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John Kiriakou: Blowing Whistle on Bush-Era Torture 'Was Worth It'
Whistleblower, who's now serving remainder of 30-month sentence at home, told Democracy Now! that 'entire torture program was approved by the president himself.'

Former CIA agent John Kiriakou said Monday that the Bush-era torture program "was approved by the president himself" and that the two years he spent behind bars for blowing the whistle on that program was worth it.

Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison in 2013 after pleading guilty to releasing the name of an officer implicated in a CIA torture program to the media and violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. He was released from federal prison last week and is serving out the remainder of his sentence at home.

He is the only government employee who has gone to jail in connection with the torture program—a fact attorney Jesselyn Radack has called "a miscarriage of justice" and which Kiriakou said makes him feel like he's "in the Twilight Zone sometimes."

In an interview with Democracy Now!, Kirikou said he was convinced about the reason for his imprisonment: "My case was about blowing the whistle on torture."

It’s the lessons the U.S. didn’t learn from Vietnam that make its loss there the real tragedy
The U.S. has become a serial invader and destroyer of other nations, especially Muslim ones. What happened?

Last month was the 47th anniversary of the start of the Tet Offensive. Tet was the tipping point of the Vietnam War, the battle that exposed the lie of “light at the end of the tunnel.” It is worth remembering to see if we can salvage any lessons from it.

On Jan. 30, 1968, the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army launched a series of assaults aimed at breaking the back of the U.S. occupation of Vietnam. It included attacks on more than 100 hamlets, towns and cities and dozens of military bases. It was named “Tet” for the traditional Vietnamese Lunar New Year, which was when it was launched. It reversed the course of the war, causing the U.S. to begin planning its withdrawal.

The attacks themselves were repulsed but their psychological effect was devastating. For the prior six months, the Johnson administration had waged a “Success Offensive” in the U.S., claiming that the U.S. was winning the war. Robert McNamara, U.S. secretary of defense and the original technocrat, had claimed “all available measures are showing progress.” The myth of imminent American victory was brutally exploded by the surprise, the breadth, the ferocity and the tenacity of the fighting.

But Tet was only the realization of an inevitability. The U.S. defeat in Vietnam was ordained from the beginning. Understanding why is key to learning any lessons from the war.

Ho Chi Minh had approached Harry Truman in 1946 asking if the U.S. would help the Vietnamese evict the French colonial occupiers, much as the Americans had evicted the British colonial occupiers in their Revolutionary War almost 200 years before. Fatefully, Truman sided with the French. That was the “original sin” that doomed American prospects in Vietnam.