The national media watch group
The Obama administration has pursued an unprecedented campaign to prosecute whistleblowers. The fact that John Kirikaou is facing such punishment reinforces the sense that he should be viewed as such a whistleblower, someone who was trying to expose the CIA's torture practices. But was that really his motivation?
A couple of recent FAIR Blog posts have dealt with apologists for torture: Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen and former CIA interrogator John Kiriakou, who misled ABC News about the effectiveness of waterboarding. What's striking is how they both offer the same insight into why torture is attractive–it met their post-September 11 psychological needs. Kiriakou told ABC (12/10/07): "At the time I was so angry and I wanted so much to help disrupt future attacks on the United States that I felt it was the only thing we could do." He sounds a lot like Cohen writing in the Post [...]
