The faux Republican outrage over Nancy Pelosi’s perceived slight, in charging that CIA briefers directly misled Congress, has been amusing to watch. Even as the Democrats’ seeming inability to either defend her, or fear of sinking into the same phony political sandtrap, is disappointing. But Democrats seem to excel at disappointment these days, so that part of the ginned-up story is hardly surprising.
The GOP hypocrisy in charging that Pelosi has somehow hurt the morale of The Agency in the bargain (and, as bonus, that Obama’s release of the Bush Torture Memos has endangered CIA operatives) has been all the more amusing to witness, in their complete and entire selective amnesia of their party’s own 100%, unqualified support of a White House which, for the first time in the history of this nation, had publicly outed the identity of a covert CIA operative. In unapologetically exposing Valerie Plame-Wilson, and completely destroying her entire, crucial network monitoring the trafficking of WMD in the Middle East along with it, untold damage was brought not only to CIA operatives risking their lives in the defense of this nation, but also to the national security of the nation itself, which was significantly blinded in the Middle East — and on the issue of WMDs, of all things — at a time when we were theoretically going to war there, over that very issue. Yet, the Republicans chose to side with the criminals in treason, over the “morale” or “effectiveness” of The Agency in their shortsighted and inexcusable politicization of the matter.
It doesn’t get much more absurd than all of that…unless you add to it the Democrats’ near-complete incapacity to take on, and tear down, the opportunistic Republicans on their own, absurdist argument in phony defense of the CIA of late.
Ernie Canning, here at The BRAD BLOG, has been documenting the CIA’s rich, and often ugly, 50-year history in the use of torture, and other illegalities, as a direct tactic to control foreign populations in the march towards the growth of U.S. Empire in the twentieth, and now twenty-first, century, well-prior to the Bush Administration’s claims of the necessity for so-called “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” in the post-9/11 era. Canning’s third, and latest chapter in his exclusive four-part series was published here last week.
But more germane, for the moment, to the continuing, cynical, and disingenuous Republican “outrage” over Pelosi’s charges that the CIA misled Congress during classified briefings — as happily amplified by the corporate broadcast media on all of the Sunday News Shows today — is 42-year CIA veteran Melvin A. Goodman’s brief summary of the CIA’s rich history in bamboozling Congress published over at The Public Record. As with the use of torture by the CIA, no, The Agency’s lies to Congress did not begin in the post-9/11 period, but they certainly reached a high-point (or low-point, depending on your perspective) during that period which the GOP has now chosen for their fully-politicized, hoped-for distraction, in targeting the current Democratic Speaker of the House.
Goodman’s summary is worth a quick review — particularly by Democrats who seem to be caught flat-footed, yet again, in having a clue about how to dismantle, and defang this latest absurd strawman argument mustered by a party with no tools left in their toolbox, other than a fully-compliant corporate media, and a startlingly-inept opposition party.
So pervasive has been the CIA’s lying, bamboozling, and propagandizing that its disaffected former employees and critics on the outside have devised a “nickname” for the organization: The Mighty Wurlitzer. All one has to do is type in the words in a search engine and one will come up with hundreds of results documenting the CIA’s history of gross dishonesty and criminal activities in support of US corporate empire abroad.
Brad, check this out, how the coordinated right filters down to the local level. In my local paper, the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Republican sympathizer and owner Richard Connor’s Sunday column:
http://www.timesleader.com/opinion/columnists/connor/Torture_issue_reaching_a_boiling_point_Richard_L__Connor_Opinion_05-24-2009.html?commented=Y#comments
Unlike my rebuttle in the comments of the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, Brad actually lets you comment here.
This guy, Richard Connor, the owner of the WBTL, endorsed Republican Sherwood (of choking his mistress fame) over Dem Chris Carney, even after his own paper broke the Sherwood mistress choking story. He bought the paper soon after that story, and it turned into a Republican rag.
His staff endorsed Obama by vote, and he requested they revote. They again chose Obama, but Connor had to write a huge op-ed on how they were wrong. At least he let the paper endorse Obama, though, with an asterisk…
He also endorsed Santorum over Casey. Nice!
He ran an Ann Coulter column for years, for “balance” he said, then replaced her with Mona Charen…just as bad if not worse.
In between Connor’s staff’s vote, he tried to “persuade” then to choose McCain.
After seeing Cheney on TV all the time, do you think Cheney would be running the country, or McCain, if McCain won? I think Cheney.
Where’s George Bush? Wasn’t he the president?
You know, I think people like owner Richard Connor get a “skeleton” column, and alter a few words…because they’re all the same. The coordinated right/wrong.
And does everyone get that the Blagejovich thing was the exact same thing? A distraction?
I hope everyone is smart enough to realize these things.
What happened to the OH SO IMPORTANT Blagejovich story? Gee! The world was going to end! 24×7 coverage for WEEKS!
NOW…it gone…POOF!!!!!!!!!!
The GOP controls the “liberal media”, they OWN it, they DRIVE the stories.
WAKE UP!!!
If a bunch of liberals own the media, then NAME THEM! WHO are they? You can’t!
Because 5 corporations own 90+ % of the “liberal media”. Are corporations liberal?
Anymore, whenever someone says “liberal media”, ask them: “Who are these liberals? What are their names?”
Seriously, who are they? They AREN’T!!!!!!!!
Anymore, you get BUZZED when you’re in an argument and say “liberal media”, and can’t name “the liberals”. You lose!
I figured a while back that when Pukes say they are “Promoting Freedom around the World”, they really mean exploiting people for cheap labor corporatism, and we all know the definition of Corporatism, don’t we.
Of course the CIA deceived Pelosi. That’s what it does. It’s an agency that coined words like “disinformation” and “plausible denial.” Suggesting otherwise is on par with a story about a man biting a dog.
As revealed by Alfred McCoy, the billion dollars a year the CIA spent between 1950 and 1952 to crack the code of human consciousness dealt not only with torture but mass persuasion.
CIA officers are masters of propaganda. In Plausible Denial (1991) attorney Mark Lane discussed information obtained via FOIA requests that showed how:
As Amy & David Goodman observed in Static, citing a 1977 Carl Bernstein article, “The CIA & the Media,” between 1950 and the 1970s, in addition to a worldwide network of media that included newspapers and radio stations, there were at least “a dozen full-time CIA agents…employed by American news organizations, often with knowledge of their top management.†There were a minimum of “twenty-two American news organizations who were also working for the CIA. About a dozen publishing houses printed more than one thousand books that were produced and subsidized by the CIA.â€
I do hate it when someone holds back information because they think they know better than the ELECTED officials. (Well, hopefully most of them were really elected)
Here’s a couple of former CIA, fessing up to it all:
WILLIAM COLBY, former CIA director: “The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.”
JOHN STOCKWELL, former CIA official and author: “It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable, and to propagandize and teach the American people to hate, so we will let the Establishment spend any amount of maoney on arms.”