Philip Mudd, a former deputy director of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, defended the use of torture on both MSNBC's show Morning Joe and CNN's New Day show with Chris Cuomo as co-host. Much like the incorrigible Dick Cheney, he defended torture, but then added a twist by blaming the American people.
"Excuse me, common sense? You have the majority of the American people still saying this is okay. We went to the people who determined what U.S. statutes say. They were clear. I personally spoke to members on both sides of the aisle in the Congress. They told me either ‘okay,’ or ‘is this it?’ — in other words, ‘aren’t you doing more?’ The mood of the population is reflected by the American security service. The mood of the population is, ‘this is okay, this is more than okay. And, by the way, if we see ever see another jumper from the 100th floor of a building in New York, it’s on you.’ You want to know what that’s like, Chris? We were dealt a hand of deuces, and we ran the table in the casino. I thought it was great work." (Quote from the blog Mediaite, December 16, 2014.)With the same logic, most tyrants could defend any terror and abuse by claiming that they just did what the people wanted them to do. A new Pew Research Center poll (December 16, 2014) found that 51 percent of Americans believe that CIA's torture was justified. And much like most American's believed in Dick Cheney's lies about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in the year that lead up to the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq, 58 percent now believe that the torture was effective, despite the fact that the senate report based on CIA's internal documents showed that it did not.
Mudd's defense is nothing but a version of "the Devil made me do it," or as Eve told God according to the Old Testament: "The serpent deceived me, and I ate” (Genesis 3:13).
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