Tag: Human Torture

More “Change” From President Obama

President Obama’s track record has been stunning in its all out embrace and expansion of the corrupt Foreign Policy of the past 8 dark years (and with it, the total rejection of what people voted for) —  a darkness Obama won’t let any sunlight near.

Here’s the latest from Obama:

The Obama administration quietly announced Friday the appointment of John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, to head the internal investigation of the intelligence failures that led to the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a Delta airliner headed for Detroit as well as the events leading to the shootings at Fort Hood in November.

With this appointment, President Barack Obama has assured that the culture of intelligence cover-up will continue. McLaughlin has participated in and sought to cover-up many of the CIA’s most egregious failures and misdeeds of the past decade. When he left the CIA, he then served as the agency’s chief apologist.

So, who is John McLaughlin? Most of official Washington and the mainstream media view McLaughlin as the mild-mannered, professorial CIA bureaucrat, who former CIA director George Tenet called the “smartest man he had ever met.”

Few people understand, however, that McLaughlin played the most important role in making sure that the Bush administration received the intelligence that would be used and misused to justify the use of force against Iraq in 2003.

Washington insiders remember that it was CIA director Tenet who told President George W. Bush, “Don’t worry, it’s a slam dunk,” in response to the president’s demand for stronger intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to provide to the American people. Few people remember that it was McLaughlin who actually delivered the “slam-dunk” briefing to the president in January 2003.

McLaughlin was the “villain” behind the politicized intelligence on Iraq in the run-up to the illegal war. He perverted the intelligence process, ignored high-level briefings on the weakness of the intelligence on WMD and then tried to silence David Kay, the chief of the Iraq Survey Group, when the weapons inspectors found no evidence of strategic weapons in Iraq.

When Kay returned to CIA headquarters from Baghdad, Tenet and McLaughlin made sure that Kay was given a tiny, windowless office at the end of a distant, deserted corridor undergoing construction. It had no secure phone or classified computer. Kay called it Siberia.

Continued…

Obama: Words .vs. Actions

Consider the following words of hope offered by President Obama, and the public commitments which he made to us upon his taking office:

Obama’s Words:

“All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of  disclosure,  in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government.

Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

      –President Obama, January 21, 2009

“My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.”

     –President Obama, January 28, 2009

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Okay, so let’s look now at how President Obama has actually put those words and those goals into action.