August, 13 2015, 03:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
'Let's Talk About Torture'
As Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to visit Cuba on Friday, where Guantanamo is located, see: "Democrats Continue to Delude Themselves About Obama's Failed Guantanamo Vow," by Glenn Greenwald.
WASHINGTON
As Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to visit Cuba on Friday, where Guantanamo is located, see: "Democrats Continue to Delude Themselves About Obama's Failed Guantanamo Vow," by Glenn Greenwald.
JOHN KIRIAKOU, jkiriakou at me.com, @johnkiriakou
Kiriakou is now a columnist with OtherWords and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He's also a former CIA counterterrorism officer and former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He just wrote the piece "Let's Talk About Torture," which states: "The CIA's torture-era leadership won't repent. Even after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its report saying in no uncertain terms that the CIA had tortured its prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and that torture never elicited any actionable intelligence that saved American lives, Bush-era CIA Directors George Tenet, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, and several of their underlings announced plans to release a book justifying torture.
"They intend to repeat a lie over and over again in this book: that torture worked. They hope that the American people are either so gullible or so stupid that they'll believe it. It's up to the rest of us to ensure that our government swears off committing this crime against humanity.
"I know that these former intelligence leaders are lying because I worked with them at the CIA. When I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program in 2007, they came down on me like a ton of bricks."
[Kiriakou was a whistleblower who was imprisoned for 30 months. Another whistleblower,Chelsea Manning "is now facing the serious threat of 'indefinite solitary confinement' in prison at Fort Leavenworth, where she is serving a 35-year sentence for providing WikiLeaks with documentation of a vast array of war crimes and deception by the U.S. government." See alert from RootsAction.]
Kiriakou's piece continued: "President Barack Obama decided to ignore these officers' violations of the law, to 'look forward as opposed to backwards.' I disagree.
"If these folks want to talk about torture, let's talk about torture.
"Let's talk about the prisoners who were killed -- murdered -- by CIA officers during questioning and why those officers were never brought to trial. Let's talk about the sexual assault perpetrated against prisoners by CIA officers, but described as 'rectal rehydration.' Let's talk about the CIA's secret prisons around the world. Let's talk about the CIA's doctors involved in the torture program who violated their Hippocratic oaths to 'first do no harm.' Let's talk about the targeting and murder of U.S. citizens overseas without the benefit of trial."
Also see: "'Both Sides' Are Wrong: Torture Did Work -- to Produce Lies for War (See Footnote 857 of Report)" by Sam Husseini.
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
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