Col. Manners on the Protocols of CIA Torture and his Love for the NSA’s Aunt Zelda
http://www.juancole.com/2014/03/manners-protocols-torture.html
(Editor's note): Our old friend Colonel Manners (ret.) made his first appearance at TomDispatch last October. Today, hes back for the third time. We have yet to run into anyone more knowledgeable in the mores, manners, and linguistic habits of the national security state. His CV (unfortunately redacted) would blow you away. At a time of heightened tension among the U.S. Intelligence Community, the White House, Congress, and the American people, who better to explain the workings and thought patterns of the inner world of official Washington than the Colonel? Once again, he answers the questions of ordinary citizens about how their secret government actually works. Among advice columnists, hes a nonpareil. Heres just a sampling of his answers to recent correspondence.
Col. Manners on the Protocols of CIA Torture and his Love for the NSAs Aunt Zelda
By Juan Cole | Mar. 20, 2014
(By Tom Engelhardt for Tomdispatch)
Dear Col. Manners,
When Barack Obama entered the Oval Office, he insisted that we look forward, not backward. While he rejected the widespread use of torture and abuse by the CIA in the Bush years, his Department of Justice refused to prosecute a single torture case, even when death was the result. (The only CIA agent to go to jail during the Obama presidency was the guy who blew the whistle on the CIA torture program!)
Jump ahead five years, and instead of looking forward, it seems that were again looking backward big time. The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, usually the staunchest backer of U.S. intelligence, seems to have sworn a vendetta against the CIA on the Senate floor for spying on her oversight committee as it prepared its still-unreleased report on the Agencys torture program. The CIA denies it all and claims committee staffers spied on them. Once again, the Justice Department faces the issue of charges over the Agencys torture program! It seems like little short of a constitutional catfight.
What gives, Colonel? Shouldnt President Obama have prosecuted CIA torturers in the first place and isnt it time that he and his Justice Department finally take all this to court?
Tortured in Tacoma
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