GUEST: Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer and executive director of the Council for the National Interest, talks about his recent article, "A Necessary Reckoning With Torture," that was published in the "American Conservative."
How is it that we got here, and what is our political reality? Good questions for a Twenty First Century American.
Our guest gave us a view from the CIA. He didn't go in a disbeliever, but once he realized how the government operated, he needed the distance of cynicism. Philip told us pretty much what we expected, that everyone in government lies about US foreign policy. The idea that the US invades countries to better the lives of their citizens isn't believed by anyone in the know. The "reasons" for the Iraq war were lies, something that most people in Washington were well aware of. Only the people of the US get fooled. Citizens in the rest of the world know better and don't indulge in the fantasy of American good intentions.
Richard Nixon once called the American people, the "child in the family." The one lacking enough sophistication to really know what was going on. How did we get this way? Maybe empires develop such people, afraid to understand lest they have to risk something to change it.
