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C.I.A. to Let "Skeletons" Out of its Closet
sgt_doom writes "The C.I.A. announced it was going to reveal "skeletons" by declassifying hundreds of pages of documents detailing illegal abuses over the years. As a preamble, the National Security Archive at George Washington University released a separate set of documents covering internal government deliberations of the abuses from January 1975. Mandatory reading for all those history-challenged individuals who believe government knows best!"
The government routinely declassifies documents after 30 years and releases them to the public. I believe the idea is "well, in 30 years, everyone who dealt with this will be dead, so that's a good time frame." Stop trying to stir shit up and act like this is some big to-do.
These CIA actions helped win the Cold War.
The "abuses" did have a purpose, a lofty one at that.
Yes, yes, I understand, the losers of the Cold War are still upset.
Seems they were born that way.
As the self-proclaimed leaders of the free world, this isn't much of a defense. In fact it's quite a shitty defense. You can point your finger at other countries who have military dictatorships that are backed by the US, and say that they sin, but this misses my previous point that they are backed by the US.
... or of course carry out the torture yourself, and then claim that you are spreading freedom and democracy.
... er ... died of natural causes.
The simple fact is that you can't parade around the world in your tanks, with your banned chemical and nuclear weapons, and have your CIA kidnap and 'render' political opponents to countries who will torture them to death
This CIA goat was claiming that we're seeing a shadow of a 'very different' CIA, operating in the past. But if anything, what we're seeing from these documents is a far more defensible organisation than you have today under the war criminals, Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice, etc. But they won't release these files until after every current neo-con has been wasted