The problem is not John Brennan: It's us

[kpete]

SUN JAN 13, 2013 AT 08:00 AM PST
The problem is not John Brennan: It's us
byLaurence LewisFollowforDaily Kos

The tradition of liberty is old. The common people will let it grow old, yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life...
-"The Writer," from Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange

Meanwhile, no one on the left or the right seems to much care about Brennan’s nomination, despite the fact that he was forced to withdraw his name from consideration from the very same job in 2008 thanks to controversy over his alleged involvement with Bush-era interrogation programs. Brennan spent years at the CIA and served as chief of staff to former director George Tenet during the creation of the post-9/11 detention and interrogation programs. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer described him as a “supporter” of the programs, which included torture and the use of secret prison “black sites.”

“There are some really important concerns that need to be publicly addressed before the Senate moves forward with the nomination,” said Laura Murphy, the ACLU’s Washington legislative office director, in an interview with Salon. The ACLU doesn’t take positions on nominees for executive branch jobs, but Murphy said Brennan’s appointment is “troubling,” adding, “We definitely are concerned.”

http://www.salon.com/2013/01/07/the_actually_controversial_nominee/
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/13/1178236/-The-problem-is-not-John-Brennan-It-s-us

[vi5]

1. This is not a complicated situation

Republicans don't care because they love torture.
Enough Democrats don't care because they support Obama more than they support any specific liberal or moral values and would not dare criticize anything he does or oppose anyone he supports.

That just leaves all the shrill, "emo prog" leftist radicals who care and complain about stuff like torture or human rights violations. And we're not enough to stop anything.

[forestpath]

3. +1

[MotherPetrie]

4. bingo

[Honeycombe8]

8. Yes, let's criticize those who disagree with you and say they don't support liberal or moral values!

Because they disagree with YOU, the big man behind the curtain! O Wise One! Were we only all as Wise as you!

[vi5]

12. It's not disagreeing with me.

It's being in favor of torture and supporting it as policy. I don't know of any definition of liberal that involves supporting torture. And if you find it moral then you definitely have different morals than I do.

I didn't support people like that under Bush, and I don't support them now just because someone with a D after their name says I should.

His first nomination in 2008 was withdrawn, coincidentally when we had a larger majority than we do now and with a more liberal senate.

[TwilightGardener]

2. Interestingly, here's where Brennan and Hagel can be tied together:

"After Obama was elected president, it didn’t take him long to turn to Hagel for advice. Even before taking office he tapped him for a sensitive national-­security mission. Along with former senator David Boren, Hagel traveled to CIA headquarters at Langley for a series of briefings on the array of covert operations being run by the spies. According to several participants, the meetings were tense, as intelligence officials argued in favor of holding onto controversial programs, like enhanced interrogation techniques. Absolutely not, Hagel and Boren shot back: torture was a stain on America’s reputation."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/01/13/the-logic-of-hagel.html

While it's scary that the CIA was still recently arguing for this stuff, there has been and will be pushback--Obama is not going to let this ever happen again.

[MotherPetrie]

5. then why is Obama so determined to hire a torture supporter like Brennan?

Why is Obama REWARDING this creep?

[TwilightGardener]

7. After Petraeus? Trust. I think Obama knows that Brennan won't be

a fuck-up, and knows the CIA culture so he won't be "rolled".

[MotherPetrie]

9. And screw torture opponents

[TwilightGardener]

11. If torture will not again be tolerated in the CIA (and I don't think it will),

then I can't get too upset over this appointment. I don't know who else could be head of it, who also understands the unique culture of it, that hasn't been tainted by the policies of GWB. Obama is limited in this way. There aren't a whole lot of Panettas out there, Petraeus screwed up, and Hagel (who might be a good fit for CIA, given his intelligence and anti-torture background) is going to the Pentagon. The acting CIA chief, Morell, I am guessing served in the CIA during Bush's administration and thus is probably also "corrupted" with the enhanced interrogation business.

[TheKentuckian]

13. If you don't get how putting someone in a leadership position with that lack of morality,

non-commitment to human rights, disdain for justice, and absence of decency is a big problem then I don't see how a person avoids sharing those same traits.

This is an advocate of war crimes and war criminal, at the least they should be unwelcome in leadership and probably should be on trial or in jail.

I also don't feel the "culture" should be coddled or played into at all, the "culture" is toxic. You don't see the fruits of the culture in the degradation of our own national minority, destabilization in South America, and a fucking bad made a disaster in the middle east?

If you are a eager torturer then what other disregard for humanity is part of your make up?

Why not Dick Cheney, Obama would be his boss after all?

[TwilightGardener]

14. Look, I'm not thrilled with Brennan. But what are Obama's realistic

options for this position--someone whom he personally trusts who also understands the CIA well?

[TheKentuckian]

15. If your personal trust is in a torture monger then it way past time to reevaluate how something so

valuable is given. Trust him to do what endorse and support crimes against humanity and subverting the very concept of rule of law?

I'd look among those who have served and had the courage in their convictions to oppose rather than those who took the torch and ran with it.

I'd look at folks like maybe Victor Marchetti or Lindsay Morgan that have come forward and demonstrate far greater real understanding of what is up than Brennan ever has but I'm also against the CIA culture so I don't share the concern, better the "culture" be demolished than continue to poison our water.

[MotherPetrie]

6. the problem is Obama wanting this torture guy in his administration

Don't blame innocent and powerless bystanders for that-- it's on OurPOTUS. PERIOD.

[allrevvedup]

10. Here's what Jane Mayer says about Brennan in "The Dark Side,"

the 2008 book she wrote based on her New Yorker pieces, which I have:

"George had some long nights," John Brennan, his former deputy, said. But again, Tenet sided with his bosses. (page 180)

This appears in a paragraph about how Tenet gave "the White House" what it wanted and shifted operations from Afghanistan to Iraq despite misgivings. Per the index, that's it.

So if this goes back to Jane Mayer, she didn't have a hell of a lot to say about Brennan in 2008, and she wrote the book on Bush-era CIA torture.

[Oilwellian]

16. Well, she also had this to say...

Without more transparency, the value of the C.I.A.’s interrogation and detention program is impossible to evaluate. Setting aside the moral, ethical, and legal issues, even supporters, such as John Brennan, acknowledge that much of the information that coercion produces is unreliable. As he put it, “All these methods produced useful information, but there was also a lot that was bogus.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer/?printable=true

John Brennan and Bush’s interrogation/detention policies
Examining the actual record of Obama's top adviser for intelligence policy

http://www.salon.com/2008/11/16/brennan/