National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair's efforts in a recent memo to rationalize the crimes against humanity committed by the CIA are dangerous and unAmerican. While he did try to justify ending some torture, the Obama Administration policy, other aspects of the memo have the primary effect of obstructing justice.

For instance, Blair's memo makes the dangerous and factually inaccurate claims about the efficacy of torture. CNN 4/22/09:

"High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country," retired Adm. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, said in the two-page memo dated April 16 and sent to colleagues.

Credible sources on interrogations say that torture doesn't provide accurate information. How are we going to restore the American peoples' confidence in the intelligence community when we are told such preposterous lies to the contrary.

Let's look at what actually happened. The Bush regime and CIA employees following criminal orders repeatedly tortured detainees until the torture victims said whatever the Bush regime wanted. Consider the "intelligence" gathered by the torture.

Phony Intelligence: Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party regime was aligned with Al Qaida.
Fact: The two groups were mortal enemies.

Phony Intelligence: Iraq was had chemical and biological weapons and had a nuclear weapons program.
Fact: Iraq had discarded all of their chemical and biological weapons roughly a decade before and had made no efforts whatsoever to obtain a nuclear weapons capability

Remember the fake "terror alerts" the Bush regime put out at very convenient times during the 2004 presidential campaign. Guess where the "intelligence" came from.

Torture was used by the Bush regime, the CIA, the NSA, crony contractors, and who knows who else to defraud our country into an Iraq war that has cost the lives of over 4000 US troops, an unknown number of mercenaries, and over 1.3 million Iraqis. Torturing wasn't limited to being a crime against humanity itself, it also was part of propaganda efforts to commit one of the worst crimes against humanity: a war of aggression. German generals who had nothing to do with the Holocaust were successfully prosecuted for just such war crimes after World War II.

Until everyone involved in torture is prosecuted, patriotic Americans will have no way to trust or respect the CIA.

Dennis Blair doesn't want anyone prosecuted. America needs a Director of Intelligence we can trust. Blair simply is not that person. He needs to go.