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On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker talks with CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou, the only man who went to prison for the U.S. government's torture program -- not for participating in it, but for exposing it.

Abu Zabaydah, one of the Guantanamo prisoners that the United States has admitted to waterboarding, has made his case for release in his first appearance in 14 years of imprisonment. Kiriakou discusses his role in Zubaydah's capture, the extent of the torture that was inflicted on him, and whether the Guantanamo prison camp will ever close.

A new investigation shows that the U.S. downplayed the extent of Shia militias’ torture and abuse of Sunni civilians after the recent liberation of Fallujah from ISIL. But this sectarianism was purposely fomented by the murderous U.S. occupation following the 2003 invasion. Becker is joined by Iraqi-American journalist Raed Jarrar.

A Sputnik News poll found that the majority of people over 35 in almost every former Soviet republic believed that life was better before the disintegration of the USSR. Public intellectual and Michael Parenti, author of Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, and Loud & Clear producer Walter Smolarek speak with Becker about the significance of the dissolution of the Soviet Union nearly a quarter of a century later.