Coleen Rowley: Torturegate: the Hypocrisy is Breathtaking

[marmar]

from HuffPost:




Torturegate: the Hypocrisy is Breathtaking
Posted January 7, 2008 | 12:37 AM (EST)



Without the great investigative reporters of yore, who's up to cracking this latest scandal, the substance of which is bigger and certainly much uglier than Watergate (which merely, by comparison, entailed non violent burglary and some dirty tricks)? One wouldn't even need the Woodward-Bernstein investigative tenacity to unravel "Torturegate" as there are so many who know the truth about the sordid episode, even without the best evidence of the videotapes. As opposed to the relatively smaller group of "Watergate Seven" conspirators--notably Gordon Liddy, H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Mitchell, and Chuck Colson--there must be literally hundreds of government insiders who know the truth about the ordering and covering up of the Bush-Cheney Administration's illegal torture. It shouldn't be hard at all to find a new "Deep Throat" or two (or actually several) who know more than Mark Felt knew about Watergate.

Andrew Sullivan already connected some dots in "The Torture Tape Fingering Bush As a War Criminal" while Laura Rozen (writing about "Operation Stop Talking" for Mother Jones), Scott Horton ("Judgment and Torture" for Harpers Magazine) and Jason Leopold (writing "Report May Have Motivated Destruction of Torture Tapes" for Truthout) have begun the process of uncovering some of this latest terrible scandal. But much of the main stream media hasn't seemed very interested so far. Where's Dana Priest, for instance, whose reporting about secret black sites and extraordinary renditions may have prompted the destruction of the CIA videotapes in the first place?

Would my colleague's cloak and dagger cartoon be more complete if it included the main stream media as ostriches standing around with their heads in the sand?

Why has no reporter apparently bothered to contact a Bin Laden expert like Ali Soufan (whom I recently quoted in "Torture Is Wrong, Illegal and It Doesn't Work") or (retired FBI agent) Jack Cloonan or (former CIA operative) Bob Baer who previously explained how and why torture doesn't work before news of the destruction of the CIA torture tapes arose? Here's what Baer and Cloonan said about torture before "Operation Stop Talking" went into effect: .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/coleen-rowley/torturegate-the-hypocris_b_80142.html