Believe the worst when it comes to Bush and war, says veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/23880

Clear and Present Danger
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2007-06-22 17:11. Media

Believe the worst when it comes to Bush and war, says veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern
By Pasadena Weekly

Instead of starting out a recent article with a story about how his grandmother warned against saying anything but nice things about people, maybe veteran CIA analyst and vociferous Bush administration critic Ray McGovern should have quoted Washington icon Alice Roosevelt Longworth.

“If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody,” Teddy's daughter once remarked, “sit next to me.”

That's because McGovern, perhaps best known for calling former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a liar on TV last year, had precious few “nice” things to say about Bush, “thugs like Vice President Cheney and ,” or former CIA Chief George Tenet, who was the subject of the article for truthout.org.

After dispensing with a few pleasantries, McGovern ripped into Tenet, who at the time had just published a book on his role in the run-up to war, “In the Center of the Storm.” While Tenet was making the TV news rounds plugging his book, McGovern was publicly railing against the country's former top spy for disgracing himself and the agency by helping the administration initiate an unjustifiable and unforgivable war.

But while the war in the minds of McGovern and a majority of Americans can no longer be justified or tolerated, what gets his Irish blood boiling most is both the use of torture by the administration and Tenet's own Nazi-esque denials of employing tactics that ultimately prompted McGovern to return the Intelligence Commendation Award that he was presented with by Bush's father.

“Hewing to the George W. Bush dictum of ‘catapulting the propaganda' by endlessly repeating the same claim (the formula used so successfully by Joseph Goebbels), Tenet manages to tell ‘60 Minutes' five times in five consecutive sentences: ‘We don't torture people.' Like President Bush, however, he then goes on to show why it has been absolutely necessary to torture people. What do they take us for, fools? And Tenet's claims of success in extracting information via torture are no more worthy of credulity than the rest of what he says,” wrote McGovern, who along with other former CIA employees founded the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, VIPS, a group dedicated to exposing the mishandling of war-related intelligence.

“His own credibility aside,” continued the 68-year-old McGovern, who worked under seven presidents during 27 years of service, “Tenet has succeeded in destroying the asset without which an intelligence community cannot be effective. And that is serious. He seems blissfully oblivious to the damage he has done — aware only of the damage others have done to his ‘personal honor.'"

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[glitch]

1. K & R for Ray McGovern (cuz I know it will be good), now I am off to read it. Thanks for posting. nt

[cassiepriam]

2. They treat us like fools because it has been a successful strategy.

[AntiFascist]

3. Yet another expert continues to rail against the administration...

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But McGovern's concerns don't stop with Tenet. He believes the US government under Bush is the real terrorist organization, and may even be preparing to declare martial law – the end of democratic rule – in the wake of another terrorist attack.

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Far from making Israel secure, the entire invasion and occupation of Iraq has led to a situation in which there are thousands of terrorists, most of them hating Israel as much as they hate us, and being trained to perpetrate terrorist acts.

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We really mean to create permanent military bases … with which to dominate that part of the world and have something to say about the oil.

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The bottom line for me is there has to be an independent investigation because the 9/11 Commission report is flagrantly a cover up. The question is: What is being covered up?

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My colleagues at VIPS have been saying for over a year now that there is a 50-50 chance that Bush will strike Iran from the air ... before he leaves office. But that is really atrocious when you look at it, because that would be World War IV, easy and simple.

...