Breathtaking Hubris, Chutzpah and Hypocrisy: Responses on Opposing Sides of Torture

Breathtaking Hubris Chutzpah and Hypocrisy: Responses on Opposing Sides of Torture

by Jim Craven/Omahkohkiaaiipooyii

“Chutzpah”

The classic definition of “chutzpah” or bombastic nerve, is “someone who has murdered his parents and then pleads mercy on the court on the grounds he is an orphan.” Just when I thought former General and CIA director Petraeus set a new standard and definition of “chutzpah”, when he had both his mistress/biographer and his wife in the same row at his induction to CIA while neither the wife nor the CIA knew what was going on, we have a new level and standard with the Brennan session on Torture.

In terms of leaks of classified sources, methods and operational tactics, along with potentially damaging information on Petraeus and others, apparently the strategic geniuses at Stratfor had some concerns they expressed in emails that were hacked by a Malaysian hacker and passed on to WikiLeaks to become open source:

Re: INSIGHT – YEMEN – why champagne hangovers suck Released on 2013-02-05 13:00 GMT

Email-ID 90306 Date 2010-02-05 22:14:51 From aaron.colvin@stratfor.com To analysts@stratfor.com List-Name analysts@stratfor.com

On the money angle, it’s a perfect example of how opportunistic the tribes and players are in Yemen. Great stuff.

Sent from my iPhone On Feb 5, 2010, at 2:41 PM, Michael Wilson wrote:

PUBLICATION: background/analysis ATTRIBUTION: STRATFOR source SOURCE DESCRIPTION: Yemeni diplomat based in DC SOURCE RELIABILITY: B ITEM CREDIBILITY: 2 SUGGESTED DISTRIBUTION: analysts SOURCE HANDLER: Reva . This was a bit of a hectic, late night mtg so I didn’t get a focused discussion. King Fahd’s youngest son, Prince AbdelAziz was in town and challenged everyone to a champagne bottle drinking contest. He’s a total goof-off. I have a more serious mtg scheduled with the Yemeni diplomat for next wk.

Source just came back from Yemen last week. Seems like they are making decent progress against AQAP and the Houthis. You know that song, moneymoneymoneymoney moonaaaay, monaaaay? well, that’s yemen right now.

The Saudis are pouring cash in to buy off militants, defectors, etc. through the tribes and it’s working. Source claims that AQAP is heavily infiltrated because of this. And their concerns over OpSec show. It’s just become a huge money-making business now. That’s why the Houthis want to negotiate directly with Saudi, and not through Sanaa and why Sanaa wants to be the mediator. They know whoever deals with the Saudis, gets money as part of the deal. Everybody wants a cut.

An example on the money angle — this one commander tells the Saudis give me 40,000 riyals, I’ll make the Houthis come down from XXXX (i’m forgetting the name of this hilltop right now). The commander takes the money, hands out 10,000 Riyals, keeps the rest for himself and they all come down. Because of deals like this Abdel Malik al Houthi doesn’t have control over the entire Houthi insurgency., just sub-factions here and there.

Yes, the Houthis were able to seriously raise their profile and embarrass Sanaa and Riyadh, but they’re pretty beaten down right now. The towns are all bulldozed. THey have nowhere to go. Just hiding out on hilltops right now.

The delay in the release of Echo is because the Yemenis got the intel to bomb their ‘computer’ labs in Arhab.

The Saudis and Americans aren’t giving any attention to the rehab proposals. Yemen has been asking them for support, but they’re not interested in that initiative right now. Nothing’s being done on it. What the Yemenis really want are more helos, which the US isn’t giving them. US says they already have enough transport and firepower, but is also blocking the Yemenis from striking any deals with the Russians, Chinese, etc to get them.

The Yemeni CT units are slowly (well, trying) to come up to speed. There’s a body that was created about a year ago, called the OSSF – office of strategic security forces or something like that. It’s 100,000 strong, trained by Jordanian and US intel, NSA. There’s a change in attitude by Sanaa on the CT front. Whereas before, the US would provide the coordinates on a target and the Yemenis would stall and stall, now they’re ready to take them out.

Whenever the source met with Saleh, Saleh [brother of Osama bin Laden] was completely obsessed with the Houthi rebellion. THat’s at the top of the list of his priorities. he wants to end this for good.

Petraeus has become BFF with the Yemeni ambassador here. Dinners every other week at the amb’s house. Last time he came with this woman, not his wife. The Yemenis think she was his mistress, but i seriously doubt that he’d be that stupid considering how high profile he is. You can see Petraeus taking a much deeper interest in Yemen these days though.

Petraeus (after he drinks a few) says privately there is an Iranian link in Yemen, but it is not yet critical.

Didn’t get much of a chance to go into any depth on the southerners and al Fadhli, but i will next wk. – Michael Wilson Watchofficer STRATFOR michael.wilson@stratfor.com (512) 744 4300 ex. 4112

and:

Re: INSIGHT – Yemen – Counterterrorism turf wars in DC Released on 2013-02-05 13:00 GMT

Email-ID 1204569 Date 2010-09-04 23:33:33 From sean.noonan@stratfor.com To analysts@stratfor.com List-Name analysts@stratfor.com

Well, at this point Awlaki is a more serious threat than UBL. It’s not just a PR thing.

———————————————————————-

From: “Reva Bhalla” To: “Analyst List” Sent: Saturday, September 4, 2010 3:23:19 PM Subject: INSIGHT – Yemen – Counterterrorism turf wars in DC

PUBLICATION: background/analysis ATTRIBUTION: STRATFOR source SOURCE DESCRIPTION: discussion over sheesha with Yemeni diplomat source and two of Saleh’s younger sons SOURCE Reliability : B ITEM CREDIBILITY: 2 DISTRIBUTION: Analysts SOURCE HANDLER: Reva

Update on those leaks from a couple weeks ago on CIA recommendations to the administration to carry out drone strikes in Yemen… The administration has tasked out all the main agencies to give their recommendations on US counterterrorism policy toward Yemen, with a policy decision due by the end of the year.

There’s a huge turf war between CIA and JSOC over this, which is why all these leaks are coming out. First the CIA leaked their rec for drone strikes. Then CENTCOM leaked their rec for $1.2 billion assistance funding for Yemeni special forces (this was all Petraeus, who has a very good relationship with the Yemenis and goes to the Yemeni ambo’s house pretty regularly for dinner.The Yemenis are nervous about Mattis taking over Centcom. THey could deal well with Petraeus, whom they consider a ‘diplomat.’ Don’t know yet how to read Mattis.

There’s been a ton of media spin and leaks later about Anwar al Awlaki being the next bin Laden. OBL is becoming old news now. CIA and JSOC want a new target to claim success, so there’s a concerted campaign going on right now to play up al Awlaki as the #1 terrorist. Al Awlaki is much easier to target anyway and they have leads on him, so every agency wants to be the one to say they got him. – Sean Noonan Tactical Analyst Office: +1 512-279-9479 Mobile: +1 512-758-5967 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. http://www.stratfor.com

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1/2 + 1/2 = 1;  Not 1/2/ Truth + 1/2 Truth = 1 Whole Truth only Minimum 3 Lies

But the contrived and not-even-half-truth responses by Brennan, coupled with those from their proxies who say what Brennan does not dare say and keep his job, are actually sort of very true; yet also net a new definition and standard for the definition of “chutzpah”:

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“What is really worse and more barbaric and inhumane ?”… “applying “EIT” [we refuse to use or allowed used the word ‘torture’] to “known” terrorists [a lie proved by all those proved innocent later yet kept anyway in black sites or at Gitmo] versus Obama [from a sanitized and covert distance] assassinating with drones and hellfire missiles [and anyone near them], with no due process, only “suspected” terrorists, thus also destroying any of their potential intelligence value (pocket litter, cellphones, laptops, interrogation) etc?

–

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Of course Mr. Brennan does not mention that various nation-states and regimes were picked [e.g. Libya and Ghadafy Syria and Assad, Saudi Arabia, etc] as “subcontractors” specifically to do, the worst possible torture, along with the U.S. and British private contractors, what even cherry-picked  judges, OLC attorneys, spin-meisters, and favored Congressional committee chairmen  and CIA or other agencies could not do; and if caught, would at least be finished career-wise and in terms of retraining high-level clearances to trade on in the future. And he does not mention the difference between president Obama’s now explicit use of the word “torture” [which he knows well, and knows well has profound legal and constitutional implications under international as well as U.S. law] versus this continual use of euphemisms to sanitize inhuman practices that none of them would not call torture if applied to themselves or their loved ones. https://sttpml.org/20-extraordinary-facts-about-cia-extraordinary-rendition-and-secret-detentiontorture/

What’s Missing?: The Paradigm Problem

Mr. Brennan does not mention that he, like all CIA operators, is trained to lie with the certitude and shallow affect of a psychopath [which is why CIA attracts so many of them]; is trained to hold a cover-story against solid evidence and facts from various directions; is trained how to plant a “poison pill” [a potentially devastating piece of evidence fueling a damaging story planted at a critical moment in the media and designed to unravel and thus cause the whole story and the truth of it to unravel and tainted for anyone who pursues the story]; and is trained even how to “beat the box” (polygraph and other instruments of deception detection) including, it would appear, their own boxes, as with Aldrich Ames and several other traitors [who all remained true-blue anti-Communists, with resumes, pedigrees and profiles that would be a wet dream for a CIA recruiter as they sold secrets for money not ideology] were able to get past polygraph sessions repeatedly.

If you look at all the whistle-blowers from NSA who became whistle-blowers after going through channels  at internal risk to their careers, and who suffered reprisals of all sorts under contrived pretexts, every one of them was, and still remains, fundamentally conservative politically, “patriotic” and with backgrounds that would be ideal for any NSA recruiter. None of the NSA whistle-blowers started out as such, and none of them suffering reprisals was ever a leak to James Risen or any other journalist as they were charged and later cleared. https://sttpml.org/before-snowden-the-nsa-whistleblowers-who-tried-to-lift-the-veil/

But if you look at the pedigrees, ideological connections, positions of the likes of Aldrich Ames (father former CIA NOC) and Robert Hanssen (father former Chicago Police “Red Squad”), who sold secrets to foreign powers whose systems and ideologies they professed to hate, then what does ideological or dynastic pedigree mean? Even with all the power and meta-data of the National Security state, who and on what basis can they trust to keep their secrets even with hush money, threats or the like? That is but one of the many contradictions they face.

Security requires compartmentalization but reality, which is multi-dimensional, requires integration of sources and methods for analysis and operations that are in conflict, and the kinds of people with the skills needed for the work are also the “Alpha” kinds, that may desert for the same reasons they were supposed to have been recruited and vetted: integrity, honor, real not phony or jingoistic “patriotism” etc.

One definition of paradigm (a definition favored by any despotic regime) is “Paradigm is what one thinks about something before beginning  and being aware of,  thinking about something.”; a kind of acquired and internalized (some say DNA-hardwired as “human nature”) prism that shapes what we are prepared to consider and not consider, see or not see, hear or not hear, feel or not feel, predict or not predict, prioritize or not prioritize, etc. But this definition of paradigm suggests a one-way and static relationship between paradigm and the phenomena being viewed and reacted to through it. But we know from experience, our own even, that the relationship between paradigm and the reality through which it is viewed and reacted to is a two-way and dialectical relationship; each influencing the other over time. What is a liberal? A conservative that has been downsized and outsourced. What is a conservative? A liberal that has been mugged.

Psychopathy: Individuals, Groups, “Cultures” and States

What kind of person [or  organization or state]  makes the following assertion?:

“I am special, “exceptional”, not like others, I was blessed by God to lead and rule others, and thus the only morality or law I recognize is that which is consistent with, and serves, me and mine, my or our, interests, only as we define them; and the most expedient [as well as clandestine and covert] means necessary in pursuit of my or mine’s objectives, security imperatives and interests [as defined only by me]”?

–

 

This kind of braggadocio that is so typical by politicians and what passes for “American Culture”, [no such thing–many cultures]  has all the bombastic grandiosity, shall affect,  megalomania, malignant narcissism, predation, hubris, callousness, cruelty, calculation and lack of empathy of the classic psychopath. And the cynical and contrived argument of context is typical:

“You just  cannot imagine what we faced on the 9-11 [that we were charged with foreseeing and preventing and didn’t. But that’s ok,]; we are now more determined than ever to avenge 9-11 [translation: put us back in the positions in which we failed, give us a version of the Nazi Enabling Act , and this time, we will not only prevent the next one, we will ‘take off the gloves’ and take out those terrorists–whose real crime was being responsible for exposing our own hubris, incompetence, negligence and possible treason on 9-11 and to justify and obstruct proper investigations not only of crimes, but the continual cover-up of them and refusal to prosecute perps].  The ” They were just following what they had every reason to believe were lawful orders for an honorable cause” defense is the “Eichmann defense”.

The Media-Intelligence-Military-Congress-Contractor Complex

• If say one has suffered say horrible malpractice at the hands of an incompetent surgeon, and restorative surgery is imperative, does one go back to the same incompetent physician for more operations and medical opinions to make it right?
• And if the news-media are interviewing as an “expert” on medical malpractice, or hiring as a “special consultant”, that physician alleged to have been part of it, would that not be at least problematic if not outrageous?
• Why are all those who helped to bring  the world the carnage of the Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other illegal wars founded on lies and engineered pretexts, who could even themselves be guilty of crimes and violations of UCMJ and international law, being interviewed and hired as “special consultants” who are “in the know” by CBS, NBS, ABS, CNN etc?
• How about as a “inside expert source” on aviation safety, a pilot accused of serious incompetence that resulted in aircraft passenger fatalities, the investigations of which were contained or suppressed by friends on the inside, or someone who hired him without vetting?
• How about Ted Bundy the serial killer as a “source” and “expert” on the likely fate of disappeared women particularly the ones he was responsible for but remained undetected (Mr “Promising Young Republican” award of Washington State Republican Party, 1972) for a long period of time?

Some Questions

• And if Bush, Cheney and CIA, NSA [who say they all found first out about 9-11 on CNN in real time] were so concerned with finding and taking out the perps, then why did they actively obstruct any investigation of any aspect of 9-11 for 441 days?
• Why did they allocate initially only $14 million and spent a total of only $44 million [half of what was spent on Clinton and his activities in the O[r]al Office) and why did it take some of the victims [“the Jersey Girls”] and their public pain to force a Commission that was clearly set up to cover-up not to illuminate?
• Why was Kissinger initially appointed to head the 9-11 Commission yet immediately resigned when one of the “Jersey Girls”, in his office at Kissinger Associates,  asked him if his client list including anyone with the last name bin Laden?
• Why did the FBI wanted poster on bin Laden never mention 9-11 and why did bin Laden deny being involved even while openly praising the action?
• Why was bin Laden given the code name “Geronimo” which is a slur against American Indians and a Defender [who was even invited to the inaugural parade of Teddy Roosevelt as an example of Roosevelt’s notorious triumphalism, megalomania, war mongering,  racism, eugenics, and malignant narcissism] given and what were the memetics?

 The Jack Bauer, 24 Hours Defense

Next, the claim is made that “EIT” methods yielded the intelligence that led to bin Laden. But then  Brennan backed off saying of course  the information came from the prisoners not the methods but followed the imposition of the methods (post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy) and since other methods were not employed it is “unknowable” if the alternative methods would have “worked” and thus also “unknowable” if it was the torture that “worked”.

But even president Obama admitted that his go decision was a roll of the dice, that they had no certain intelligence that bin Laden was in the house, that if the raid had failed it would have not been possible to keep it covert (plausible deniability) or clandestine (hidden) from the Pakistanis, an ally, nor the American people. Further, highly classified helicopters were used and one lost so the source of the operation was clear. Finally, according to some of the accounts of SEALS on the raid, they were joking on the way that if they pulled it off they would be guaranteeing Obama’s re-election; apparently a prospect some were not happy with. The fact is that for the victims, no CIA or Special  Op has ever been clandestine (hidden) nor covert (source plausibly deniable); it is only the American people, under whose name these crimes under international law and the Nuremberg precedents are being conducted o , for whom they are kept as long as possible clandestine and covert.

Mr. Brennan does not mention that in the post-bin Laden raid period, CIA gave out more sources and methods, operational tradecraft and organizational structure in the immediate and triumphalist  sycophantic films like “Zero-Dark Thirty” than any traitors or leakers from the inside have given out. He does not mention that CIA and other such agencies routinely  leak to the press under control for controlled purposes, what they would prosecute anyone else for leaking on their own without a green light.

He does not mention that there are other techniques, used also by the criminal gangs in various parts of the world, such as threats against family members, threats to send the prisoner to states where there are no rules and very creative methods of torture, not mentioned on the list of 13 permissible acts. He does not mention the innocents who were swept up and sent to black sites only to be finally released as covertly as they were grabbed and sent to be tortured. He does not mention that like the Phoenix program in Vietnam, where an estimated 27,000 to 40,000 assassinations took place, using bounty-paid informants, led to most of those targeted being for purposes of family feuds, revenge, the bounties or ethnic hatreds not for any alleged terrorism.

He does not mention the well-known CIA and military tradecraft for dealing with politicians especially those with angst about national security credentials (Democrats) and those with angst about neither they nor their children, ever having served in the military or wars they spent their lives promoting (Republicans)  (Dr. Samuel Johnson: “Every man thinks less of himself if and for not having been a soldier.”) like Cheney, Bush, Addington, et al. http://jimcraven10.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/republican-chickenhawk-hall-of-fame/

Brennan does not mention that in the intelligence world capture is preferred to kill unless the target staying alive might talk but not what those who did the capturing would want. Bin Laden alive (he was clearly intended to be killed), was much more valuable even if he did not talk (did not martyr himself as he ordered others to do.)

The military comes in with uniforms full of decorations, tell some “war stories” they tell the often chickenhawk pols with some cognitive dissonance angst:

“You too are serving no less than we in the military and we thank you for your courage service in defense of our shopping lists and budgets [and although we may have dropped the ball  a few times, underestimated the enemy and forces needed, overestimated ourselves, this time we will get it right”], give us the money we need, let us keep it deep and dark [and we will keep you all able to “plausibly deny” what you need to”] and rest easy. We will have to have black budgets [non-transparent, non-audited, non-accountable, easily looted, ] and [expensive] private contractors with proper clearances [our buddies, ideological soul-mates and former generals who will have a place for us on the other side of the perennial Congressional-Military-Intelligence-Government-Media-Private Contractors revolving door] and will get the job done [this time but it will also be a permanent and total war and thus permanent business opportunities for us and those who help us]

What Global or National Security?

Where there was no Al Qaeda (Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon) now it flourishes and has spawned offshoots that make AQ look like Quakers. Where U.S. allies could be counted on for votes in the UN or as coalition partners, now many openly denounce what they once overtly or covertly supported. Regimes that were once destinations for “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” that even the psychopaths hired as private contractors would not do, and once praised for their alliance in the “Global War on Terror”, were later targeted for regime change.

Where Mr. Brennan now admits that some of the private contractors they hired and some CIA officials went “rogue” beyond even what CIA allowed, he says nothing that this speaks to CIA vetting and what kinds of creatures they were looking for as well as the fact that they now have inside knowledge they can trade on to stay out of court. Whenever anyone does corruption or potentially problematic operations with others, they become vulnerable to the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of the others with whom they act in concert and vice versa. As Tom Paine, an admitted conspirator against the Crown he and the other “Founding Fathers” put it: “We must all hang together or surely we shall all hang separately.

Further what does “plausible deniability” mean? It means if I do something I don’ t want in the open or myself discovered as the source of the act I can lie about  it and not only likely get away with it, but even possibly get someone else blamed for it (false flag op). But sabotage, assassinations, poisoned water supplies, mayhem, renditions (kidnapping) are all acts of war and terrorism  under international law whether sourced or not, overt or clandestine, done by self-proclaimed “exceptional” nation-states or not, whether under declarations of war or not. https://sttpml.org/just-war-and-the-interrelated-predicates-and-precedents-of-nuremberg/

The Classic, Worn and Untrue  CIA Defense: “To Show Our Successes We Have to Kill You”

Mr. Brennan brings out the same tired old defense: “Our relatively few errors and mistakes become public and we regret and correct them; but our many successes must be kept deep and dark to protect sources and methods to protect the very public who often criticize us not knowing the myriad threats we must deal with daily and by the hour and minute.” The problem is that this is simply untrue as evidenced by even the most sycophantic and toadying memoires of ex-CIA like Henry Crumption, David Atley Phillips and others that reveal even the most allegedly successful covert operations of the CIA such as rigging he Italian elections in 1948, Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954,  Chile 1973 (their own 9-11), all later produced destructive blowbacks still being felt globally today.

They speak of infantile turf battles, petty ego games, operational screw-ups covered-up internally, and psychopathic levels of legend-in-their-own-mind grandiosity versus  actual performance, narcissism, shallow affect, jingoism,  and the only morality being expedience and asserted imperatives and interests. https://sttpml.org/timeline-and-manuals-playbooks-of-cia-covertovert-atrocities/

CIA Behind Its Rave Reviews of Itself

 

 

Evolving (to be continued with supporting evidence)