Daniel Patrick Welch

Following is an interview with political analyst Daniel Patrick Welch, addressing recent revelations in The Guardian that the CIA didn't even follow its own guidelines on torture. Welch goes beyond the scope of the most recent leaks, trying to tie in the many connections between imperialism, death squad policy, white supremacy and the *real* Thousand Year Reich. Original article appears at http://presstv.ir/Detail/2015/06/16/416184/CIA-torture-core-feature-imperialism Full transcript here:

The interesting thing about these leaks--which are always prompted by lawsuits: it's impossible to get any clarity or transparency out of the CIA, whose job is to secretly and covertly monitor the world and do all these evil things in the name of the US government--is that occasionally you get the tiniest glimpse of the tip of this enormous iceberg that is the underground world of the CIA.

So The Guardian got ahold of this, which was heavily redacted, of course, and it just shows, through the language that's used, and the tone--it is amazing; it makes my skin crawl and the hair on the back of my neck stand up to hear "doctors" and "human experimentation." It is exactly like SAVAK or like Dr. Mengele. These are the same methods and the same justifications that have been used forever for this garbage: torturing humans in the name of--what is it they call it? Getting 'actionable information?' But really it is to maintain the supremacy of a certain segment of leadership over a general society and over the world.

The funny thing is that this Payson, this guy who was interviewed and who worked for Physicians for Human Rights, mentioned that "torture is the first crime." And I kind of laughed to myself and I thought "No, the CIA is the first crime. This is the original crime." And this, coming after the detainees of 2001, is, again, the tip of the latest iceberg. It's like there's an ice *shelf* that keeps breaking off these huge icebergs and you get this little glimpse. We did through the Church Commission back in the early 1970's, which actually did have an effect, because it resulted in restrictions imposed by Congress because this came out--of the horrific legacy of torture and murder and death squad assasinations in Central America and so forth.

And Congress was appalled--or rather the public was more astounded by it--and so they were able to impose some restrictions, which the CIA spent a generation undermining and getting around and which were eventually rescinded. And you know, now there are absolutely no limits on what the CIA can do. They have this BS line about 'human experimentation,' which is just a way to justify torture, because you say you're 'experimenting with consent,' which is a silly thing in itself, isn't it? I mean listen to that: "I'm trying waterboarding just to see what it feels like. It's like a vacation!"

The whole thing is unbelievably cynical. They went through this thing with the School of the Americas, where they were training assassins for work in Central and South America, and a manual was leaked in the early 1980's (ten years after the Church Commission) which was a torture manual, designed to train people how to, you know, torture people and suppress indigenous resistance and maintain oppressive governments. And it's not new with the CIA either. The CIA took the reigns from MI6, the British intelligence, who are probably the best at it. And it is a core feature of imperial conquest and imperial domination going back hundreds of years. And now it's linked up with the Pakistani ISA and Mossad and all these intelligence agencies that do this, that torture, rendition, the operation of black sites.

Whether something will happen from it or not is an open question. The thing is, nothing will happen in the core countries in terms of regulation because they've already whitewashed what they can do and what they want to do. It's like 'Dr. Mengele is fine as long as he's a registered psychologist.' You know, that kind of thing.

But what might happen is that these revelations sicken a world that already despises US policy for what it is. And it also strengthens, I think, the rise of the Global South and its alliance with the BRICS countries, specifically Russia and China, in that the only way to counter this kind of evil is through a credible military deterrent--it's the only thing that you can have. And that may change the world--we'll see. It started to change the world, I think, in Syria in 2013, when the Russians just said no, you're not going to start World War III. And it's continuing now with ongoing resistance.

I just wanted to say one more thing, which is that this is a core feature of imperialism itself, and of white supremacy. Think of what they're saying. They're saying *all the time*: barbarians in Africa, barbarians in Asia, barbarians in the Middle East, *those* people behead people--we do it with 'smart bombs.' And then you find out that, you know, actually, no, we do behead people, and we told them to behead people, and we trained and funded them to behead people, etc etc etc. It provides a moral and a social justification for this evil--that We are somehow better than Them. Western philosophy and western education and western culture is supreme. We are the good guys and they are the bad guys.

And that comes from the British--all the way back to the conquest of Ireland. Right from Ireland in the twelfth century to Syria today, so almost a thousand years of this philosophy that says that we can torture and kill in the name of a higher goal because we are *better humans.* It is a racist evil that has to be wiped from the earth. And hopefully, the rest of the world--not in our country but in the rest of the world--people are starting to wake up and it will eventually vanish from the pages of history.

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© 2013 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission granted with credit and link to http://www.danielpwelch.com. Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia. Together they run The Greenhouse School http://www.greenhouseschool.org. Translations of articles are available in over two dozen languages. Links to the website are appreciated.