Atrocity-Linked Officials Advise Frontrunner Demopublican Prez Candidates

[Every American voter should already be aware by now of the essence of
the facts presented by today's "Democracy Now" program. The moneyed
interests control the elections and the government. This is nothing
new.  The moneyed interests have always determined who is allowed to
debate, which candidates will win the nominations of the two major
parties. After the moneyed interests make these determinations, they
say to the little sheep people:  "Now go vote for one of the candidates
we have selected and make it appear the US has a democracy."

Now, even Ralph Nader is falling for this to some extent by endorsing 
John Edwards because Edwards, he says,  is at least confronting the
cor****ations.  But is Edwards really doing this? Of course not.  Read
the transcript below with guests Allan Nairn and Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
for a very interesting re****t that shows how all the candidates who are
allowed to debate and have a viable chance are backed by the various
moneyed interests. 

Boycott the vote until the money is OUT.  Use your time, money and 
energy to learn the truth and reality of US terrorist history, organize 
to take over work sites, organize food reserves and shelters for the 
workers, form real guerrilla media on and off the Internet, educate the 
youth about the CIA's history of intervention.  Do this before following
the lead sheep off the cliff --a cliff that is marked "elections." -JM]

Democracy Now - Jan 3, 2008
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/3/vote_for_change_atrocity_linked_us

Links to work by today's Guests:

Alan Nairn's "News and Comment" blog: http://newsc.blogspot.com/
His article on Jan 2, 2008 is called  "The US Election is Already Over.
Murder and Preventable Death Have Won."  See:
http://newsc.blogspot.com/2008/01/us-election-is-already-over-murder-and.html

Kelley Vlahos, Wa****ngton freelance journalist, whose article on
presidential advisers entitled "The War Whisperers" appeared on Oct 8,
2007 in The American Conservative magazine:
http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_10_08/article.html

Vote for Change? Atrocity-Linked U.S. Officials 
Advising Democratic, GOP Presidential Frontrunners

Transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: Presidential candidates are scrambling to win last-minute
sup****t in Iowa ahead of tonights caucus. Thousands of re****ters have
also descended on Iowa this week, covering everything from Mike
Huckabees haircut to John Edwardss rally with singer John Mellencamp.

But little attention has been paid to perhaps one of the most im****tant
aspects of the candidates: their advisers, the men and women who likely
form the backbone of the candidates future cabinet if elected
president. Many of the names will be familiar.

Advisers to Hillary Rodham Clinton include many former top officials in
President Clintons administration: former Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, former National Security Adviser Samuel Berger, former UN
Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. Senator Barack Obamas list includes
President Carters National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski,
former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, former Middle East
negotiator Dennis Ross.

Rudolph Giulianis advisers include Norman Podhoretz, one of the
fathers of the neoconservative movement. John McCains list of official
and formal policy advisers includes former Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger, General Colin Powell, William Kristol of The Weekly
Standard, and former CIA Director James Woolsey. One of Mitt Romneys
top advisers is Cofer Black, the former CIA official who now serves as
vice chair of Blackwater Worldwide. Vice President Dick Cheneys
daughter Elizabeth is advising Fred Thompson.

As for Mike Huckabee, its not clear. In December, Huckabee listed
former UN Ambassador John Bolton as someone with whom he either has
spoken or will continue to speak, but Bolton then revealed the two
had never spoken. Huckabee also named Richard Allen, but the former
National Security Adviser also admitted he had never spoken to Huckabee.

To talk more about the advisers behind the presidential campaigns, Im
joined by two guests. Kelley Vlahos is a freelance journalist in
Wa****ngton. Her article on presidential advisers called War
Whisperers appeared in The American Conservative in October.
Investigative journalist Allan Nairn joins us here in the firehouse
studio. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!

I want to begin by going to Wa****ngton, D.C., to our guest there, to
the author of War Whisperers. Talk about why you focused, Kelley, on
the advisers of the presidential candidates.

KELLEY BEAUCAR VLAHOS: Well, it was becoming clear to me and to others
here in Wa****ngton in certain circles that the advisers that were
emerging for the campaigns, whether it be Democratic or Republican,
were part of some seriously pro-establishment cliques. And I say
cliques, because there is really no other way to describe it. But
these cliques generally can be categorized as not only
pro-establishment, but more pro-interventionist, whether it be the
so-called liberal interventionists on the Democratic side or your war
hawks on the Republican side.

But what became clear is that the candidates werent reaching outside
of these establishment cliques and that they were getting no fresh
ideas, no vision outside of these pretty standard parameters. And we
thought"me and the editors thought it might be a good idea to explore a
little bit under the surface about where these of advisers were coming
from, in hopes of maybe deciphering where foreign policy might be going
in the future.

AMY GOODMAN: Lets begin with Hillary Clinton, Kelley Vlahos.

KELLEY BEAUCAR VLAHOS: OK. Well, Hillary Clintons"her foreign policy
team can be best described as"and I hate to use this word so casually,
but"throwbacks of her husbands administration. We have, you know,
Richard Holbrooke, Madeleine Albright, you have Sandy Berger as your
sort of top-tier advisers, your key advisers, the most recognized
faces. And then, beyond that, as I say in the article, you have this
newer generation"I want to say newer generation, but a generation of
former Clinton types who you might not recognize their names, but
theyve been around for a long time and are seriously scrambling for
position in what they see as a new Clinton administration. So youre
seeing a lot of old faces, old names, who havent really changed their
ideas from, you know, what I and others can see, in terms of doing the
research, havent changed their real vision of the world and foreign
policy since the 1990s.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me bring Allan Nairn into this conversation. You have
just written about the advisers, as well, on your blog,
newsc.blogspot.com. Elaborate further on Hillary Clintons advisers.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, I think one thing you could say about the advisers
for all the candidates who have a chance is that the presence of these
advisers makes it clear that these candidates arent serious about
enforcing the murder laws and that theyre willing to kill civilians,
foreign civilians, en masse in order to advance US policy. And theyre
not serious about law and order. Theyre soft on crime.

And start with Clinton. Madeleine Albright, she was the main force
behind the Iraq sanctions that killed more than 400,000 Iraqi
civilians. General Wesley Clark, he was the one who ran the bombing of
Serbia in the former Yugoslavia, came out and publicly said that he was
going after civilian targets, like electrical plants, like the TV
station there. Richard Holbrooke, in the Carter administration he was
the one who oversaw the ****pment of weapons to the Indonesian military
as they were invading"illegally invading East Timor and killing a third
of the population there, and he was the one who kept the UN Security
Council from enforcing its resolution against that invasion. Strobe
Talbott, he was the one who, during the Clinton administration, oversaw
Russia policy, a backing of Yeltsin, which resulted in turning over the
national wealth to the oligarchs and a drop in life expectancy in much
of Russia of about fifteen years"massive, massive death. And you have
various backers of the Iraq invasion and occupation and the recent
escalation, people like General Jack Keane, Michael OHanlon and
others. Thats just Clinton.

AMY GOODMAN: Barack Obama?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Obamas top adviser is Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Brzezinski gave an interview to the French press a number of years ago
where he boasted about the fact that it was he who created the whole
Afghan jihadi movement, the movement that produced Osama bin Laden. And
he was asked by the interviewer, Well, dont you think this might have
had some bad consequences? And Brzezinski replied, Absolutely not. It
was definitely worth it, because we were going after the Soviets. We
were getting the Soviets. Another top Obama person"

AMY GOODMAN: I think his comment actually was, Whats a few riled-up
Muslims? And this, that whole idea of blowback, the idea of arming,
financing, training the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets,
including Osama bin Laden, and then when theyre done with the Soviets,
they set their sights, well, on the United States.

ALLAN NAIRN: Right. And later, during Bill Clintons administration,
during the Bosnia killing, the US actually flew some of the Afghan
Mujahideen, the early al-Qaeda people"the US actually arranged for them
to be flown from there to Bosnia to fight on the Muslim/NATO side.

Another key Obama adviser, Anthony Lake, he was the main force behind
the US invasion of Haiti in the mid-Clinton years during which they
brought back Aristide essentially in political chains, pledged to
sup****t a World Bank/IMF overhaul of the economy, which resulted in an
increase in malnutrition deaths among Haitians and set the stage for
the current ongoing political disaster in Haiti.

Another Obama adviser, General Merrill McPeak, an Air Force man, who
not long after the Dili massacre in East Timor in 91 that you and I
survived, he was"I happened to see on Indonesian TV shortly after
that"there was General McPeak overseeing the delivery to Indonesia of
US fighter planes.

Another key Obama adviser, Dennis Ross. Ross, for many years under both
Clinton and Bush 2, a key"he has advised Clinton and both Bushes. He
oversaw US policy toward Israel/Palestine. He pushed the principle that
the legal rights of the Palestinians, the rights recognized under
international law, must be subordinated to the needs of the Israeli
government"in other words, their desires, their desires to expand to do
whatever they want in the Occupied Territories. And Ross was one of the
people who, interestingly, led the political assault on former
Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Carter, no peacenik"I mean, Carter
is the one who bears ultimate responsibility for that Timor terror that
Holbrooke was involved in. But Ross led an assault on him, because,
regarding Palestine, Carter was so bold as to agree with Bishop Desmond
Tutu of South Africa that what Israel was doing in the Occupied
Territories was tantamount to apartheid. And so, Ross was one of those
who fiercely attacked him.

Another Obama adviser, Sarah Sewall, who heads a human rights center at
Harvard and is a former Defense official, she wrote the introduction to
General Petraeuss Marine Corps/Army counterinsurgency handbook, the
handbook that is now being used worldwide by US troops in various
killing operations. Thats the Obama team.

AMY GOODMAN: John Edwards?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Edwards is a little different. The list of his
foreign advisers is not as complete, so its not as clear exactly where
they may be coming from, but its interesting. Last night on TV, one of
the top Edwards advisers, Mudcat Saunders, was complaining about the
fact that there are 35,000 lobbyists in Wa****ngton. And it appears,
from the Edwards list, that many of the military lobbyists are working
on the Edwards foreign policy team, because the names that"the Edwards
names that are out there mainly come from the Army and the Air Force
and the Navy Material Command. Those are the ****tions of the Pentagon
that do the Defense contracts, that do the deals with the big companies
like Raytheon and Boeing, etc. One of those listed on the Edwards team
is the lobbyist for the big military contractor EADS. So, although
Edwards talks about going after lobbyists, if he tries to go after the
military lobbyists, he may get a little blowback from his own advisers.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you saying that theres no difference between these
candidates?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, fundamentally, theres no difference on the basic
principle of, are you against the killing of civilians and are you
willing to enforce the murder laws. If we were willing to enforce the
murder laws, the headquarters of each of these candidates could be
raided, and various advisers and many candidates could be hauled away
by the cops, because they have backed various actions that, under
established principles like the Nuremberg Principles, like the
principles set up in the Rwanda tribunals, the Bosnia tribunals, things
that are unacceptable, like aggressive war, like the killing of
civilians for political purposes. So, in a basic sense, there is no
choice.

But there is a difference in this sense: the US is so vastly powerful,
the US influences and has the potential to end so many millions of
lives around the world, that if, lets say, you have two candidates
that are 99% the same"theres only 1% difference between them"if youre
talking about decisions that affect a million lives"1% of a million is
10,000"thats 10,000 lives. So, even though its a bitter choice, if
you choose the one who is going to kill 10,000 fewer people, well, then
youve saved 10,000 lives. We shouldnt be limited to that choice. Its
unacceptable. And Americans should start to realize that its
unacceptable.

But thats the choice we have at the moment. In Iowa, I think there are
steps people could take to start to challenge that system, if they
wanted to.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We continue this discussion about the advisers to the
presidential candidates, the men and women behind the men and women who
are running today. Our guests are Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a freelance
journalist in Wa****ngton, wrote a piece in The American Conservative
called War Whisperers: The 2008 Hopefuls Promised a Change in Foreign
Policy Then Hired the Old Guard. We are also joined by independent
investigative journalist Allan Nairn. He writes a blog called
newsc.blogspot.com. His piece today on this issue is called The US
Election is Already Over. Murder and Preventable Death Have Won.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, would you like to add to any of the advisers
Allan just talked about? And then well move on to the Republicans.

KELLEY BEAUCAR VLAHOS: Well, I think Allan has covered most of it and
pretty thoroughly. I agree with him that there is very little
difference among these people, and I think what he said really speaks
to the idea and the challenge that there is no incentive for these
candidates to reach out beyond any of this orbit or galaxy of foreign
policy advisers who have been linked in, you know, were talking
decades of war and events and actions and operations. And there seems,
whether it be John Edwards reaching out to the Defense contracting
community or Hillary Clinton reaching out to her husbands former
security advisers and operatives or whether its Obama reaching out to
former Clinton types, there doesnt seem to be any incentive to reach
out beyond that. It seems like there is a stranglehold in this town on
the kind of advisers that one is supposed to be linked with.

And I think a lot of that is linked to money, where, you know, the
candidates have big names, big lobbyists; that in turn brings them in
more funders, more bundlers. And its sort of like this hand-in-glove
symbiotic relation****p, where the bigger names you have, the more
familiar names, the more entrenched you have in these cliques I spoke
to previously, the more money youre bringing into your campaign. So
theres no incentive to go beyond that, unless youre ready for some
amount of rebuke and some of the spigot being turned off.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, actually, in terms of money, Allan Nairn, someone
like Obama raises an enormous amount of money from just the grassroots.

ALLAN NAIRN: Yeah, Obama"thats a very telling example. Like Dean in
the last campaign, Obama has the ability to get all the money he needs
from the middle class through the internet, through $50, $80, $100
contributions. He actually doesnt need to finance his campaign, to go
to the hedge funds, to go to Wall Street. But he does anyway. And he
does, I think, because if he doesnt, they wouldnt trust him. They
might think that hes on the wrong team, and they might start attacking
him. He is someone who, in terms of the money he needs for his
campaign, he could afford to come out for single-payer healthcare, for
example, but he doesnt. He doesnt need money from the health
insurance industry, thats wasting several percentage points of the
American GDP in a way that no other industrial rich country in the
world does, yet he chooses not to do that, because he doesnt want to
be attacked by those cor****ations.

AMY GOODMAN: And is Edwards and Clinton any different on those issues?

ALLAN NAIRN: Not as far as I can tell. None of them have come out for
single payer. The only one who came out for single payer was Kucinich.
Campaign contributions is just one of many tools that rich people have
to get their way. There are basically two parallel factors in any
democracy. One is one person, one vote. The other is one dollar, one
vote. And those two are mixed together. So, although the people do have
some say, there are usually a lot more dollars out there than people,
and they find ways of prevailing in the end, unless the people become
aggressive and disruptive and demanding and threaten to shake the
system so that big concessions are made.

AMY GOODMAN: Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, lets go to the Republicans:
Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Mike Huckabee, John McCain. Give
us a few of their advisers.

KELLEY BEAUCAR VLAHOS: Well, Giuliani, as you had mentioned, and you
had a pretty thorough list of people, but Giuliani is probably
strikingly"strikingly is reaching out to the most strident
neoconservatives on the scene today. He has familiar neoconservatives
on his team, like you said: Norman Podhoretz, also Daniel Pipes,
who"and I dont remember if you had mentioned, but"has been leading the
charge against Islamofascism on college campuses, has put out his
Campus Watch, in terms of going after professors that he deems are not
pro-Israel enough. He has other less familiar names, like Martin
Kramer, Stephen Rosen, Peter Berkowitz of the Hoover Institution. He
has basically a small galaxy of neoconservatives from familiar think
tanks as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation,
Hoover, the Hudson.

And basically, I mean, just to start, you know, with Giuliani, because
I think he has the most poignant list of people in terms of where you
would think that his foreign policy strategy is moving, he has
basically"and I said this in my article"has taken the Bush Doctrine,
has just pumped it up with steroids. He is fully on board"he always has
been"with the Bush Doctrine. His people behind him are. Were talking
about no-holds-barred forward with the war on terror, the war against
Islamofascism. He believes that the war on terror is a grand war
versus good and evil. He is not shy to say that, his people arent shy
to say that. Hes fully in grip of these people and the Bush Doctrine.

And, you know, if you want to see where the Rudy Giuliani"President
Rudy Giuliani will take us, you just look at the Bush Doctrine as if
the Iraq war never happened or, better yet, the problems that have
arisen from the Iraq war have never happened, because Rudy Giuliani
doesnt seem to acknowledge any of that. Any issues before the surge
are incidental. You know, everything is moving forward, and his policy
team is right there backing him.

AMY GOODMAN: Allan Nairn, more on Rudolph Giuliani, and then to Mitt
Romney.

ALLAN NAIRN: Giuliani, as was mentioned, his big adviser is Norman
Podhoretz. Podhoretzs new book is World War IV, which he seems to
like. Podhoretz says, bomb the Iranians. And hes not just talking
about pinpoint Iranian nuclear installations; hes saying bomb the
Iranians. And he says he prays that this will happen. Ex-Senator Robert
Kasten, an old major backer of the Pakistani military dictator****ps and
the Suharto dictator****p in Indonesia, hes another key Giuliani
adviser.

McCain has General Alexander Haig, who oversaw the US policy of mass
terror killings of civilians in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and
Honduras, when American nuns and religious workers were abducted, raped
and murdered by the Salvadoran National Guard. General Haig said those
nuns died in an exchange of gunfire, the pistol-packing nuns. He has a
younger"McCain has a younger adviser, Max Boot, who now points to El
Salvador, where 70,000 civilians were killed by American-backed death
squads, as a model counterinsurgency, a model for what the US should be
doing today. Henry Kissinger advises McCain, as he advises many others.
And Kissinger, of course, was responsible for mass death in Cambodia,
Vietnam, Chile, countless other places. Bud McFarlane from the Reagan
administration, who was a key backer of the Contras. Brent Scowcroft,
who these days is popular with some liberals because he opposes"he
opposed the Iraq invasion, who is a leader of the realist school"the
realist school basically says, yes, kill civilians, but make sure you
win the war, as opposed to the Bush-Cheney school, which has been
killing civilians but losing the war, as the US has been doing until
recently in Iraq and is now starting to do in Afghanistan"Scowcroft was
the one who, during the Bush 1 administration, went to China right
after the Tiananmen Square massacre and reassured the Chinese
leader****p, Dont worry about it, were still behind you.

Romney, as you mentioned, Romney has Cofer Black, a longtime CIA
operative who was one of the key people behind the invasion of
Afghanistan. During the course of that, according to Bob Woodward, he
went in and said, Were going to go into Afghanistan. Were going to
cut their heads off. Hes the one who organized Detachment 88 in
Indonesia just recently, the supposed antiterrorist outfit that
recently went after a Papuan human rights lawyer. Two key figures in
backing the old US policy in Central America, Mark Falcoff and Roger
Noriega, are also on the Romney team. And Dan Senor, who viewers
probably remember as the voice of the early invasion and occupation of
Iraq, hes one of the Romney guys. Now, as you mentioned"

AMY GOODMAN: Dan Senor is one of the spokespeople in Iraq, is married
to, I think it is, Campbell Brown, whos just been hired by CNN to
replace Paula Zahn.

ALLAN NAIRN: Huckabee, who you mentioned, its not clear who his
advisers are. Huckabee recently was attacked by Romney for being soft
on crime. So Huckabee responded, Soft on crime? I executed sixteen
people in Arkansas. How many people did you execute in Massachusetts?
Well, Massachusetts didnt have the death penalty. But if Huckabee were
really tough on crime, he would have used his post as governor of
Arkansas to extradite Bill Clinton to Arkansas to stand trial before
the courts there, as is permissible under international law, for the
hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths brought on by the Iraqi
sanctions during the Clinton administration. But thats unthinkable in
American politics. It probably didnt even occur to Huckabee. But if we
had a civilized political order and we defined crime and murder
objectively, something like that would have been on the table, and
Huckabee would have been challenged on it.

Bloomberg, who may step in as the independent, using his money, hes an
interesting example of another aspect.

AMY GOODMAN: The current mayor of New York.

ALLAN NAIRN: Yes. One is, we ought to be enforcing the murder laws
evenhandedly, so that anyone who facilitates the killing of civilians
faces trial and jail, just like any street criminal, even if theyre a
CIA operative, even if theyre an American general, even if theyre
American president.

Two, we ought to be preventing preventable death if we can. Kids who
are defecating to death, kids who are dying from malnutrition for the
lack of a couple of dollars, we should be stopping that every single
time it can be stopped in the world. Last year in the world, there were
anywhere from three to five million deaths of children under the age of
five, children who were suffering from malnutrition. If he had so
chosen"and he chose not to"Bloomberg could have personally prevented
those deaths, because according to Forbes magazine, hes worth $11.5
billion, and thats more than enough money, if distributed properly, to
prevent that many deaths, millions of one years deaths of entirely
preventable, entirely inexcusable malnutrition deaths. But it probably
never even occurred to him, and he was certainly never challenged on it
politically.

But we can start to challenge people on this politically. For example,
in the Iowa caucuses, were now in a situation where, you know, we have
very bitter choices. So what are you going to do? I mean, Kucinich, who
has good positions on many of these issues, hes decided to throw in
his lot with Obama. Ralph Nader, who has good positions, hes implying
sup****t for Edwards. OK, these are tactical choices. But one thing that
people can do in the Iowa caucuses tonight, they can go in there and
say, OK, Im caucusing for whomever, but I am making my sup****t
conditional on you renouncing sup****t for the murder of civilians, on
you firing all of your advisers who have been involved in the killing
of civilians in the past, you turning them over to the International
Criminal Court if you can get the International Criminal Court to
accept it, you signing a pledge that says no more killing of civilians,
you signing a pledge that says we will prevent preventable death.

You know, the right wing has been doing this for years on the issue of
taxes. They make"they go around, they make all the Republican
candidates sign a no-tax pledge. Thats been somewhat effective. A very
similar thing could be done, and I think it could have appeal, left and
right, to anyone who is decent to have candidates pledge no more
sup****t for killing civilians, tough on crime, enforce the murder laws,
prevent preventable deaths. Lets not have kids dying of diarrhea. If
we have spare dollars floating around that people only want, give them
to people whose bodies need them.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, its interesting, there is an Occupation
Project, and a group of people were just arrested in Huckabees
offices, among them the longtime peace activist, Nobel Peace Prize
nominee several times over, Kathy Kelly, who founded Voices in the
Wilderness.

ALLAN NAIRN: Right. Thats a good tactic. I think we have to try many
tactics from many directions. And one possible one is, you know,
getting inside things like the Iowa caucus, getting inside things like
the conventions of both parties and threaten to create a disturbance on
the floor, ruckus on the floor, if the candidate for whom you are there
as a delegate doesnt back these simple things that should be the basis
of any civilization: no murder, save someone if you can save them.

AMY GOODMAN: Final question, this is on a totally different issue,
Allan Nairn, our top headline, the Justice Department launching a
formal criminal investigation to the destruction of the videotapes
do***enting the interrogation of two prisoners. You have long been
writing about investigating the CIA and US policy, whether its in
Central America or Asia. What are your thoughts on the destruction of
these videotapes?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, one"and who knows?"Im skeptical that theyve
actually been destroyed. I mean, anyone, you know, who works with
computers knows that its almost impossible to truly eliminate
something from a hard disk and also that when theres a do***ent, there
are always multiple copies made, especially when youre in a network
system. So Id be surprised if this thing was really destroyed.

But, anyway, its unfortunate that the issue of torture"I mean, its
good that the issue of torture has finally been put on the table of
American politics and people talk about it to some extent, but its
unfortunate that its been put on the table in the context of the
torture of these al-Qaeda people, these people who were openly proud
killers, mass murderers of civilians. In that context, a lot of people
look at it and say, Well, yeah, look at these lowlifes. Maybe they
should be tortured.

But the fact of the matter is, 90% , at least, worldwide of cases of
torture are not of people like this who are open mass murderers. They
are usually of dissidents, of rebels, or of common criminals. And
often, it is done by regimes that are armed, trained or financed by the
United States. This was the case in El Salvador. In El Salvador, I
interviewed Salvadoran military people who told of torture training
cl***** they got from CIA officials, and they talked about how the CIA
people would be in the room as the torture sessions were going on. And
these were not al-Qaeda types that they were torturing; these were
labor organizers, these were people who were speaking for justice,
these were peasants.

Thats what most torture is in the world, and it should be completely
banned and abolished, not in the soft rhetorical way that McCain is
talking about it, but actually stopping it by stopping sup****t for all
the forces that make a practice of torture. And that would involve
completely rewriting the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill, the
Defense Appropriations Bill, and it would also involve calling in the
authorities and carrying out many US officials in chains, because
theyve been backing this illegal stuff for years.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, were going to leave it there. In talking about, by
the way, the occupation of offices, it was not only Huckabees office,
it was also Barack Obamas Iowa office, as well as Mitt Romneys Iowa
office, people occupied yesterday. 

Allan Nairn, I want to thank you for being with us. Your blog at
newsc for News and Comment, newsc.blogspot.com. And Kelley Beaucar
Vlahos, thank you for joining us from Wa****ngton, D.C. Her article
appeared in The American Conservative. The piece was called War
Whisperers. [See proper URLs at top of this post - NYTr]

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