Consequences of Exposing Torture and John Brennan's Promoting Torture

Ironies of living in the post-Bush world: by Debra Sweet Director World Can't Wait
1. The only CIA operative connected to waterboarding and torture during the Bush regime to be jailed, John Kiriakou, will go to prison for giving an agent's name to reporters in connection with an investigation aimed at exposing enhanced interrogation techniques. The agents who did the torture face no sanctions at all, and in fact are glorified in popular culture, like the new film Zero Dark Thirty.

2. In 2009, the Bush regime promoter of "enhanced interrogation" (torture to most of the world), John Brennan, was too controversial an appointment for Obama to make to head the CIA, so he became a special advisor in charge of the drone program. In 2013, Brennan is safe enough to get the CIA job. Has Brennan or Obama changed? Not so much. But many critics of torture have been silenced under the Democrat commander in chief.

The Brennan nomination Monday, described as "sure" to succeed in Congress, brought this from The Telegraph:

"The mastermind of Barack Obama's secret drone war was chosen on Monday to lead the CIA and 'relentlessly' extend its controversial campaign against al-Qaeda into the president's second term."

Glenn Greenwald writes in The Guardian:

"Brennan last year got caughtoutright lying when he claimed Obama's drone program caused no civilian deaths in Pakistan over the prior year. He also spouted complete though highly influential falsehoods to the world in the immediate aftermath of the Osama bin Laden killing, including claiming that bin Laden "engaged in a firefight" with Navy SEALS and had 'used his wife as a human shield'. Brennan has also been in charge of many of Obama's most controversial and radical policies, including "signature strikes" in Yemen - targeting people without even knowing who they are - and generally seizing the power to determine who will be marked for execution without any due process, oversight or transparency."