The National Security State as a Criminal Enterprise

[rhett o rick]

The National Security State as a Criminal Enterprise
By Tom Engelhardt

“It came from the top and that’s never been a secret. The president authorized the building of those CIA “black sites” and the use of what came to be known as “enhanced interrogation techniques” and has spoken of this with a certain pride. The president’s top officials essentially put in an order at the Department of Justice for “legal” justifications that would, miraculously, transform those “techniques” into something other than torture. Its lawyers then pulled out their dictionaries and gave new meaning to tortured definitions of torture that could have come directly from the fused pens of Franz Kafka and George Orwell. In the process, they even managed to leave the definition of torture to the torturer. It was a performance for the ages.”

“The Bush administration was, of course, helped in those years by a media that, when not cheerleading for torture, or actually lending the CIA a helpful hand, essentially banished the word from its vocabulary, unless it referred to heinously similar acts committed by countries we disliked.”

“And in case you think it’s all over but for the shouting, think again, as Rebecca Gordon, author of Mainstreaming Torture, writes today in “American Torture: Past, Present, and… Future?””

Read the complete article: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/12/15/national-security-state-criminal-enterprise

[Enthusiast]

1. Kicked and recommended a whole bunch!

[rhett o rick]

2. We can't let our torture problem just die out. We need some action from the President. nm

[sabrina 1]

3. It is policy. And to stop it would require changing Congress completely.

There are far too many powerful people behind this government, the CIA eg, the Military, for any one President to be able to end torture.

I guess we were really naive when we thought it could be stopped and that people would be held accountable.

[Cosmic Kitten]

4. ...as a Criminal Enterprise... to what end?

It's east to agree with the sentiments expressed.
Change though, requires an examoination of the
purpose and ends desired of the "Criminal Enterprise".

Is it violation of human rights for it's own sake,
or is that a symptom/tactic to greater ends?
IS it simply control of energy resources?
Or is it Defense of the Petrodollar?
Is it global economic hegemony?

[rhett o rick]

5. It's all about power. Wealth is great but just a means for power. The Security State is not there

to protect the 99%. It is not altruistic. Those that want power know that they need to control the government and population. The Security State can protect the Deep State Oligarchs and allow them to plunder. There have been a large number of individuals that have tried to stand up against the Oligarchs that have been silenced. Just sayin'

[sabrina 1]

6. To what end? Same as it always when people grow giddy with power.

Money, power, one fuels the other.

I don't believe there is any ideology involved other than simply controlling as much of the world as possible.

It's called 'madness'.

Read the PNAC for their public statement of what they 'dreamed' of.

It's old and it's evil. I doubt they even care whether they are doing any good or not.

They are psychopaths, most of them.

Our only hope is that they will turn on each other.

And there were signs of that after Cheney's 'tell all book' was published.

And more recently after the torture report more or less exonerated Bush, Cheney went ballistic, stated that Bush knew everything and made the decisions.

So, a split among them could weaken them, hopefully.