what other potentially vastly more horrible things are being executed in their name elsewhere?

And so you speculate and assume the worst. It’s very easy to manipulate this perspective through propaganda, and the media does so all the time. Instead of saying things outright, which they might be held accountable for if the claims are later disproven, you’re led to fill in the gaps with your own imagination. So, a person is said to have “disappeared,” and you immediately think they’re in some black site, but if they reappear and it turns out they were fine all along, the media can say, “Well, we personally didn’t know where they were, and that’s all we actually said.”

Of course, there’s also stuff that the CIA covered up for decades, such as the 1953 Iranian coup. And most people are simply unaware of it because it’s never discussed in the news. I suppose it’s different in that it was done to a foreign country but I’m not sure that makes it better. In any case, they have the capability to do things like that without the public’s knowledge.

No doubt, any comparison between the two will be met with “whataboutism,” regardless of the relevance of the comparison. But shouldn’t we also say that it’s impossible to say what, “potentially vastly more horrible things are being executed in their name elsewhere” regarding the US?