Tag Archives | CIA

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Torture and the New Definition of American Virtue

The Washington Post/ABC News poll earlier this week showed that most respondents approved of CIA torture and most opposed disclosing the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA abuses. Apparently, as long as the government denies its atrocities, Americans can still feel virtuous. And seeking the truth is giving aid & comfort the enemy… Another great […]

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Senate Torture Report – My Initial Two Cents+

I have not finished reading the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA torture.  Following are some of my initial thoughts via Twitter @jimbovard – #TortureReport CIA interrogators often did not speak the language of detainees so they compensated by beating hell out of them — James Bovard (@JimBovard) December 11, 2014 #TortureReport With all the […]

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Torture Deja Vu: Congress Covered up Torture 8 Years Ago

It is good that Americans are finally learning some of the details of the CIA torture regime thanks to the Senate Intelligence Committee report.  But were the most shocking details redacted? Will we ever know?  Following is a piece I wrote 8 years ago after Congress enacted the Military Commissions Act which effectively retroactively legalized […]

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Obama’s Harebrained Scheme for Benevolent Carnage Exposed

Like Richard Nixon always said, the nation’s cartoonists are a pox on national security.  And now Garry Trudeau of Doonesbury has gone and exposed the secret calculations behind the latest U.S. intervention in Iraq. Sorta. If American citizens had real-time access to the secret memos, emails etc. that are driving Obama’s latest bombing campaign in […]

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My First Piece after 9/11: Dangers of Trusting Government

Last week was the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Reposted below is the first piece I had published after that attack. George Neumayr was the IBD editor who accepted the piece; George is now a contributing editor at American Spectator. (Still can’t understand why the New York Times op-ed page didn’t jump when I […]

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Obama Foreign Policy Maxim Actually Not Bad

According to Hillary Clinton, the Obama administration’s guiding maxim for foreign policy was “Don’t do stupid shit.” But if that was their lodestar, why did they ever hire Hillary as Secretary of State? Hillary would also have been disqualified for that job if the Obama team relied on Google’s (former) motto: “Don’t be evil.” If the […]

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