Torture, extraordinary rendition, Brewster Jennings, undercover operatives working at desks – my one question amidst all these revelations is simple. Why am I aware of it? How is it, the inner workings of our top secret intelligence agency have become common knowledge? Every child growing up in America hears the legend, urban or otherwise, that if you were to say to someone on the telephone that you planned to kill the President, government spooks would be around to snatch you up in no time. The truth behind this legend is unknown to me, but that always seemed to be the point. It was the very knowledge of there being a gaggle of secret agents out there capable of just about anything that somehow gave you a feeling of comfort or fear, depending on what you were up to at the time. Things nobody knew about, and because of that, America would be one step ahead of the crazies, blowing holes into schemes, always ‘smarter than the average bear’.
What happened to change all that? Simply put, following 9/11 the Bush administration turned every man and woman wearing a military uniform into a CIA agent, thereby stripping the agency’s work of it’s anonymity. Indeed, a group of National Guard soldiers working in the Abu Gharib detention facility, without having had proper training to perform the function of prison guard let alone interrogator, were ordered to ‘soften up’ detainees to make them more willing to provide information. Photographs of their methods were taken by the soldiers themselves, in a chilling display of exactally what separates a professional CIA spook from the rest of our government’s employees. The first operational imperative concerning this line of work being, nobody ever finding out about what you did. Aside from authorizing non-MI soldiers to do these things, another blunder in the President’s policy was considering every detainee there to be someone worth ‘softening up’. Apparently the theory was, if they didn’t speak English, it’s likely they knew where a group of terrorists were hiding and what they were planning to blow up next.
If this weren’t true, then someone should be able to explain how a teenager in Afghanistan was found dead in a cell, hands bound to the ceiling, legs beaten to the point where an autopsy stated that they appeared to have been run over by a bus. This man wasn’t a terrorist, nor did he have any valuable information to offer the Army soldiers who killed him. While this event backs up the fact that as in Abu Gharib, unqualified soldiers were ordered to carry out the duties of military intelligence/CIA, it also exposes another ill conceived aspect of our policy. As at no time was there any consideration paid to the scenario where an innocent detainee was tortured, then later released. Prior to these interrogations, we didn’t ‘know’ that the detainee had done anything wrong, or that they at all represented the enemy. So when it came time to explain why this or that person was treated in the way that they were, any answer our government provided carried with it the damning stench of apathetic incompetence. As whether or not the soldier is prosecuted for what happened, the larger question is always going to be, ‘why’ an unqualified soldier was ordered to ‘soften up’ a detainee in the first place? Because we all know that in the military, you do what you’re told to do.
While there surely are detainees worthy of harsh treatment, people who are certainly enemy combatants, expertise is needed in distinguishing that person from someone who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just like in assuming that if you were to threaten the President’s life over the phone, someone would be knocking on your door; the fact that certain people who do know things we need to find out are captured and tortured, is really a thing that pretty much any American can assume happens and in a lot of cases deem acceptable. If I’ve learned anything in the time since those photographs from Abu Gharib broke out, it’s that the American public doesn’t entirely condemn what’s done to detainees in the name of national security. If Osama Bin Laden were to be captured today, I don’t think there are many Americans who would shed a tear from knowing that he was tortured for information.
But with the knowledge that innocent people were also tortured, what should be something the public knows absolutely nothing about, instead becomes a heated topic of debate. The opinions that come out of this debate pit Americans against Americans, who judge one others’ patriotism and humanity, thereby creating a domestic enemy for each to go along with the one we’re all already at war with. All because of a policy that handed this work requiring experts over to people who had no business anywhere near it. As it’s clear that once the public gets a clue about what’s happening, there’s a demand to know more. Therefore the curtain our intelligence community relies on to adequately function is torn down, exposing people and functions we should never know about, to scrutiny none should ever have to face. Because if you ask a man to systematically issue beatings to a group of people without providing him the training to make sure none of them die, when one or two of them expire, it’s not entirely their fault. Especially considering the primary mantra repeated throughout basic training is, “Kill!”
Some of them lost their heads. Some of them became well acquainted with a sadistic side of themselves that may have come as surprise. The public knows this is true, so questions are asked. Hence the reason why we and the rest of the world now know about the policy of ‘extraordinary rendition’, where suspects are transported to third party nations who carry out methods of interrogation perhaps too gruesome for our own spooks to stomach. The mechanism could indicate just that, but I happen to believe that it’s in place instead because prior to President Bush converting all of our forces into CIA keystone cops, the Geneva Convention statutes were respected enough for the government to take steps ensuring that our hands appeared clean. The United States didn’t want to be found in violation, hence the need to shuttle these people off to someone else, should the need to explain what happened ever come up. It wasn’t the United States who tortured this guy, it was the Egyptians. Of course, if the person was deemed worthy of such costly treatment, chances are the CIA knew for a fact who they were and what they were capable of doing.
And here we have the key elements that are missing from so many of the known instances of manslaughter and abuse currently enabling people around the world to view us as fascists. Knowledge of who the person was, having been determined by trained professionals, whose identity would always be kept secret, was the standard. The reason for using the pros, and the process of rendition remaining ‘extraordinary’ rather than ‘typical’, was essential for any of it to be carried out in secrecy to the benefit of our safety. Instead, the mechanism is now public knowledge, and in terms of our safety, the instances of criminal incompetence, that haven’t remained hidden, manages only to galvanize the resolve of our enemy. Support for their cause is easier to obtain, and in turn, our ultimate goal of victory in the war being fought is that much more difficult to obtain. Meanwhile, the cover from public scrutiny that’s so necessary for military intelligence and the CIA to operate effectively, is compromised.
Once the cat’s out of the bag and things don’t go as planned in terms of the war, we suddenly realize that this sacred idea of cover can be sacrificed for political reasons as well. This is evident not just in the actual Rove/Libby leaks, but even more so in the closing of ranks by Republicans, with the CIA’s beef over a breach of security being categorized as a waste of everyone’s time. Former agents have testified before Congress this past week in stern protest over the position both the White House and the Republican Party have taken concerning the security breach. Larry Johnson, a former agent said, “We deserve people who work in the White House who are committed to protecting classified information, telling the truth to the American people, and living by example to the idea that a country at war with Islamic extremists cannot focus its efforts on attacking other American citizens who simply tried to tell the truth.”
The lunatics are on the grass, making the spooks quiver in unison with all manner of dark thoughts to chew on. As not only does the White House consider an average National Guard private, who might have been flipping burgers a few months prior, qualified to perform their duties, but should the DC winds blow some stench in the wrong direction, they’ll find themselves on a spit rotating over a bonfire. Sure, their jobs are the stuff of Hollywood action movies, but unlike those actors who find their own place in the sunset once it’s all over, these real life actors sometimes only survive long enough to grab up the leftover scraps. When you think about it, now that CIA agents are also treated as an administratively expendable human commodity at our government’s disposal, there’s not a single group besides the private contractors on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan today, who don’t get screwed over worse with each passing month this bullshit, political cancer of a war drags on. Soldiers and Marines are now deployed 18 months at a time, CIA agents are ‘fair game’ – political prey, and the veterans from both sides feel betrayed. The only move left now is for the government to start following these broken hearted people around with cameras, and making some scratch off of the reality TV show they’re able to cut. This decade’s answer to Cops, where every episode the bad guys get away.
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