days that
will long be considered a low point for the Senate. For no apparent reason aside from bitter
partisanship, in one of the last acts the Democratic controlled Senate can make
before the new Republican dominated Senate is sworn in next January, the Chairman
of the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence, the poorly aging California
Senator Dianne Feinstein, with great hype, released information that should
never have been revealed at this time.
The blatant move to tarnish the efforts of the CIA and our military and
the use of “black sites” for imprisonment and interrogation in Afghanistan from
2002 to 2009 is a direct affront to the committed men and women who were tasked
with waging a new kind of war against a new kind of enemy after September 11,
2001. While the focus of this “report”
was concentrated on CIA and military contractors operating with “enemy
combatants” from 2002 through 2004, the document contains information that
reveal it to be nothing more than a half-assed attempt at a witch hunt. Senator
Feinstein once again demonstrated her inability to put politics aside from
national security.
It appears the passage of time
has dulled the sharp images and memories of the death and destruction in New
York City, Washington, DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania on that sunny Tuesday
morning 13 years ago. It was on that day
that the Taliban protected Muslim extremist terrorist organization known as al
Qaeda pulled the United States into a war that would see them ultimately routed
by mid December 2001. Within weeks of
September 11, 2001 the CIA and Special Forces had been inserted into
Afghanistan in advance of what we would see as the successful aerial assault
that it was, followed by a near
extinction of al Qaeda fighters. Those
who remained were trapped in the Khyber Pass.
Many “enemy combatants” were captured and the CIA began to set up “black
sites” in countries supportive of our fight against terrorists with a global
reach. It was at some of these black
sites that the enemy combatants were held and interrogated. Remember, from September 11, 2001 until
December 31, 2001 we had seen ricin laced letters sent to public officials and
news reporters; the belief that another “follow-up” attack was imminent. The Congress quickly granted the President
and military broad authority to conduct this new type of asymmetrical warfare
in the firm belief that the United States, New York City in particular, remained
a “high value target rich” environment. The basics of what came to be known as “The
Patriot Act” were passed with bipartisan support. This was not a war of our choosing; this was
a most urgent matter of engaging in a rapid and overwhelming display of
American might while the fires from the collapsed World Trade Center towers
still smoldered entombing dozens of unrecovered bodies including the remains of
several hundred fallen members of the FDNY.
SECRETS KEPT
Our federal government has a
long history of nondisclosure even for the most petty of information. Some of the secrets our government has kept
from us are the details of actions ranging from criminal to inhumane. One needs look no further than the infamous “Tuskegee
Experiment” where government doctors infected African American men in Tuskegee
Alabama with syphilis and observed the advance of their disease for decades
without ever calling the “experiment” off to do the moral and medically ethical
thing they should have done. There were
trials using LSD on servicemen in the 1960’s as well as a host of human
experiments to assess the biological effects of radiation from nuclear material,
inserting non-toxic gas into the New York City Subway system to study the flow
of air within the network of tunnels and a variety of an unknown number of
studies all conducted under the guise of “national security”. Even the bogus claims of alien bodies from an
alleged 1947 UFO crash being stored at an Air Force Base near Roswell, New
Mexico was kept under wraps for decades as was the voluminous amount of data
and information accumulated throughout the years concerning the existence of
UFO’s. Yes, our federal government was extremely tight-lipped about matters
large and small, of extreme sensitivity and small consequence. With the advent
of the “Sunshine Laws” and the “Freedom of Information Act” (FIFA) researchers,
journalists and scholars have gained access to a wealth of information, a
literal treasure trove of federal secrets, embarrassments, and even crimes.
The list of governmental
secrets, deceptions and outright lies is long and sordid but, some secrets were
kept for a period of decades for reasons of discretion and decorum, in some
circumstances, before being released.
Some of the revelations kept hidden from the public for long periods of
time, once revealed seemed laughably inane
while others portrayed in chilling detail clandestine operations both here and
abroad. Secrecy has its place as do
security clearances and other measures constructed to protect United States
interests abroad.
SECRETS REVEALED
Given what the feds have kept
from the public over the years, the release yesterday of the 600 page summary
of the Senate Select Committee’s investigation into the alleged use of enhanced
interrogation techniques in the immediate aftermath of the al Qaeda attack on
the United States on September 11, 2001 is inexplicable. Consuming $50 million and five years of
Senate staffers’ time and efforts, the actual report is close to 6,000 pages
and contains information that could cost the lives of our men and women in the
military still on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq. If nothing else the particulars spelled out
in this summary will likely be used as “recruiting” material by ISIL and the
other terrorist groups still hell-bent on attacking us here at home and at our foreign
embassies, consulates and other locations of vital interest.
Long touted as “The Torture
Report” the critics of the document, many of whom were intimately involved in
the CIA programs and operated the black sites, cite its many flaws and
inaccuracies as well as the tone and tenor of the report that at times is
merely accusatory, at other times incriminating. That our own Senate would publically air for
all the world to see some of our most closely held information regarding
intelligence gathering and analysis and tradecraft, has the distinct feel of a
negligent act at best; a matter of criminality, gross irresponsibility, with a
slight tincture of treason.
It is the nature of this
report that makes its public release all the more reckless, irresponsible and
indefensible. We are currently still
engaged militarily in Afghanistan, Iraq and other less known places around the
world as our efforts to eradicate as many terrorist groups and their
infrastructure such as it is, as we possibly can. The interrogation of the enemy combatants,
many of whom are still held at the Naval Base – Guantanamo, Cuba, - had, at the
time, the greatest sense of urgency. The
efficacy and value of information gleamed through the use of “enhanced”
techniques can be hotly debated. There
are those who say that a prisoner being tortured will say anything to appease
his captors and others who attest that the various “enhanced” techniques did in
fact yield “actionable intelligence”; information that had “real time value”.
NO HIGH GROUND
The hypocrisy surrounding the
Senate “investigation”, the compilation and release of this flawed report is
astounding. Actually, the most grievous
error made by Feinstein’s Committee was the charade perpetrated yesterday on
the floor of the Senate and in front of the press in the Capitol Rotunda. To hear the self-righteous Democrats standing
up for the “honor” of our country was sickening. They speak of a virtue they lack when they
call upon honor. The men and women of
the CIA and Special Forces live by a code that includes “Duty, Honor, Country”
and, for those brave souls, those are life and death traits. For a career
politician like Feinstein to publically excoriate the personal character and
motives of those she is unfit to even tie their shoes, was a sad hour
indeed.
The United States has written
some of the language contained in the Geneva Conventions regarding the conduct
of a military during war time. We are also Party to many other international
pacts and treaties that address wartime matters of conduct and protocol. They specifically address the treatment to be
afforded prisoners of war but those who were swept up on the high plains of
Rawalpindi and the foothills of the Hindu Kush were not part of any Nation/ State’s
uniformed organized armed forces; they were al Qaeda fighters, terrorists being
protected by the harsh, brutal extremist regime of The Taliban. That these prisoners were to be afforded all
the rights of prisoners of war was a rigorous debate at the Pentagon,
Department of Justice, the Office of White House Counsel, the Attorney General,
as well as in the Office of the President and Vice President and the National
Security Council. As a rule and historic
precedent we do not engage in torture.
The CIA and Special Forces as
well as the military contractors functioned under the secure belief that their
actions were sanctioned by those at the highest level of the Administration and
were legally sound methods and techniques.
Now there are people on both sides of the issue blaming the other for
what was and was not lawful. If
Americans had been polled regularly in the weeks and months after 9-11-2001
about the use of “torture” to extract information from enemy combatants in our
custody overseas, most would have agreed that it was prudent to do so. Everything about this investigation and
report must be kept in context not just chronologically but also within the
public sentiments and the reality of further attacks after al Qaeda struck from the clear blue skies unprovoked on
September 11, 2001.
THE SELLING OF THE AMERICAN SOUL
For all those who vigorously
protest the alleged and actual treatment of some in our custody received in the
early days of our “War on Terror”, there have been transgressions that were such
dramatic divergence from our historical behavior that it is difficult to equate
those actions with what was done in the aftermath of 9-11-2001. Afghanistan was a righteous and just cause as
we have mentioned earlier. Once the
Cheney/Bush Administration shifted their focus far afield towards a
confrontation with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, we lost the moral high ground, such
as it had been. Never before in our
history had we waged a war of aggression, a war of choice. But, for reasons to this day not fully
understood, yet fair to say were somewhat dubious at best, absolutely greedy, belligerent
and petulant at worst, all military assets were shunted away from the real
battlefield in Afghanistan. It has been
well documented that had the Administration provided authorization as requested
from the commanders in the field to seal off the rugged, lawless border between
Afghanistan and Pakistan, we very well might have had Osama bin Laden captured
or killed prior to New Year’s Day of 2002.
It was in this ill-conceived, poorly planned, and utterly unnecessary war
in Iraq that the American soul was most soiled and tarnished in the eyes of the
world and in the conscience of Americans at large.
But the American soul was born
out of armed revolution, forged in the brutality of our own Civil War and has
repeatedly, steadfastly stood up and sided with those seeking to obtain our
democratic ideals. We live in a “Democratic
Republic”; sometimes the designations assumed by our political Parties occlude
our true identity. We have fought against Fascism, Nazism, Totalitarianism, and
the inhumane ideologies of ethnic and sectarian genocide, oppression, religious
sectarianism, and for the basic human rights endowed by our Creator. Generally speaking we are a fine and decent
people and have used our vast military and diplomatic might and influence
judiciously and with great restraint on the international stage.
FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
Time, as in hindsight,
provides a different perspective on events from the past. It often takes the distance of years to fully
objectively assess what was and what wasn’t done, the entirety of the decision
making process, and how events evolved based on the circumstances of the
day. Lost in this retrospective process
is the immediacy of the moments now under scrutiny. History is written well after the fact by
historians just as the analysts and critics have the luxury of time; for those
who were not present in the arena, far away from the theater of battle with all
its confusion and hot blood spilling, it is easy to deconstruct the past. It is only natural. But what should be first and foremost in the
minds of all involved today is the simple fact that what was done was done with
the balance of the greater good in mind.
Yes, the Cheney/Bush Administration are guilty of a number of sins but
those sins came later in the game. In
the months and years, from the end of 2001 until 2004 they authorized actions that
appear suspect today but back then seemed to serve the public interest and
national security.
The arguments of today will
turn into thesis topics of tomorrow and will long be studied in our military
academies and our intelligence community.
Hopefully they have learned lessons but all bets are off when an event
of the magnitude of 9-11-2001 tears at the very heart of who we are as a nation
and as a people. We sought, as always,
to engage from the high ground but soon realized that perch did not exist in
the war on terror, in the fight against zealots so committed to a cause they
would much rather die than capitulate. Men
unafraid of death are adversaries of a vastly different nature than we are
accustomed to. We fight to defend our
nation and people; they attack to promote an ideology that has no life beyond
the remote corners of the planet they are permitted to live and plot, plan, and
ready themselves for an unwinnable war.
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Brooding Cynyx 2014 © All Rights Reserved