AMERICANS FOR HONEST GOVERNMENT
Seek the truth – stand by the truth – live the truth.
Our agenda is to establish a government base on the truth and our Christian principles
http://www.unz.com/pcockburn/
http://www.icij.org/
By: Juan Reynoso- voteforamerica@gmail.com -- http://teapartyorg.ning.com/
The U.S.A. era of impunity. http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/03/15/fein-m15.html
Kidnapping, Torture, Assassination, corruption and Perjury Are No Longer Crimes in Washington.
Kidnapping: After 9/11, the Bush strategy “war on terror”, the CIA enlisted Fifty-four other countries and got into kidnapping, 136 “terror suspects”, including completely innocent people were kidnapped off the street, often with the help of local police or intelligence agencies. The prisoners were delivered either into the Bush administration’s secret global system of prisons, also known as “black sites,” to be detained and mistreated, or directly into the hands of torturing regimes from Egypt to Uzbekistan. To this date no American involved has been brought to court for such illegal acts by the federal government, only one set of CIA agents was, indicted in Italy for a kidnapping and rendition to Egypt. Among them was the Agency’s Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady. But he later fled the country for the United States. Last year, he was briefly taken into custody in Panama, only to be spirited out of that country and back to safety by the U.S. government.
Torture: The Bush administration justice Department authorized the CIA to use torture “enhanced interrogation techniques” against prisoners in the Global War on Terror. These “techniques” included “waterboarding, “known as the water torture”. On coming to office, President Obama rejected these practices, but refused to prosecute those who practiced them. To this date, not a single CIA agent or private contractor involved was ever charged, or brought to trial, nor was anyone in the Bush Justice Department or the rest of the administration which ordered these practices. But John Kiriakou member of the national security a former CIA agent who torture no one, but told the truth and offended the Obama administration by turning whistleblower and going public about the Agency torture; He is now serving a 30-month prison sentence for disclosing the truth, In other words, the only crime that could be prosecuted in connection with the Agency’s torture campaign was one that threatened to let the American public know the truth and the CIA crimes.
The destruction of evidence of a crime: To purposely destroy evidence in order to impede a future investigation of possible criminal acts is itself, of course, a crime. We know that such a thing did indeed happen. Jose Rodriguez, Jr., the head of CIA clandestine operations, destroyed 92 videotapes of the repeated waterboarding; The Justice Department investigated his act, but never charged him. He has since defended himself in saying that he was “tired of waiting for Washington’s bureaucracy to make a decision that protected American lives.” He is still free and writing op-eds for the Washington Post defending the interrogation program whose tapes he destroyed.
The planning of an extralegal prison system: As we all know today, the global network of prisons, or “black sites,” at which acts of torture were committed was set up at the wishes of the highest officials of the Bush administration. This system was created specifically to avoid putting terror suspects into the U.S. legal system and void the rule of law. This was a well-planned crime committed not under the rubric of war against any specific power, but of a global war without end against al-Qaeda and like-minded groups.
The killing of detainees in that extralegal system: The deaths of detainees in CIA custody in offshore prisons as a result of harsh treatment ordered by their Agency handlers, was not considered a crime. In a rare case a low-level Army interrogator was convicted of “killing an Iraqi general by stuffing him face-first into a sleeping bag,” and was sentenced to “forfeit $6,000 of his salary over the next four months, receive a formal reprimand, and spend 60 days restricted to his home, office, and church.”)
Assassination: Today, it is part of everyday life in the White House and at the CIA. The president’s role as assassin-in-chief, as the man who quite literally makes the final decision on whom to kill, has been all-but-publicly promoted as a political plus. The drone assassination campaigns in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, though covert and run by a civilian agency with the help from the U.S. Air Force are openly reported on in the media. In 2009, for instance, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta didn’t hesitate to enthusiastically praise the drone attacks in Pakistan as “the only game in town.” And best of all, they are “legal.” We know this because the White House had the Justice Department prepare a 50-page document on their legality that it has refused to release to the public. In these campaigns in the backlands of distant places where there are seldom reporters, we nonetheless know that thousands of people have died, including significant numbers of children. Being run by a civilian agency, they cannot in any normal sense be “acts of war.” In another world, they would certainly be considered illegal and war crimes. Top officials have taken responsibility for these acts, including the drone killings in Yemen of four American citizens condemned to death by a White House that has enthusiastically taken on the role of judge, jury, and executioner. No one of these criminals involved, however, will ever see a day in court.
Perjury before Congress: Lying to Congress in public testimony is, of course, perjury. We know that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper committed perjury, when asked by Senator Ron Wyden whether the NSA had gathered “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans” — a question submitted to him a day in advance — Clapper answered, “No, sir”. This was a lie, pure and simple, as the Snowden revelations on the NSA’s gathering of phone metadata on all Americans, including, our congressional representatives. Clapper subsequently apologized, saying that he spoke in what he called “the least untruthful” way possible, but no one prosecute him for perjury which is a crime and Congress did nothing and Clapper remains the director of national intelligence with the “support” of president Obama.
Mind you, our government is corrupt to the core. The above seven categories don’t even take into account: warrantless surveillance of Americans, the corporations and private contractors that overbilled and cheated the government in its war zones, or the NSA employees using government surveillance systems. The NSA claims that at least one employee was “disciplined” for this, but no one was taken to court. A rare exception: a number of low level military figures in the Abu Ghraib scandal were tried for their abusive actions, convicted, and sent to jail, though no one higher than a colonel was held accountable in court for those infamously systematic and organized acts of torture and abuse.
Whistleblowers are the people’s heroes, Manning and Edward Snowden are prosecuted for telling the truth; In Washington today, knowledge of the truth is not only a crime; but telling the truth to the American people is treason. That’s today political reality of our government and the perpetual culture of corruption. They are too big to go to Jail, under the pretense of National Security, democracy, U.S. interest or whatever they want lie about to betray us.
The United States is concerned that the president, justice Department officers, the secretary of defense, or U.S. troops acting on their orders could be charged with war crimes. The United States government wants immunity from prosecution. In other words, the country accused of crimes would be the judge of whether the acts were officials; that is why they keep in secrecy their crimes and are cover-up under the pretense of classified information. Such immunity for government officials is a giant step backward for international law and will be the end of freedom and democracy; it will grant immunity to any person, whatever his rank, and be free from prosecution for crimes against humanity.
It's not clear what national security interest is served at this point by continuing to hide what U.S. officials did to people detained after the September 11 attacks, other than to avoid U.S. embarrassment and the cover-up of crimes against humanity.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/3/cia-torture-feinsteininterrogationimpunity.html
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/03/11/the-cia-senate-intelligence-committee-the-culture-of-impunity-for-torture/
http://antiwar.com/blog/2014/04/14/senators-urge-partial-declassification-of-cia-torture-report-keep-vast-majority-secret/
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/03/10/pers-m10.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/senate-intelligence-head-accuses-cia-of-undermining-us-constitutional-framework/5373195
