Nat Parry — Torture-Tainted CIA and State Nominees Recall Failure to Prosecute Bush-Era Abuses

The declining human rights standards on display with the Haspel and Pompeo nominations are the latest in a long line of policy failures that include the Obama administration’s lack of prosecutions of Bush-era torture, Nat Parry notes.

If a person is OK with torture and assassination, that person is OK with anything. Is this an indication of psychopathology or more seriously, sociopathology?

Consortium News
Torture-Tainted CIA and State Nominees Recall Failure to Prosecute Bush-Era Abuses

Nat Parry

Sputnik — Cheney Seeks to Manipulate Trump 'Splashing Gasoline' Into Election 'Scandal'

Pavel Svyatenkov gets it right.

Political scientist Pavel Svyatenkov told Radio Sputnik that the US politician wants to "splash gasoline" in the election scandal to manipulate Donald Trump.

Svyatenkov recalled that Dick Cheney previously worked in the administrations of Republican presidents George Bush Sr. and George W. Bush.

"This is when a part of the Republican elite that is associated with the Bush group — both the elder and the younger — comes into the game," the expert said.

According to the expert, Cheney played an important role in the Bush administration — he held the post of defense minister and vice president and many believed him to be an extremely influential "shadow ruler" of America.

"Therefore, the fact that now Cheney makes such statements means that there is an attempt to pour gasoline into the scandal, and a serious split among the Republican elite,"Svyatenkov noted....

"Shadow ruler." I like it.

Sputnik International
Cheney Seeks to Manipulate Trump 'Splashing Gasoline' Into Election 'Scandal'

Press conference Trump style

Press conference Trump style.

The Hill
Trump slams China on Twitter
Mallory Shelbourne

Crooks & Liars
Ministry Of Propaganda: Dick Cheney Tells CNN 'We Don't Need You Guys Anymore' Because Trump Has Twitter
By David

Heather — Mike Pence Calls Dick Cheney His Role Model For VP

We all saw this coming from a mile away after Trump said he would put his vice president in charge of domestic and foreign policy, didn't we?

Crooks and Liars
Mike Pence Calls Dick Cheney His Role Model For VP

Heather

David Dayen — Donald Trump Is Right: Deficits Don’t Matter

Trump’s statement sounds a lot like Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a tenet of economists who believe in de-emphasizing the need for deficit reduction because the U.S. controls its own currency. Balanced budgets, to MMTers, take money out of the hands of ordinary Americans who can put it to more productive use through job creation and consumer spending. The deficit only matters once you reach full employment, when overheated consumer demand can lead to inflation. But we’re nowhere near that point right now, meaning there’s plenty of room for deficits, without any possibility of default.

One MMT advocate, Stephanie Kelton of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, worked for Bernie Sanders in the Senate and now advises his campaign. But even Sanders emphasizes deficit reduction, by promoting higher taxes on the wealthy and Wall Street transactions. Kelton’s worldview, and in this instance Trump’s, goes far beyond even Sanders’s comfort level on the issue.…

If the deficit really doesn’t matter, Democrats would have to live up to their image as the party of the people, and work to provide better opportunities for them. And they would have to spend federal money to do it. Behind the mockery of Trump’s monetary positions is the truth that mainstream Democrats aren’t prepared for the implications of an MMT world. They would rather hold off the left by claiming that their hands are tied because of the deficit.

Such moderation makes the wealthy funders of Democratic campaigns far more comfortable, and it leads many in the media to laud Democrats as the more responsible, serious party. But such cuts don’t lead to more jobs, higher wages, and a better life; spending on infrastructure or health care or education does. Democrats should listen again to Trump’s stray remark for the grain of truth in it: Deficits don’t matter. The sooner the party realizes that, the better off its constituents will be.

Right on, bro! Power to the people!

New Republic
Donald Trump Is Right: Deficits Don’t Matter

David Dayen
ht Kevin Fathi

Zalmay Khalilzad — Was the Iraq War Conceived in a Secret 1992 Document?

(Editor’s note: The following is adapted from the author’s new book, The Envoy: From Kabul to the White House, My Journey through a Turbulent World.)

An insider's view of how the US rolls.

The National Interest
Was the Iraq War Conceived in a Secret 1992 Document?
Zalmay Khalilzad | Head of Policy Planning in the Defense Department from 1991-1992, Special Presidential Envoy to Free Iraqis from 2002-2003 and subsequently US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the UN

Nat Parry — New GOP Plans for Torture

President Obama’s failure to prosecute Bush-era torturers created an impunity that has encouraged some Republican presidential candidates to tout new plans for more torture if they reach the White House, a grotesque example of “American exceptionalism,” as Nat Parry explains.

Two huge fails for former constitutional law professor now President Barack Obama: the decisions not to prosecute torture or control fraud.

Both are serious failures that will have repercussions into the future until they are addressed, but of the two, the failure to address torture is the most serious since it undermines American moral authority and therefore soft power internationally.

Without moral authority and soft power, the US can only lead through threat of force backed by readiness to apply it.

Whatever else Obama has done for the good is cancelled by these monumental failures, which are both strategic failures and, worse, moral failures, proving that the man was not fit for the office.

Consortiums News
New GOP Plans for Torture

Nat Parry

Lauren McCauley — Pentagon Asks Psychologists to Reconsider Torture Ban, Argues 'You Never Know...'

They're baaaack!

Common Dreams
Pentagon Asks Psychologists to Reconsider Torture Ban, Argues 'You Never Know...'

Lauren McCauley

Alastair Crooke — Lost on the ‘Dark Side’ in Syria

The full story of how the U.S. ended up allied with some Sunni extremists in Syria – while at war with others – is a convoluted tale dating back to President George W. Bush’s neocons venturing off into Vice President Cheney’s “dark side” to work with violent jihadists, writes British diplomat Alastair Crooke.

Jaw-dropper if you aren't already aware of the history. The US was up to its eyeballs in facilitating jihadism in furtherance of its perceived interests from 1979, as Zbig admits. This is bipartisan politically in the US, just as is the deep state. Even those who are aware of the history may have something to learn, too. Quick summary: snakepit with US fingerprints all over it.

Consortium News
Lost on the ‘Dark Side’ in Syria

Alastair Crooke

Robert Parry — Bush-41 Finally Speaks on Iraq War

Robert Parry traces the history of the worst crime(s) thus far in the 21st century, and one for which there has been zero accountability. Now Poppy Bush tries to hang the blame on Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld for misleading his son. In fairness, though, Parry details how it was Cheney that engineered consent through lies and propaganda, and how the rest of the players were too weak to stand up to him and call him on it publicly.

The question lingers: why did Zinni not go public when he first heard Cheney lie? After all, he was one of the very few credible senior officials who might have prevented a war he knew was unnecessary. A tough, widely respected Marine intimidated by a Vice President with five draft deferments? It happens.  It happened.

Secretary of State Powell was also blindsided, but there is no sign he summoned the courage to voice any objections directly to the President about Cheney’s version of the threat from Iraq and what had to be done about it.

Even the nation's top warriors could not summon the courage to confront a draft dodger. Really!

Robert Parry tells us of his take on unfolding events while serving as an analyst.

Despite the propaganda and more tangible signs of incipient war in Iraq, my former intelligence analyst colleagues and I – with considerable professional experience watching other countries prepare for aggression against others – were finding it difficult to believe that the United States of America would be doing precisely that.

Still harder was it to digest the notion that Washington would do so, absent credible evidence of any immediate threat and would “fix” intelligence to “justify” it. But that, sadly, is what happened. On March 19, 2003, U.S. “shock and awe” lit the sky over Baghdad.

And they got away with it!

That was more than 12 ½ years ago. That not one of the white-collar crooks responsible for the war and ensuing chaos has been held accountable is an indelible blot not only on our country, but also on international law and custom. After all, the U.S./U.K. attack on Iraq fits snugly the definition given to a “war of aggression” as defined by the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunal. Nuremberg labeled such a war “the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

And the evil continued to accumulate: torture, kidnapping, black prisons, extrajudicial killing, massive invasions of privacy, and even the annulment of such basic human rights as the great writ of habeas corpus that was wrested from England’s King John 800 year ago. And, in the wake of this criminality, bedlam now reigns across large swaths of the Middle East driving millions of refugees into neighboring countries and Europe.

That the U.S. and U.K. leaders who launched the Iraq war have so far escaped apprehension and prosecution might be seen as a sad example of “victor’s justice.” But there are no victors, only victims. The reality that President George W. Bush and his co-conspirators remain unpunished makes a mockery of the commitment to the transcendent importance of evenhanded justice as expressed on Aug. 12, 1945, by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the chief U.S. representative at Nuremberg:

“We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it.”
Maybe it is partly because I know the elder Bush personally, but it does strike me that, since we are all human, some degree of empathy might be in order. I simply cannot imagine what it must be like to be a former President with a son, also a former President, undeniably responsible for such trespass on law – for such widespread killing, injury and abject misery.…

With his current modified, limited hangout – especially (his richly deserved) criticism of Cheney and Rumsfeld – Bush the elder may be able to live more comfortably with himself and to get past what I believe must be his regret now over having made no public effort to stop the madness back then.

Worst still, if Bush-43 is to be believed, Bush senior had guilty foreknowledge of the war-crime attack on Iraq….

In any event, Bush-43 includes the following sentences about informing his father about plans to attack Iraq: ”We both knew that this was a decision that only the president can make. We did talk about the issue, however. Over Christmas 2002, at Camp David, I did give Dad an update on our strategy.” …

Simple. Putin did it.

Consortium News
Bush-41 Finally Speaks on Iraq War

Robert Parry

“A Turning Point for Obama”: How the President Learned to Love the National Security State — Elias Esquith interviews Charlie Savage

Snippets.

Bush and Cheney were CEOs by background. They did not put a lot of lawyers in policymaking roles around them. The lawyers they did pick, especially in their first term, tended to have these pretty idiosyncratic views of executive power; and, as a result, they’re able to put in these wide-ranging changes, to have the the government run like a business. Overnight, it’s like, “we’re going to have military commissions”; no further ado; no second-guessing.

Obama and his administration are quite the opposite. Obama and Joe Biden, of course, are both lawyers and showed a clear tendency to put lawyers into policymaking roles around them. And this has consequences, having government-by-lawyer and not government-by-CEO. Lawyers are very incremental; lawyers have to really engage with the other side, because they have to prepare for everybody’s argument; they have to value process. That means they are going to be cautious about changing the status quo. They’re going to be cautious about dislodging what Bush has equipped to them.…

I definitely think it’s an interesting factor that people who are out in the world don’t fully understand.

I think there’s a very [mistaken] understanding of how the government works — which is that the president just does these things. Obama just does it. Once you work [in D.C.] for a while, you understand that that’s widely oversimplified. Most of the time, the president never knows about what’s going on. It could appear [so] at the most superficial level, but it’s really the 150 or so senior and mid-level executive branch officials that he’s appointed who are making these decisions and grappling with these dilemmas.

What you’re adding to that when you bring up [the deep state] is that, underneath, there’s this permanent state of security officials who have their own sort of world and expertise and turf and bureaucratic interests. All these forces encounter each other in ways that don’t reduce to “Bush did this” and “Obama did that.”

Salon
“A Turning Point for Obama”: How the President Learned to Love the National Security State Elias Esquith interviews Charlie Savage, author of Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency

Dan Sanchez — How Russia's Syria Campaign Shocked the Neocon Quest for Empire

Good read.

Russia Insider
How Russia's Syria Campaign Shocked the Neocon Quest for Empire

Dan Sanchez

Ambassador Joe Wilson (ret.) and Valerie Plame — Back To The Dark Side: Dick Cheney's Pax Americana

Back To The Dark Side: Dick Cheney's Pax Americana

By Ambassador Joe Wilson (ret.) and Valerie Plame Exceptional, the new book from former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz, is not. It is nothing more than an unhinged rant that smacks of sedition."The children need to know the truth about who we are, what we've done, and why it is uniquely America's duty…

David Corn — George W. Bush's CIA Briefer: Bush and Cheney Falsely Presented WMD Intelligence to Public

On "Hardball," Michael Morell concedes the Bush administration misled the nation into the Iraq War.…

Morell's remarks support the basic charge: Bush and Cheney were not misled by flawed intelligence; they used the flawed intelligence to mislead.

Mother Jones
George W. Bush's CIA Briefer: Bush and Cheney Falsely Presented WMD Intelligence to Public
David Corn

John Kiriakou — I Went to Prison After Exposing US Torture. Why Weren’t the Perpetrators Charged?

Inquiring minds would like to know. The simple answer:  Some people are better than others. This begs the question, who decides?

Bill Moyers & Co.
I Went to Prison After Exposing US Torture. Why Weren’t the Perpetrators Charged?
John Kiriakou | associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He’s a former CIA counterterrorism officer and former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Greg Palast — How Bush won the war in Iraq - really!

Palast at his best as investigative reporter.

If you thought it was "Blood for Oil"--you're wrong. It was far, far worse.

Greg Palast
How Bush won the war in Iraq - really!

Greg Palast for Vice Magazine

Torture refuses to go away

This neat ideological package asserted the unchallengeable power of a “unitary executive” above constitutional checks and balances, national law, and international treaties. Echoing Richard Nixon’s circular self-justification of three decades earlier, Justice Department lawyer Steven Bradbury told Congress: “The president is always right.” 

The Project for the New American Century, a think tank with which Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and other officials were associated, laid down intellectual covering fire for these policies. With the United States the only superpower left, the PNAC apparently concluded that history was over and that the Bush administration had an unprecedented opportunity to remake the world in its own image and demonstrate the futility of resistance. 

The policies it engendered effectively said to the international community: “The rules we used to agree on no longer apply to us. Here’s exactly how far above international law we are. What are you going to do about it?” 

Strategically, the Bush-Cheney project targeted conceptual smart bombs on the very idea of human rights. The rest of the world got the message, and the cracks in the foundations of U.S. national security have yet to be repaired.…

Consortium News
Finding Creative Ways to Torture
Peter Costantini

US torture did not begin with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, but rather was a feature of President Ronald Reagan's program for Latin America and it continued in the G. H. W. Bush administration in which Dick Cheney served as US Secretary of Defense.

Ronald Reagan’s Torture

Robert Parry (Originally published on Sept. 8, 2009)

Torture did not cease between the Bush administrations. Bill Clinton authorized CIA rendition to nations known to practice torture.

Barack Obama famously said that that the United States does not torture but left open the question of rendition.

See Wikipedia, Extraordinary Rendition. How's that for Orwellian double-speak?

digby — Rogue Superpower

In other words, the most powerful nation on earth has no limits and has no obligation to follow any rules, laws or norms.

Welcome to the real world, where there are no rules unless there is an authority and will to impose them. People like Dick Cheney, CEOs that run control frauds,organized crime, etc. knows this and acts accordingly. Get over it.

The only way to deal with this is by gaining that authority and having the will to use it. This is difficult to do. Unless President Obama was liar previous to the election, he thought he would have the authority and will to correct course. It turns out he either didn't have the authority, owing to the way the US government and political system is organized, or didn't have the will to impose it. I think it's a combination of the two.

While one may be shocked and angry over things that governments do, as I am, that's just the way of the world given the level of collective consciousness and the resultant cultural conventions and institutional arrangements at present. 

The US is pretty equally divided on the issue even though the circumstances of torture seem to be clear morally. However, it depends on one's ethical stance. 

According to a broadly accepted version of utilitarian ethics that takes consequences as the criterion, the end justifies the means. Those holding to other versions of utilitarianism, or a version of deontological (rule-based) ethics or virtue (character-based) ethics, this seems abhorrent.

On the other hand, there is also law, and torture is illegal. The only question remains is whether the law was broken, and that is a judicial matter. The president seems not to have the will to proceed on this. In the eyes of many this is a serious character flaw. Some will see it as justified. Others will view it a being pragmatic.

Hullabaloo
Rogue Superpower

digby

Dan Froomkin — Obama Administration Reverses Bush Policy, Says U.S. Torture Ban Applies Abroad

As Charlie Savage of the New York Times reported last month, President Obama’s legal team was debating whether to reaffirm a Bush administration position that the United Nations Convention Against Torture imposes no legal obligation on the U.S. to bar cruelty outside its borders. 

The debate is over. And the good guys won — this time. See the following statement issued by the White House this morning, even as State Department officials were answering questions about the administration’s position in Geneva before the United Nations Committee Against Torture.….

Gnashing of teeth in the Cheney abode?

The Intercept
Obama Administration Reverses Bush Policy, Says U.S. Torture Ban Applies Abroad
Dan Froomkin

'I Could Have Stopped Them': Ex-CIA Lawyer Defends Waterboarding Decision — Holger Stark interviews John Rizzo

One of the architects of the torture program explains it.

Spiegel Online
'I Could Have Stopped Them': Ex-CIA Lawyer Defends Waterboarding Decision
Holger Stark interviews John Rizzo