Washington haalt valse Befehl ist Befehl cliché van stal voor nieuwe CIA directeur 'Bloody Gina.....'

Tijdens de Neurenberg processen werd het excuus 'Befehl ist Befehl' onderuit gehaald als onzin, immers je hebt je ten allen tijde aan de (internationale) rechtsorde te houden en als dat niet kan valt het toch echt onder jouw eigen verantwoording als je je schuldig maakt aan (oorlogs-) misdaden..... Ondanks deze juridische geschiedenis, gebruikt Washington dit valse 'Befehl ist Befehl' excuus voor de nieuwe directeur van de CIA, Gina Haspel.......  

Gina Haspel, een psychopaat die niet alleen toezag op martelingen, maar ook voor de lol zelf mensen martelde in een geheime CIA gevangenis in Thailand, is dus door Trump benoemd tot de nieuwe directeur van de CIA....... Dit nadat Mike Pompeo, tot nu directeur van de CIA, een al even grote psychopaat en voorstander van het disfunctionerende martelen, tot minister van buitenlandse zaken werd benoemd....... 

Pompeo heeft meermaals gezegd dat martelen wel effectief is (wetenschappelijk bewezen onjuist) en dat alles volgens de (VS) wet is toegestaan...... (dat is niet zo, maar slimme juristen vinden wel een zwak punt in de wet, waarmee bij wijze van spreken alles gerechtvaardigd kan worden, ook als het bijvoorbeeld gaat om martelen.....)

Lees de volgende stap van de VS in het proces richting het Vierde Rijk (dat al net zo fascistisch zal zijn als het Derde Rijk, dat blijkt ten overvloede weer uit het volgende artikel van The Intercept):

WASHINGTON BREAKS OUT THE “JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS” NAZI DEFENSE FOR CIA DIRECTOR-DESIGNATE GINA HASPEL

Written by Jon Schwarz

Mar. 15

DURING THE NUREMBERG TRIALS after World War II, several Nazis, including top German generals Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel, claimed they were not guilty of the tribunal’s charges because they had been acting at the directive of their superiors.

Ever since, this justification has been popularly known as the “Nuremberg defense,” in which the accused states they were “only following orders.”

The Nuremberg judges rejected the Nuremberg defense, and both Jodl and Keitel were hanged. The United Nations International Law Commission later codified the underlying principle from Nuremberg as “the fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

This is likely the most famous declaration in the history of international law and is as settled as anything possibly can be.

However, many members of the Washington, D.C. elite are now stating that it, in fact, is a legitimate defense for American officials who violate international law to claim they were just following orders.

View of some of the Nazi leaders accused of war crimes during World War II during the war crimes trial at Nuremberg International Military Tribunal court, held between Nov. 20, 1945 and Oct. 1, 1946. Photo: Stringer/AFP/Getty Images

Specifically, they say Gina Haspel, a top CIA officer whom President Donald Trump has designated to be the agency’s next director, bears no responsibility for the torture she supervised during George W. Bush’s administration.

Haspel oversaw a secret “black site” in Thailand, at which prisoners were waterboarded and subjected to other severe forms of abuse. Haspel later participated in the destruction of the CIA’s videotapes of some of its torture sessions. There is informed speculation that part of the CIA’s motivation for destroying these records may have been that they showed operatives employing torture to generate false “intelligence” used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

John Kiriakou, a former CIA operative who helped capture many Al Qaeda prisoners, recently said that Haspel was known to some at the agency as “Bloody Gina” and that “Gina and people like Gina did it, I think, because they enjoyed doing it. They tortured just for the sake of torture, not for the sake of gathering information.” (In 2012, in a convoluted case, Kiriakou pleaded guilty to leaking the identity of a covert CIA officer to the press and spent a year in prison.)

Some of Haspel’s champions have used the exact language of the popular version of the Nuremberg defense, while others have paraphrased it.

One who paraphrased it is Michael Hayden, former director of both the CIA and the National Security Agency. In a Wednesday op-ed, Hayden endorsed Haspel as head of the CIA, writing that “Haspel did nothing more and nothing less than what the nation and the agency asked her to do, and she did it well.”

Hayden later said on Twitter that Haspel’s actions were “consistent with U.S. law as interpreted by the department of justice.” This is true: In 2002, the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department declared in a series of notorious memosthat it was legal for the U.S. to engage in “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were obviously torture. Of course, the actions of the Nuremberg defendants had also been “legal” under German law.

John Brennan, who ran the CIA under President Barack Obama, made similar remarks on Tuesday when asked about Haspel. The Bush administration had decided that its torture program was legal, said Brennan, and Haspel “tried to carry out her duties at CIA to the best of her ability, even when the CIA was asked to do some very difficult things.”

Texas Republican Rep. Will Hurd used the precise language of the Nuremberg defense during a Tuesday appearance on CNN when Wolf Blitzer asked him to respond to a statement from Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.: “The Senate must do its job in scrutinizing the record and involvement of Gina Haspel in this disgraceful program.”

Hurd, a member of the House Intelligence Committee and a former CIA operative as well, told Blitzer that “this wasn’t Gina’s idea. She was following orders. … She implemented orders and was doing her job.”

Hurd also told Blitzer, “You have to remember where we were at that moment, thinking that another attack was going to happen.”

This is another defense that is explicitly illegitimate under international law. The U.N. Convention Against Torture, which was transmitted to the Senate by Ronald Reagan in 1988, statesthat “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

Notably, Blitzer did not have any follow-up questions for Hurd about his jarring comments.

Samantha Winograd, who served on President Obama’s National Security Council and now is an analyst for CNN, likewise used Nuremberg defense language in an appearance on the network. Haspel, she said, “was implementing the lawful orders of the president. … You could argue she should have quit because the program was so abhorrent. But she was following orders.”

Last but not least there’s Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, who issued a ringing defense of Haspel in Politico, claiming she was merely acting “in response to what she was told were lawful orders.”

Remarkably, this perspective has even seeped into the viewpoint of regular journalists. At a recent press conference at which Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul criticized Haspel, a reporter asked him to respond to “the counterargument” that “these policies were signed off by the Bush administration. … They were considered lawful at the time.”

It fell to Paul to make the obvious observation that appears to have eluded almost everyone else in official Washington: “This has been historically a question we’ve asked in every war: Is there a point at which soldiers say ‘no’? … Horrendous things happened in World War II, and people said, well, the German soldiers were just obeying orders. … I think there’s a point at which, even suffering repercussions, that if someone asks you to torture someone that you should say no.”

(Thank you to @jeanbilly545 and Scott Horton for telling me about Hurd and Paul’s remarks, respectively.)

Top photo: Gina Haspel speaks at the 2017 William J. Donovan Award Dinner.

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Voor een begeleidende video, zie het origineel

Zie ook:
'Ondervragers van de VS zijn aanwezig bij martelingen in Jemenitische gevangenissen'

'Rapport maakt duidelijk dat VAE 23 gevangenen hebben vermoord in Jemenitische gevangenissen'

'Michael Hayden (ex-CIA en generaal b.d.): niets mis met martelingen door Gina Haspel.....'

Zijlstra's leugen is vervolgbaar onder de Neurenbergse principes......

De NAVO oorlogsagenda blootgelegd met de Nederlandse leugen over de agressie van Putin......

Op BBC World Service radio werd vanmorgen in 'News Hour Extra' één grote anti-Rusland propaganda show opgevoerd, uiteraard gecombineerd met het ophemelen van de VS en de NAVO, plus een groot pleidooi voor meer geld naar defensie, uh oorlogsvoering..... Dit met een aantal 'deskundigen' (allen anti-Rusland), waaronder Clingendael oorlogshitser en flapdrol de luxe Zandee......

De naam van het programma werd eerder ter discussie gesteld, en naar aanleiding van inzendingen gedaan door luisteraars (dat moet je maar geloven) wordt de naam veranderd van 'News Hour Extra' in 'The Real Story.....' ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Maak er maar 'Propaganda Hour Extra' van! Blijkbaar moet de nieuwe naam van te voren al aangeven dat je hier niet met nepnieuws te maken krijgt, belachelijk!!

Op Information Clearing House bracht men (ook al vandaag) een artikel over de leugen van Zijlstra, een leugen die volgens de schrijver Finian Cunningham 2 jaar oud is, echter deze dateert niet alleen uit 2006, maar wordt sinds die tijd regelmatig aangehaald door Zijlstra (plus andere vooral VVD politici) en een aantal reguliere media organen!!

Volgens Cunningham legt dit ten overvloede nog eens de NAVO oorlogsagenda bloot. Zo werd de door de VS op poten gezette opstand die in de Oekraïense coup resulteerde, omgedraaid in agressie en expansiedrift van Rusland...... Uiteraard overgoten met de VS propagandamachine leugens over een annexatie van De Krim en het binnenvallen van Rusland in Oost-Oekraïne........ Beiden flagrante leugens waar geen nanometer bewijs voor is!

Voorts komt Cunningham met andere voorbeelden die dit beeld staven, al moet ik zeggen dat er voorbeelden te over zijn, neem alleen al de expansie van de NAVO richting Moskou, waar de NAVO nu, in tegenspraak met gesloten overeenkomsten (met Gorbatsjov), voor een groot deel van de Russische westgrens staat........ Cunningham komt met de leugen van de voormalig minister van buitenlandse zaken in Polen, Sikorski: hij zou naar eigen zeggen persoonlijk hebben gehoord dat Rusland en Polen in een overleg Oekraïne onder elkaar verdeeld hadden.......... Een leugen die na doorprikken naarstig werd ingetrokken door deze liegende hufter...... Sikorski is overigens een 'christendemocraat', die van zijn god blijkbaar keihard mag liegen en ophitsen tot oorlog.......  

Terecht stelt Cunningham dat de Nederlandse regering de leugen gebruikt van de geheime diensten dat ze een aan de Russische regering gelieerde groep zou hebben gehackt en hebben gezien dat de Russen de Democraten in de VS hebben gehackt (zodat niet hare kwaadaardigheid Clinton, maar Trump de verkiezingen heeft gewonnen), iets waarvoor alweer geen flinter bewijs is geleverd........ Een smerige leugen die wordt gebruikt voor het propageren van de 'Sleepwet' die hier ter discussie staat en waar volgende maand in een referendum, tegelijk met de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen, over gestemd kan worden.

Ondanks een kleine uitglijder (waar het echte feit het verhaal in feite alleen nog meer ondersteunt), een prima analyse! Hierin stelt Cunningham onder meer dat de leugen van Zijlstra in feite aanzet tot oorlog en dat is strafbaar onder de 'Neurenbergse principes...'

Dutch Lies Over Putin’s ‘Aggression’ Expose NATO War Agenda

By Finian Cunningham

February 15, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte was this week forced to bear a parliamentary vote of no confidence after his foreign minister finally came clean over a dangerous lie he has been telling for two years concerning Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Halbe Zijlstra quit in shame on Monday as the country’s foreign minister after admitting that a story he had peddled about personally hearing Putin plotting to create a “greater Russia” was false. That then forced premier Rutte to endure a “no confidence” motion from parliamentarians. In the end, Rutte survived the vote. If a majority had voted against his leadership, his coalition government may have collapsed.

But the deep damage done to the Dutch authorities will not be so easily repaired by Rutte’s survival as premier. What has been exposed this week is a senior member of government recklessly telling bare-faced lies in an attempt to slander Russia, poison international relations, and ratchet up already dangerous geopolitical tensions.

Zijlstra had claimed two years ago, in 2016, that he had personally witnessed Russian leader Vladimir Putin boasting about creating a “greater Russia” which, it is claimed, would incorporate Ukraine, the Baltic states, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

The newly resigned Dutch top diplomat claimed he heard Putin making the remarks while present with others at the Russian leader’s dacha (summer house) back in 2006. 

This week, Zijlstra finally came clean and admitted before parliament that he hadn’t in fact been present at the alleged gathering. He still maintains, however, that a confidant who was among the guests at Putin’s dacha informed him of the alleged “greater Russia” plan. But how can we now trust the word of a self-confessed liar?

Zijlstra’s boss, Prime Minister Rutte, also sought to downplay the debacle, claiming that his foreign minister had made “a big mistake” – but that “lying was not a deadly sin”.

Rutte is in for a rude awakening due to his complacent thinking. For indeed his government has been caught telling a very grave lie whose ramifications concern issues of war and peace in Europe.
Disgraced former minister Zijlstra stands accused of gross distortion of Russia’s foreign policy.

Since the US and European-backed illegal coup in Ukraine in early 2014, geopolitical reality has been turned upside-down. American and European corporate media have peddled relentless anti-Russia propaganda accusing Moscow of “aggression” and “expansionism” in Europe.

This torrent of Russophobia spewed out by Washington, the Pentagon, NATO and the European Union has created the worst crisis in relations with Russia since the Cold War ended nearly three decades ago. There are real fears that the mounting crisis could escalate into an all-out war involving nuclear powers.

Zijlstra’s offense therefore is not merely a “mistaken” lie. His flagrant public distortion has contributed directly to the grave deterioration in geopolitical relations. One could even argue such reprehensible remarks amount to incitement of war, which is a cardinal crime under Nuremberg legal principles.

Lamentably, the mendacious senior Dutch politician is not an isolated case. Recall how former Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski was caught out telling similar defamatory lies about Russia in 2014.

Sikorski, who has been an ardent supporter of NATO force build-up against Russia, reportedly claimed that he personally overheard Vladimir Putin in 2008 plotting to annex Ukrainian territory in a covert plot. 
Sikorski claimed that he heard Putin propositioning then Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk with a carve-up deal of Ukraine between Poland and Russia.

Sikorski was obliged to swiftly retract the claims published in US media, and awkwardly admitting that he was not present at the alleged meeting with Putin, and that his quoted remarks were meant as a “surreal joke”.

But, again, this is no joke or mistake. It is deadly serious disinformation by senior government officials, which is recklessly inciting war tensions with Russia. Sikorski is prominently associated with pro-NATO think-tanks like the hawkish American Enterprise Institute. He is married to Anne Applebaum who makes a living from writing anti-Russian screeds for news outlets like the Washington Post.

Zijlstra and Sikorski join the ranks of Russophobia regurgitated by other European foreign ministers like Britain’s Boris Johnson who issued the outlandish claim earlier this year that Russia is “targeting” British infrastructure; or French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian who has impugned Russia for chemical weapons use in Syria – only for the French President Emmanuel Macron to admit this week that his government has actually no evidence about the use of such weapons in Syria.

Macron has made his own contribution to Russophobia by leveling unsubstantiated allegations that his presidential election campaign last year was “hacked” by Kremlin agents. He has since banned Russian news media from attending his press conferences.

All these senior government figures are irresponsibly fueling a climate of demonization against Russia which is compounding other unhinged claims made by politicians in Washington and the Baltic states. Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, for example, recently claimed that Russian Iskander missiles based on Russian sovereign territory of Kaliningrad were targeting half of Europe, an alarmist claim which has been amplified by US secretary of defense James Mattis in the Pentagon’s recent Nuclear Posture Review.

The climate of hysteria – based on false, fevered official claims – is militating against normal political and diplomatic relations, which is, in turn, exacerbating the war in Ukraine and leading to wider war tensions with Russia across Europe.

A good question is why the ousted Dutch minister decided to own up this week to his lies about Putin.
The answer may be related to the bigger credibility crisis of the Dutch government and its NATO allies with regard to the whole Russophobia propaganda war.

Next month, the Netherlands is to hold a national referendum on extending powers of Dutch state intelligence to monitor public electronic communications. To convince the Dutch public to vote for more snooping powers, the authorities are relying on the hackneyed claims about Russian “meddling” and “interference”.

It seems significant that Dutch media reported last month that the country’s secret services allegedly “hacked into” Russian state hackers who were allegedly penetrating the American Democratic party’s databases during the US presidential elections back in 2015-2016. As usual, no evidence was provided to support the claims. We know from other credible reports that the Democratic party was quite possibly not hacked at all, but rather was leaked from inside by a Democrat staffer. So the Dutch intel story smearing Russia is highly dubious.

But it seems that the purported “good deed” performed by the Dutch intelligence services was pitched in the media as a way to ingratiate bona fides with the Netherlands public. The aim being to dispose the public toward voting in the referendum next month to give the Dutch state more intrusive powers over citizens to “protect” them from “nefarious Russians”.

Now, if the Dutch minister had held on to his office any longer there was a risk that his lies may have become public embarrassingly close to the March referendum, which could have resulted in the public rejecting the authorities’ desire for more snooping powers.

Perhaps then the decision was taken in high office for the minister to take the fall now in order to get rid sooner of an embarrassing story concerning his lies over Russia.

Whatever the explanation about the timing, the admission of Dutch government lying about Russian aggression in Europe is nevertheless an illuminating and appalling insight into how Russophobia and war is being fomented by the US and its European NATO allies.

Abominably, European government officials are willing to risk plunging millions of citizens into a war with Russia based on lies and warped, self-serving prejudices.

This article was originally published by "Strategic Culture Foundation" -

-See Also -

U.S. Democrats push $1 billion bill for election security

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Zie ook: 'Zijlstra heeft gelogen, liegt en zal blijven liegen, al helemaal als het over Rusland gaat.......'

       en: 'Zijlstra terecht afgetreden wegens anti-Russische propaganda, nu Rutte nog........'

       en: 'Zijlstra de VVD leugenaar wordt beweend, nu even de andere kant!' (cartoons en prenten)