By RON PAUL || Remember back in April, 2007, when then-CIA director George Tenet appeared on 60 Minutes, angrily telling the program host, “we don’t torture people”? Remember a few months later, in October, President George W. Bush saying, “this government does not torture people”? We knew then it was not true because we had already seen the photos of Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib prison four years earlier.
Still the U.S. administration denied that torture was torture, preferring to call it “enhanced interrogation” and claiming that it had disrupted so many terrorist plots. Of course, we later found out that the CIA had not only lied about the torture of large numbers of people after 9/11, but it had vastly exaggerated any valuable information that came from such practices.
However secret rendition of prisoners to other places was ongoing.
The U.S. not only tortured people in its own custody, however. Last week the European Court of Human Rights found that the U.S. government transferred individuals to secret detention centers in Poland (and likely elsewhere) where they were tortured away from public scrutiny. The government of Poland was ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to two victims for doing nothing to stop their torture on Polish soil.
How tragic that Poland, where the Nazis constructed the Auschwitz concentration camp in which so many innocents were tortured and murdered, would acquiesce to hosting secret torture facilities. The idea that such brutality would be permitted on Polish soil just 70 years after the Nazi occupation should remind us of how dangerous and disingenuous governments continue to be.
This is the first time the European court has connected any EU country to U.S. torture practices. The Obama administration refuses to admit that such facilities existed and instead claims that any such “enhanced interrogation” programs were shut down by 2009. We can only hope this is true, but we should be wary of government promises. After all, they promised us all along that they were not using torture, and we might have never known had photographs and other information not been leaked to the press.
There are more reasons to be wary of this administration’s claims about rejecting torture and upholding human rights. The president has openly justified killing American citizens without charge or trial and he has done so on at least three occasions. There is not much of a gap between torture and extrajudicial murder when it comes to human rights abuses.
Meanwhile, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior current and former CIA officials are said to be frantically attempting to prepare a response to a planned release of an unclassified version of a 6,500 page Senate Intelligence Committee study on the torture practices of that agency. The CIA was already caught tapping into the computers of Senate investigators last year, looking to see what information might be contained in the report. Those who have seen the report have commented that it details far more brutal CIA practices that have been revealed to this point.
Revelations of U.S. secret torture sites overseas and a new Senate investigation revealing widespread horrific CIA torture practices should finally lead to the abolishment of this agency. Far from keeping us safer, CIA covert actions across the globe have led to destruction of countries and societies and unprecedented resentment toward the United States. For our own safety, end the CIA!
Ron Paul is a former U.S. Congressman from Texas and the leader of the pro-liberty, pro-free market movement in the United States. His weekly column – reprinted with permission – can be found here.
48 comments
Why does this guy continue to regale us with him enormous intellect? I guess as long as FITS is up and running, RP and TR will have an outlet. Let’s shut down our primary intelligence agency (rather than reform them at a policy level)? That’ll work out great for us, which is precisely why modern Western nations are lining up to kill off their own intelligence services. Uh, wait a minute…
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The last person that threatened to shut down the CIA, being JFK, was taken care of…although in fairness to JFK he had the power to do it, unlike Paul.
I wish they’d just confine their activities to selling drugs.
I’m tortured daily by posts from the GrandTango. Fortunately, my mental intellect and stability, together with my ‘resistance training’ in the Navy, allow me to carry on a normal existence.
I’ll bet it’s a good thing you don’t have your poison pill readily available though….
And Sandi Morals!
Fight it, baby!
This kind of proposal is why most don’t take Ron Paul seriously.
You know it’s strange, the country existed for 170 years before the CIA came into existence and you act like it would be some odd ball occurrence for it to happen again.
When the foreign policy is such that you’re not involved with the affairs of every country post Ottoman empire, let alone S. America, Africa, etc. it’s amazing how you don’t need constant global surveillance, empire building, coup support, enhanced interrogation, drone strikes, etc.
Even if you feel the need for “intelligence”, the OSS at least had a more clearly defined mission and much more accountability. They certainly weren’t dealing drugs and running foreign policy outside of the view of elected officials.
We’ve had multiple versions of the CIA from the first days of our existence.
“They certainly weren’t dealing drugs and running foreign policy outside of the view of elected officials.”
Okay, if you say so…
Ah, I see, I can smell the ubiquitous “it’s Wikipedia for crying out loud” coming.
The non denial, denial-is best. If you want to willfully shut your eyes, so be it. Hell, the fact they drug run is common knowledge.
I’m not denying it, I’m positing that the various intelligence apparatuses of our great nation have engaged in all sorts of nefarious activities including but not limited to dealing drugs and becoming engaged in extra political activities inside foreign governments. I might argue the drug dealing vice drug running angle but I’m agreeing with you to a point.
Thank you for that, it helps the dialogue when you know the person representing a different viewpoint is sincere. It increase my respect to you.
Right. I just can’t picture Julia Child running drugs. Smuggling fine wine, maybe, but not drugs, save maybe poppy seeds.
and of course we know that Julia Child is the typical CIA agent.
:)
The irony of your statement is that I spoke with a girl in the airport a few weeks ago that had to smuggle chocolate from Europe by telling the customs agent it was cheese on re-entry.
Our freedoms here are amazing.
Reverse that, it was cheese she smuggled in(but chocolate is ok for some reason), so she told the agent it was “white chocolate”….the agent never had a clue of course.
“The president has openly justified killing American citizens without charge or trial.”
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I believe they are charged with a serious crime. Police often legally kill (without a trial)when a suspect can not be peacefully apprehended and is a danger to the public.
“I believe they are charged with a serious crime.”
Wrong:
“U.S. officials stated that the “imminent threat” international legal standard was used to add al-Aulakqi’s name to the C.I.A.’s list of people targeted for killing.[34] In July 2010, al-Awlaki’s father, Nasser al-Awlaki, contracted the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to represent his son in a lawsuit that sought to remove Anwar from the targeted killinglist.[229] ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer said:
the United States is not at war in Yemen, and the government doesn’t have a blank check to kill terrorism suspects wherever they are in the world. Among the arguments we’ll be making is that, outside actual war zones, the authority to use lethal force is narrowly circumscribed, and preserving the rule of law depends on keeping this authority narrow.”-Wiki
TRUE — “the government doesn’t have a blank check to kill terrorism suspects wherever they are in the world.”
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“BLANK CHECK” is not claimed by the US. They only target individuals in areas in which the local government is unable to govern.
And here he goes again…
From the day off our birth as a nation, every leader has recognized the necessity of having an intelligence apparatus:
“THE NECESSITY OF PROCURING good Intelligence is apparent & need not be further urged–all that remains for me to add, is, that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible. For upon Secrecy, Success depends in most Enterprizes of the kind, and for want of it, they are generally defeated, however well planned and promising a favourable issue.” Gen. G. Washington to Col. Elias Dayton, 26 July 1777
One of Truman’s biggest self admitted mistakes was shutting down the OSS
When Washington received word that the British had killed an American who had been captured, he conducted a lottery among the British prisoners he held. The loser was executed. I don’t endorse that action and it would be illegal now. Sherman spoke the truth when he said “War is hell.”
Washington debated the retaliatory killing but never carried out out because he felt the dishonor of it would strain his reputation and cause problems when peace eventually came.
http://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=1706
Colonel, you and them damn facts again! Sic Willie and his idol Ron Paul have their own version of events.
Washington was fighting a war at the time…..that’s an important tidbit you know.
The fact that he was “fighting a war” at the time he said it doesn’t change the fundamental truth of his assessment. Truman appointed ADM Hillencotter as the first DCI and then shit canned him when the Agency completely missed what was going on on the Korean peninsula. Beedle Smith took over from him and revitalized the collection capabilities. At the Same time Smith was taking over, the Army fielded its first Special Forces Units – had that been the limit of “irregular warfare” operations, we probably wouldn’t have had the issues we had in Vietnam.
“The fact that he was “fighting a war” at the time he said it doesn’t change the fundamental truth of his assessment. ”
Actually, it does, that’s my whole point.
No, really it doesn’t, had we acted on intelligence that we had or developed information that was really available, we could have averted many a war or battle. Wanna bet that we know where every ship in the Russian navy is at any minute?
Ok, let me take a step back for a moment and suggest that we may be referring to different needs, hence my beef with the CIA.
If some criteria has been developed to ascertain that a country is a threat(and that’s a whole different, involved topic), then it would be natural to gather intelligence on the basis of that threat.
The CIA does much more than that..in fact if I were a betting man, I’d suggest their intel gathering has suffered as a result of, let’s just say, “other” activities.
So I’m not against intel, as someone above suggested, I’m simply against the way the CIA is run today, and sometimes you can’t fix an inherently corrupt organization…it’s just needs to go away and be replaced with something else.
The CIA is spying on Germany for crying out loud….
I would submit that keeping an eye on Germany isn’t all that bad an idea, they did manage to start two world wars after all (one of them they prepared for while they were “under scrutiny”, had we looked into Herr Hitler’s glider program we might have become concerned), however, they obviously would not be a priority like say, China or Russia. The problem with letting the Army or Navy being in charge of intelligence is that they tend to be parochial in their assessment. The CIA was originally intended to assess ALL off the intelligence developed by our various Intel agencies in order to develop a clear unbiased picture. Somewhere along the way, they became parochial as well.
The problem as I see it in the CIA is a lack of responsibility and clear chain of command.
Our elected leaders should be determining where the “all seeing eye” gets focused, not a cadre of unelected bureaucrats(even if they do get credentialed) overseeing a group of unaccountable yet vastly empowered worker bees….
The OSS had oversight in generals, all of whom directly reported to the CIC and could be interrogated by congress….lots of shit to run down hill and keep everyone in check.
The OSS had Mr./MGEN Donovan, a no shit war hero with the Medal of Honor to prove it, who was also a close personal friend of FDR’s. Donovan was also an accomplished lawyer with international contacts and slightly less money than God. The only other general was BG Macgruder who was the deputy director for intelligence. What Donovan had was a group of deputies, generally known as the “disciples” who were empowered to do whatever they thought necessary within his loose guidance. They were allowed to choose anyone they wanted for the organization so they choose the “cream of the crop”, people with experience in world affairs, connections and education. That’s where the moniker “oh so social” came from.
Btw, I don’t agree with you on Germany, but it’s been a long day and I’m done for today.
Again I say to you, sir….facts will get you nowhere here. Some of them really believe that the intelligence function was created with the “birth” of the CIA (or *maybe* the OSS for the more enlightened knuckleheads).
“Some of them really believe that the intelligence function was created with the “birth” of the CIA”
So who said that, and where?
Whoa, friend…deep breaths!
First, I didn’t attribute that as a quote; it was simply my opinion. However, if I had made it as a statement of fact, it would be a pretty easy inference from one of the comments we were discussing:
“You know it’s strange, the country existed for 170 years before the CIA came into existence and you act like it would be some odd ball occurrence for it to happen again.”
“it would be a pretty easy inference from one of the comments we were discussing”
Deep breaths? You really gotta stop assuming things, it’s not helping you.
That would be a ridiculous inference on my part, but more importantly I know that’s not the case. You can’t conduct a war without intelligence, period.
Dude, that’s my point. That was no assumption or inference, really, I was just being politic. The obvious meaning of, “You know it’s strange, the country existed for 170 years before the CIA came into existence and you act like it would be some odd ball occurrence for it to happen again” is clear. Prior to CIA = USA doing fine; post-CIA = CIA problems. My point is likewise clear. It *would* most certainly be oddball for us to ditch the Agency and try to survive in the modern geopolitical climate. That’s all – no real stretch or reach of any type there…
Again, your assumptions are the problem. Just because you ditch the agency, doesn’t mean you ditch the function(when needed). That why I referred to the OSS.
Again, no assumptions on my part. Don’t fall for the FITS tactic of repeating something often enough that you think it becomes true. We’re arguing in circles now, and I won’t chase you down another rabbit hole. If you want to restructure what the CIA does, fine. If you want to close them down and re-open them as OSS v.2.0, fine. We will always have an intelligence agency, and a non-military covert action capability (we didn’t invent that by the way). But repeating the tired old “drug running” stuff from the tin-foil hat crowd will not warrant a response or argument from me. It’s just too silly. Peace.
“Again, no assumptions on my part.”
lol….ok..we’ll leave it for the literate to sort out.
Whether Bush 43 or Obama, whether Bush 41 or Clinton, they serve one Master. Whether Boehner or Reid, whether Pelosi or Frist they serve one Master.
Who?
The members of the Trilateral Commission and the members of the Council of Foreign Relations, that’s who.
They have one common enemy that sends fear into their cold stone hearts…a united citizenry.
The John Birch Society is alive and well and posting as “Thomas”.
Paul has lost his mind!
You assume he ever had it.
I like Ron Paul, I like a lot of his ideas, but this one like many are short on implementation. In an ideal world we wouldn’t need an agency like the CIA, nor would we need a forward deployed military force, or spy satellites, etc. Sadly we don’t live in an ideal world and lots of other countries and groups out there in the world still want to inflict great damage on the USA.
It would be unwise at this point or at any point in the near future to dismantle our intelligence gathering apparatus outside of the country. Their are still many threats against the US that must be monitored.
End torture by shutting RonPaul the F up.
This MoFo would rather our children be killed in the streets, than disrespect a Jihadist. He has the same Bill-Clinton “bury-your-head/due process” mentality that opened the door for a sucker punch on 9-11, that Bush had to clean up.
Dumb@$$ children, trying to play boss, is a BIG F*#king problem. Obama is as good as an example as FITS and RonPaul. These EFFIN idiots are the last ones we should EVER listen to.