A covert soldier of empire speaks out:
"But over the years he came to believe that counterterrorism was creating more problems than it solved, fuelling illiberalism and hysteria, destroying communities overseas, and diverting attention and resources from essential problems in the United States"
"“We have to stop treating people like we’re in Fallujah,” Patrick Skinner said. “Just look what happened in Fallujah.”
"Two months into the U.S. invasion, Donald Rumsfeld, the Defense Secretary, revealed in a memo that he didn’t know what languages were spoken in Afghanistan."
“They were telling us, ‘Too many people have died here for us just to leave,’ ” Skinner recalled. “ ‘But we don’t want to give the Taliban a timeline.’ So, forever? Is that what you’re going for? They fucking live there, dude.”
"Skinner wrote an op-ed for Time, describing torture as an “indefensible tactic” that is designed “to produce false confessions for propaganda purposes.” "
"“I used to spend more money on meals and entertainment for a couple of sources in Amman, each year, than the Savannah Police Department has to spend on cars,” Skinner said."
"Norma Jeane carried a wooden cane and a black handbag, in which she kept her Bible, an empty pickle jar that she used as a wallet, a cracked cell phone with no battery, a magnifying glass, and an old bottle for Seroquel, an antipsychotic medication used to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. She said that the pills made her sleepy, so she’d stopped taking them long ago. She also has diabetes, but she couldn’t afford health insurance or treatment. “I haven’t taken insulin in three years,” she said."
"Then she took off her Santa hat and started messing up her hair, pulling strands so that they’d stick out in all directions. “This way, everybody gonna think I’m crazy,” she said. “No one gonna come up to me, this way. No one gonna hurt me.”"
"Skinner explained that part of his motivation in helping Norma Jeane was to prevent an emergency call, three hours later, of a homeless woman freezing to death. “Think of all the shit that went wrong in this country for Norma Jeane to be sitting in the car with us,” "
"Twenty-seven hours after we left Norma Jeane at the Waffle House, another cop radioed in an E.M.S. call. A fifty-nine-year-old homeless woman, dressed in a Santa hat and a leopard-print jacket, was freezing to death."
read the whole thing:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/07/the-spy-who-came-homesidd
