Huh? You think CIA successes are publicized? Why would they be?
I;m never surprised when a gov't paycheck "rationalizes" so they don't feel guilty about taking their paycheck.
You're right. General knowledge of their successes would bring abject shame upon the Agency. For instance, Guatamala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Granada, Libya, Syria(oops), Ukraine, Cuba(oops), Egypt, Chile, Haiti, Iran(oops), Iraq(oops), and th elist goes on.
"Major Joe Blair was the director of instruction at the U.S. School of the Americas (SOA) from 1986 to 1989. He described the training he oversaw at SOA as the following: "The doctrine that was taught was that if you want information you use physical abuse, false imprisonment, threats to family members, and killing. If you can't get the information you want, if you can't get that person to shut up or stop what they're doing, you assassinate them—and you assassinate them with one of your death squads."
The stock response of U.S. officials to the exposure of the systematic crimes I've described is that such things may have occurred at certain times in the past but that they in no way reflect long-term or ongoing U.S. policy. The School of the Americas was moved from the Panama Canal Zone to Fort Benning, Georgia, and replaced by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2001. But Joe Blair has something to say about that too. Testifying at a trial of SOA Watch protesters in 2002, he said, "There are no substantive changes besides the name. They teach the identical courses that I taught, and changed the course names and use the same manuals."
A huge amount of human suffering could be alleviated and global problems solved if the United States would make a genuine commitment to human rights and the rule of law, as opposed to one it only applies cynically and opportunistically to its enemies, but never to itself or its allies.
Nicolas J. S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He wrote the chapter on "Obama At War" for the book, Grading the 44th President: A Report Card on Barack Obama's First Term as a Progressive Leader."