Jeff Stein has a great piece on how the most prominent CIA apologist for waterboarding has finally ‘fessed up that he didn’t know what he was talking about.
Much of the news media treated this CIA “expert” like a hero back in 2007. I assume they will ignore his recantation.
It is unfortunate that career politicians and bureaucrats, on those rare occasions when they are clearly exposed as less than ethical, do not take a more Japanese approach to shame and quickly end their existences as tax-feeding organisms and economic nuisances. Perhaps shame is viewed as impractical or old-fashioned by those in Washington expecting lucrative tax funded retirements.
Well of course waterboarding doesn’t work. That’s because it isn’t torture. Dick Cheney said so. Of course he thinks shooting your friend in the face with buckshot is called hunting.
Anyway, torturing suspects went out of style, now America just assassinates suspects. It’s quick, humane, cheap, and they don’t complain and demand lawyers.
Should we expect more government employees to come forward and admit they don’t know what they are talking about? That would take up a lot of valuable television time away from important celebrity news just to tell us what we already knew.
Yes, and he’s a victim here, poor fella, forced to live the rest of his days working as a Washington Staffer while collecting royalties from his moment of fame. We always seem to hear mea culpas but never hear a thing about the widespread infrastructure of deception that seems, by all appearances to enjoy full employment and growth in our recessionary Military-Security State. I can see it now, the dirty tricks boys laughing in the back room, guffawing over a rich profit center with virtually no liability….except when they miss something like 9/11. When there are no good answers, bad answers are the only thing in Town.
The media will certainly ignore the recantation, although not for John Kiriakou’s sake. They’ll ignore it for their own sake; whatever he said, they played it up. Why? To suck up to Big Daddy Gooberment, I suspect. So they’re not going to willingly let the world see what frauds they and their Big Daddy are.
Actually, I’m not sure that the media noticed this – since it was not issued as part of a government press release.