Morning Roar: Senate Report Critical Of CIA, Myths About America’s Police State, NY Attorney General Asks To Probe Deaths By Police
I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more Morning Roar!Senate Report To Be Released Today Is Reportedly Critical Of The CIAThe Senate will be releasing a report later today that is expected to be extremely critical of the CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation and detention practices. The more than 6,000 page report is said to conclude that no significant intelligence was gathered by the CIA while using enhanced interrogation torture techniques. The report also claims the CIA misled Congress and other U.S. officials about the success and cruelty of the program.Of course former CIA officials aren’t going to sit back as their life work is torn to shreds. These government agents have a reliable tactic they'll count on to cushion the blow and mitigate the report’s damning realizations. These agents always go on the defensive and fearmonger when they are unable to escape scrutiny and are faced with inconvenient things like facts.FP Reports:
With the Senate gearing up to release a sharply critical report about the CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation and detention practices, a group of former senior intelligence officials is planning to rebut those criticisms with a flurry of op-eds, media interviews, and newly-declassified documents. The backbone of the media campaign will be a newly-launched website with a rather blunt and straightforward title: “CIASavedLives.com.”“It’s a one-stop shopping place for the other side,” Bill Harlow, a top CIA spokesman during the George W. Bush administration, told Foreign Policy. “With the website … we’ll be able to put out newly declassified documents, documents that were previously released but not well read and host a repository for op-eds and media appearances by various officials.”Joined by other senior CIA alumni, including former directors Michael Hayden and George Tenet, Harlow is coordinating an aggressive response to the release of the 500-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report, which includes new and disturbing details about the scale and severity of the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation program. With the summary expected to drop on Tuesday, Harlow plans to make his site live the very same day. (At the moment, typing in the URL brings users to a page administered by the caddish web hosting company GoDaddy.com).
In advance of the release, former CIA officials were permitted to review the executive summary in a controlled room. The review was contingent upon signing a nondisclosure agreement that limits what the former CIA directors and deputy directors would be allowed to say prior to the release.Based on the reaction of those with close ties to the CIA that were granted a review of the summary, this report is probably going to be very damning. The culture and practices used by the agency will surely be removed from the shadows and cast into the light.Many of these individuals will claim that they provided a great service to their country. They will accuse critics of being unpatriotic and claim those who question their “enhanced interrogation” techniques support terrorists. These officials will try to scare Americans by claiming to have saved American lives by utilizing torture to gain information. They will threaten that exposing these techniques will place innocent lives in the U.S. in great danger. The response is so predictable, because we see it time and time again from those in positions of coercive government power.For many politicians and ordinary American citizens, the barometer used to gauge success of a government program is if it saves American lives. This is an insufficient and flawed measurement. The true measure of success of a governing organization should be if it protects and preserves individual rights. “Enhanced interrogation” techniques stomp out the individual rights of those subjected to the practice. It is barbaric to believe that a government can trample the rights of some in order to protect the rights of others. Unfortunately, that simple fact will probably be lost in this debate following the release of the report.5 Myths About America’s Police StateRadley Balko wrote a fabulous opinion piece for the Washington Post titled Five Myths About America’s Police. I highly recommend readying the entire article, but if you’re strapped for time and want the cliff notes version I’ll do my best to summarize his main points.Balko identifies the following five myths in his opinion piece for the Washington Post. After each quote I’ll provide a brief summary and provide some perspective.
1. The job of a police officer is increasingly dangerous.
This simply is not true. Balko points out that 27 police officers were feloniously killed in 2013, which was the lowest raw number in more than fifty years. That number has spiked some in 2014 to 50, but is still in line with the general decline since the mid-1990s.
2. YouTube videos and cellphone footage prove that today’s cops are out of control.
In general, police officers have received more training and act more professionally than ever before. There aren’t an increasing number of rogue cops, rather police use more force today that they have in the past. SWAT team are used for petty crimes and the increased amount of force used, as a matter of policy, places police in situations where they are much more likely to use force against peaceful, non-violent offenders, which make these officers appear out of control.
3. With more criminals wielding heavy-duty weapons, police must militarize to catch up.
Balko points out that this assumption is wrong. Guns used in homicides overwhelmingly tend to be small-caliber handguns. Additionally, year after year gun ownership continues to increase as the violent crime rate declines.Police departments want militarized weapons for one reason…because they CAN have militarized weapons thanks to programs that transfer obsolete military weapons and vehicles to local police departments. Until local communities put a stop to this, the militarization will continue on the backs of the taxpayer.
4. Aggressive, confrontational policing is the best way to control crime.
The logic behind this sentiment reasons that the militarization of police departments has coincided with a great decline in the amount of violent crime. When taking a closer look, this is not true across the country. Crime in NYC dropped while a heavy handed approach was used, but a city like San Diego saw a similar drop without mass incarcerations.I’ll quote Balko for this next gem:
Moreover, the most notable manifestation of militaristic policing is the SWAT team. According to Eastern Kentucky University criminologist Peter Kraska, the number of annual SWAT deployments in the United States jumped more than 1,500 percent between the early 1980s and 2000. Yet according to Kraska’s data and a study this year from the American Civil Liberties Union, 60 to 80 percent of SWAT raids are to enforce warrants for drug crimes — and drug crimes are the one class of crime that hasn’t dropped since the 1990s.
5. Tasers and other “less lethal” weapons allow cops to use less force.
When tasers were first introduced they were touted as a substitute for lethal force. They were only to be used on violent suspects without killing them. Now tasers are used as a compliance tool for non-violent offenses.NY Attorney General Asks To Probe Deaths By PoliceThe NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman wants cases involving alleged police misconduct to be referred to his office, taking the decision to indict away from prosecutors and grand juries.This certainly does not seem like a step in the right direction. If removing political influence from the case is the object, then referring these cases to higher levels of government seems likely to achieve the opposite by making the cases more susceptible to political motivations.The Morning Roar every weekday Monday-Friday right here at Lions of Liberty!The Lions of Liberty are on Twitter, Facebook & Google+Receive access to ALL of our EXCLUSIVE bonus audio content – including “Conspiracy Corner”, “Degenerate Gamblers” and the “League of Liberty Podcast” by joining the Lions of Liberty Pride and supporting us on Patreon!
