Thursday, May 21, 2009

US Militarism Continues Unabated : Torture& Abuse of POWs & Bombing Innocent Villagers! What ? For Their Own Good ?

UPDATE:1:50 PM May 21, 2009

So anyway let's begin with a little music.
Richie Havens performs Jackson Browne 's Lives in the Balance






Anyway here's a bit more information on how the C.I.A. began and what its agenda was and how it acts as a separate branch of the US government.The C.I.A. is used by Presidents or by the Pentagon or other branches of the National Security Bureaucracy to do those things which others are not permitted to do. The C.I.A. unflinchingly breaks US laws & acts contrary to the stated ideals of the US Constitution & the Bill of Rights.

The C.I.A. operates in the shadows cloaked in secrecy with little or no oversight or accountability except when they get caught in some way by downing a civilian plane over Peru with a US missionary aboard.Or as they got caught during the Bay of Pigs Fiasco or after the fact they had to face a Congressional committee about their quite considerable role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile or their role in the Iran Contra scandal. So why would Obama go to the C.I.A. with hat in hand assuring these thugs who operate outside the law that they would never be prosecuted for torture or any other wrong-doing on his watch. Other presidents felt the need to also pay tribute to the C.I.A. ie President Reagan & Bush I & Clinton etc. So the chances are Obama will do little to rein these folks in because Obama may need them at some point to carry out some illegal or unethical actions on his behalf? Some experts argue that Obama feels the need to have the C.I.A. on his side because they could make things quite difficult for him But the C.I.A. in their attacks on Nancy Pelosi & others shows they are not keeping their heads down and staying out of Obama's way which show how naive Obama really is or that he never had the intention to dismantle the Bush/Cheney Regimes illegal & questionable if not immoral tactics in the War on Terror. Once the C.I.A. made the excuse that it was fighting evil Communism now its the Evil Terrorists, the Evil Insurgents, the Evil Arabs & the Evil Muslims, the Evil Taliban and every other week a new group is added to the list.

The C.I.A. ignores the sovereignty of other nations as it goes about its business toppling governments it does not approve of and supporting by any means necessary those governments no matter how brutal or anti-Democratic as long as they serve in some fashion America's interests , American corporations or by crushing so called Communists. socialists and liberals who might want a better life for all the citizens of that country and not just for the rich & powerful. So any one striving for social justice & human rights and such rights as freedom of speech or freedom of speech are simply labeled Communists or Marxists or these days terrorists & insurgents as a catch all for any who dare criticize a government which is an ally of the United States. These states America then rules by proxy by having only those in government of whom the US & the C.I.A. approve.

Secrets of the CIA Part 1

Part 1: "The Introduction"
The United States CIA declassified. Retired CIA agents tell their stories of the horrific actions committed by the CIA.


Iran 1953 Guatemala 1954 Cuba 1961 Vietnam Laos 1962 Indonesia 1965 Bolivia 1967 Cambodia 1970 Chile 1973 Afghanistan 1979 Nicaragua 1981 Honduras Panama 1989 Venezuela 2002 secrets




And here is a summary of the 1975 Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by Frank Church Church Commission which held hearings into the circumstances surrounding the Coup D'etat in Chile in which they conclude that without the help of the US government & military and the C.I.A. the 1973 coup would not have been successful in putting the Brutal General Pinochet into power.Anyway this gives one at least a glimpse of these ruthless people which Obama is now defending unconditionally.

I copied this from a website dedicated to keeping a detailed record of the criminal activities of the C.I.A. And yes the C.I.A. has quite a habit of lying to Congress, the Senate & the American people.Virtual Truth Commission 975: The Church Commission

Discoveries

U. S. Involvement: In the mid-1970's, revelations that President Richard Nixon had ordered the CIA to "make the economy scream" in Chile to "prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him," prompted a major scandal...and a major investigation by the U.S. Senate...

The 1970s hearings established that the Nixon administration adopted a secret, two-track strategy to ensure that Allende, a Socialist, was defeated in his fourth bid to the Chilean presidency in the 1970 elections. The first track, primarily a political and psychological campaign targeted against Allende, was little different from previous, multi-million-dollar efforts by the CIA to prevent his election in 1958, 1962 and 1964.

The second track, so secret that even the US ambassador in Santiago was not informed, was launched after Allende narrowly won a three-way race on Sep 4, 1970. "On September 15," wrote the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, "President Nixon informed CIA Director Richard Helms that an Allende regime in Chile would not be acceptable to the United States and instructed the CIA to play a direct role in organizing a military coup d'etat in Chile to prevent Allende's accession to the Presidency."

...Conclusions

# 1975: Frank Church, then chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, concluded that the CIA, in a shadowy alliance with U.S. corporations, carried out "massive covert operations within a democratic state, with the ultimate effect of overthrowing [the] duly elected government."

The highlights of "Project FUBELT" were cited in both the newly released CIA documents and in papers uncovered by the 1975 congressional inquiry. Covert funds were funneled into Chilean congressional campaigns; CIA agents stayed close to disgruntled Chilean military officers; to keep the military on edge, the CIA planted false propaganda suggesting that the Chilean left planned to take control of the armed forces; and the CIA secretly poured $1.5 million into one of Chile's leading newspapers, El Mercurio...

Pinochet: An Image Problem


( especially since two American citizens in Chile were executed by Pinochet's Military the incident was made into the film "Missing " by Costas Gavras with Jack Lemmon & Sissy Spacek )

The administration fretted about an image problem in the United States, too, because two Americans -- Charles Horman and Frank Terruggi -- were among those executed at the National Stadium. Their deaths constituted a "difficult public relations situation," one cable reported on Oct. 21, 1973. The Kubisch report to Kissinger cited "heavy" media criticism and congressional inquiries on the two executions. In February 1974, Kubisch delicately raised the American deaths with Chilean Foreign Minister Manuel Huerta, according to a newly declassified memorandum of the conversation. The topic was broached "in the context of the need to be careful to keep relatively small issues in our relationship from making our cooperation more difficult," the memo said...



But the first wave of executions was only the start of atrocities in Pinochet's Chile. Human rights violations kept complicating U.S.-Chilean relations, especially after Nixon's Watergate resignation in August 1974. By 1975, human rights advocates were challenging the Ford administration's continued support for Pinochet. A confidential NSC memorandum dated July 1, 1975, revealed a mutiny even inside the U.S. Embassy. "A number of officers in the Embassy at Santiago have written a dissent," according to the memo prepared for national security advisor Brent Scowcroft.

The dissent was "strongly supported by the Policy Planning office in ARA [State's Latin American division], calling for cutting off all economic and military assistance to Chile until the human rights situation improved." The memo said the embassy staff was overruled by then-Ambassador David Popper who wanted to continue support for the junta while making stronger protests on human rights. Popper met with the Chilean minister of economic coordination, Raul Saez, on April 6, 1975, to discuss the concerns. Popper said "the most difficult problem we had in our embassy had to do with allegations of torture," according to an embassy cable. "The root of the problem seemed to me to be the absolute power of DINA [Chile's intelligence service] to do whatever it desired in detaining and handling suspects."



also see my discussion of the film "Missing " by Costas Gavras which deals with the Coup in Chile & the disappearance of the US citizen Charles Horman who was exectuted by Pinochet's people with the approval of the C.I.A. & the US government at my website gordscafe


and so it goes,
GORD.

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