McCain on the other hand, though making many great points in his rejection of torture does, at the end of his speech, like the MSM mouthpieces, resort to the 'and besides it's ineffective because it produces bad intelligence. That distinction between torture as a crime regardless and torture as acceptable especially if effective [and done by a country armed to the teeth with nukes, an exceptional country] is at the heart of that moral crisis.
"American torture was not confined to a handful of aberrational cases or techniques, nor was it the work of rogue CIA agents. It was an officially sanctioned, worldwide regime of torture that had the acquiescence, if not explicit approval, of the top members of both political parties in Congress. It was motivated by far more than interrogation. The evidence for all of this is conclusive and overwhelming. And the American media bears much of the blame, as they refused for years even to use the word “torture” to describe any of this (even as they called these same techniques “torture” when used by American adversaries), a shameful and cowardly abdication that continues literally to this day in many of the most influential outlets. - Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept
The bunch of 'em off, Bush, Cheney, Obama, Brennan...it's long list...have been lying all along and they still are as Craig Murray, British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002-2004 explains when asked by RT:
Q. "There is a worry that history can repeat itself. Is there a chance that all this can happen again?"
A. "I think you would be naive if you thought it has entirely stopped. The CIA has probably stopped, at the moment, using torture directly itself. The CIA is most certainly still getting intelligence from torture, by getting other people to do it for them. In Uzbekistan where I was, the CIA didn't actually do the torture. They got the Uzbek government to do it. I also know for certain that at the moment in Bahrain, people are being tortured in order to provide evidence to the CIA. It is just the Bahrainis who are doing the torture, not the CIA."
That sounds exactly like the kinda fork-tongued bullshit Obama would concoct doesn't it? This issue of moral crisis that Snowden was asked about also concerns the wider moral cesspool our western culture, driven it's non-stop consumption and fear of having less, has become by abandoning the moral higher ground to chase the self-delusion of a material fulfillment.
Empires rise, they peak, they decline, they collapse, this is the cycle of history. Empires have seldom collapsed because outside invasion, they rot from within. The moral crisis is being manifested as inequality and racism at home and endless war abroad is eating the Empire from within. The only reason Cheney, Bush and their defenders can stand there and spout their 'patriots not criminals' crap is because they got the nukes. But one day those missiles will decay into a pile of rusted, poisonous mush at the bottom of their casket like silos. One day the lying, the torturing bastards and their accomplices will be behind bars. But that day can only come after the blinders have been removed from the fearful or this Empire too rots from within.
