http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/09/cia-torture-report-releasedThe full extent of the CIA’s interrogation and detention programmes launched in the wake of the September 11 terror attack was laid bare in a milestone report by the Senate intelligence committee on Tuesday that concluded the agency’s use of torture was brutal and ineffective – and that the CIA repeatedly lied about its usefulness.
The report represented the most scathing congressional indictment of the Central Intelligence Agency in nearly four decades. It found that torture “regularly resulted in fabricated information,” said committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, in a statement summarizing the findings. She called the torture programme “a stain on our values and on our history”.
“During the brutal interrogations, the CIA was often unaware the information was fabricated.” She told the Senate the torture program was “morally, legally and administratively misguided” and “far more brutal than people were led to believe”.
The report reveals that use of torture in secret prisons run by the CIA across the world was even more extreme than previously exposed, and included “rectal rehydration” and “rectal feeding”, sleep deprivation lasting almost a week and threats to the families of the detainees.
The “lunch tray” for one detainee, which contained hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins, “was ‘pureed’ and rectally infused”, the report says. One detainee whose rectal examination was conducted with “excessive force” was later diagnosed with chronic hemorrhoids, anal fissures and rectal prolapse. Investigators also documented death threats made to detainees. And CIA interrogators, the committee charged, told detainees they would hurt detainees’ children and “sexually assault” or “cut a [detainee’s] mother’s throat”.
At least one prisoner died as a result of hypothermia after being held in a stress position on cold concrete for hours. At least 17 detainees were tortured without the approval from CIA headquarters that ex-director George Tenet assured the DOJ would occur. And at least 26 of the CIA’s estimated 119 detainees, the committee found, were “wrongfully held.”
Some CIA officers were said to have been reduced “to the point of tears” by witnessing the treatment meted out to one detainee.
The findings prompted a call from a UN special human rights rapporteur for prosecutions of those in the CIA and the Bush administration responsible for the torture programme.
Responding to the report, Barack Obama said the US owed a “profound debt” to the CIA but accepted that some of its techniques were “contrary to our values”.
“These harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests. Moreover, these techniques did significant damage to America’s standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners. That is why I will continue to use my authority as president to make sure we never resort to those methods again.”
The Senate report ignited a political storm as it was published by the Democratic majority in its last few weeks before surrendering control to the Republican-dominated chamber elected last month.
Loyalists of former president George W Bush, whose administration presided over the torture programme, immediately launched a website aimed at rebutting the report’s central findings.
The names of other countries – including Britain – who cooperated with the US programme by assisting the rendition of suspects were redacted from the published report.
Asked about British involvement, David Cameron said the question that a parliamentary inquiry was “dealing with all those issues” and that he had issued guidance to British agents on “how they have to handle these issues in future”
“Torture is wrong, torture is always wrong. Those of us who want to see a safer and more secure world, who want to see extremism defeated, we won’t succeed if we lose our moral authority, if we lose the things that make or systems work and countries successful,” the prime minister said.
The Senate committee published nearly 500 pages of its investigation into the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme during the Bush administration’s “war on terror”. The full report is over 10 times longer, but the declassified section is dense with detail and declassified communications between the officials involved.
The Senate report squarely rebuts CIA claims that the use of such methods generated intelligence that prevented further terrorist attacks and therefore saved lives. Feinstein said its investigators had not found a single case where that was true. Detainees who underwent torture either disclosed nothing, or supplied fabricated information, or revealed information that had been already been discovered through traditional, non-violent interrogation techniques.
The torture revealed in the report goes beyond the techniques already made public through a decade of leaks and lawsuits, which had found that agency interrogators subjected detainees to quasi-drowning, staged mock executions and revved power drills near their heads.
At least 39 detainees, the committee found, experienced techniques like “cold water dousing” – different from the quasi-drowning known as waterboarding – which the Justice Department never approved.
Contractor psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen played a critical role in establishing the torture program in 2002. In the report, both Mitchell and Jessen are identified by the pseudonyms Swigert and Dunbar. A company they formed to contract their services to the CIA was worth more than $180m, and by the time of the contract’s 2009 cancellation, they had received $81m in payouts.
The committee’s findings, which the CIA largely rejects, are the result of a four-year, $40m investigation that plunged relations between the spy agency and the Senate committee charged with overseeing it to a historic low.
The investigation that led to the report, and the question of how much of the document would be released and when, has pitted chairwoman Feinstein and her committee allies against the CIA and its White House backers. For 10 months, with the blessing of President Barack Obama, the agency has fought to conceal vast amounts of the report from the public, with an entreaty to Feinstein from secretary of state John Kerry occurring as recently as Friday.
Republican House intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers warned America’s allies were predicting its release would “cause violence and deaths”. After publication Rogers said: “Though it is wholly appropriate for the congressional intelligence committees to conduct rigorous review of classified programs, I fear that publicizing the details of this classified program – which was legal, authorized and appropriately briefed to the intelligence committees – will only inflame our enemies, risk the lives of those who continue to sacrifice on our behalf, and undermine the very organization we continuously ask to do the hardest jobs in the toughest places.”
Senate Report: CIA Misled Public on Torture
- Thread starter Straight Shooter
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Jagger69
Three lullabies in an ancient tongue
Big partisan debate whether this information threatens American national security or exposes a huge misplacement of supposed American values. Unfortunately, I feel the data gravitates toward the latter even though the former may have practical credence. Bummer....and very disillusioning.
I agree. But I've never agreed with those who use the "you're putting American lives in danger" argument. We've been fighting a war on terror for 13 years now, Americans lives are in danger 24/7 regardless of Snowden leaking NSA secrets or a torture report being released. Using that argument suggests that before the torture report American lives were never in danger and we all know that's bullshit.
Ace Boobtoucher
Founder and Captain of the Douchepatrol
The day Muslims forgo beheadings is the day I disavow enhanced interrogation.
Before James Foley was beheaded, he was subjected to waterboarding. Do you consider that torture?
BlkHawk
Closed Account
War is hell.
Anything goes.
And you better do all you can to win.
Anything goes.
And you better do all you can to win.
bobjustbob
Proud member of FreeOnes Hall Of Fame. Retired to
Well.. let's consider about 20 or so beheadings of innocent hostages in the Middle East in the past few years that were even reported in the press. How many were done to their own people is unknown. Let's go back the more humane torture of being stripped naked and put on a dog collar with women soldiers riding them around.
Hasn't the U.S. government done things throughout it's history that hasn't gone along with it's ideals? Including even now with drone strikes killing american citizens abroad without due process? Which I wholeheartedly support btw. :thumbsup: Mr. President.
A 47-year-old american teacher and mother was brutally stabbed to death in an Abu Dabi Mall bathroom last week. She bled to death screaming while her twin sons were outside waiting for her. The perpetrator was a woman who was inspired by islamic terror websites to do just that.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/cri...mom-murdered-abu-dhabi-mall-article-1.2037544
Add that to the mountain of atrocities committed against innocent civilians by these people we've been fighting and yes, vigorously interrogating and forgive me if I don't shed a tear or even navel gaze over this senate report.
A 47-year-old american teacher and mother was brutally stabbed to death in an Abu Dabi Mall bathroom last week. She bled to death screaming while her twin sons were outside waiting for her. The perpetrator was a woman who was inspired by islamic terror websites to do just that.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/cri...mom-murdered-abu-dhabi-mall-article-1.2037544
Add that to the mountain of atrocities committed against innocent civilians by these people we've been fighting and yes, vigorously interrogating and forgive me if I don't shed a tear or even navel gaze over this senate report.
Mayhem
Banned
Yes, I believe we can best further the cause of American Exceptionalism by proving that we are exactly like our enemies.
Jagger69
Three lullabies in an ancient tongue
Yes....and that is their goal. If they can get us to turn our back on the basic human rights ideals upon which our nation was founded, they win. Quite obviously, regarding our willingness to use torture as an official governmental policy, they've already won.
If we are willing to abandon our basic tenets of individual rights in order to defend them, do they not cease to exist? We are literally in a no-win situation against an enemy that is fanatical in its devotion to its cause and quite willing to use this fanaticism indiscriminately as divine justification for the barbarous and heinous acts that they carry out with reckless impunity. How do you fight this enemy? The question has thus far remained unanswered but, to me, torturing them isn't the way. It makes a huge statement when someone like John McCain agrees:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/09/politics/mccain-lauds-release-terror-report/index.html
They seemed to admit that torturing didn't even work very well at all. Either no much information at all or false information or maybe they just asked wrong questions or harassed too much innocent people.
What do you people consider as reasonable punishment for this kind of situations or what kind of law system would you prefer to be used for different types of criminals? There are also huge chances that these people will newer change their ways, lost cases. Do you prefer an eye for an eye or would you be willing to tax fund their free dinners and beds in a prisons? Are fully filled shithole prisons all that much different to directly torturing these people? Prison can also be luxury for some homeless people and once you know what kind of crimes will bring you bed over the cold winter in your favorite tax-paid dorm...
What do you people consider as reasonable punishment for this kind of situations or what kind of law system would you prefer to be used for different types of criminals? There are also huge chances that these people will newer change their ways, lost cases. Do you prefer an eye for an eye or would you be willing to tax fund their free dinners and beds in a prisons? Are fully filled shithole prisons all that much different to directly torturing these people? Prison can also be luxury for some homeless people and once you know what kind of crimes will bring you bed over the cold winter in your favorite tax-paid dorm...
Mayhem
Banned
You're mixing up an unfortunate reality with an unconscionable choice. Prison overcrowding isn't a choice that the State made, it's just what happened. Torture is a deliberate choice.
“You can judge a society by how well it treats its prisoners.” Fyodor Dostoevsky
This is beyond furthering american exceptionalism. This is the entire western and modern world vs. medieval era barbarism and religious fanaticism. We are so far from being exactly like our enemies; we're going to have to try alot harder than this to get to that level. If we were exactly like our enemies we would've kidnapped Bin Laden's numerous wives and children and threatened to behead them on camera if he didn't give himself up. And then when the deadline passed, we would've done it, while praising God.
Mayhem
Banned
You just twisted yourself into a human pretzel trying to rationalize torture. And you're doing it after what we've known for decades has been confirmed: Torture doesn't work.
Well that's being disputed by those in the CIA itself:
CIA Director Brennan
https://www.cia.gov/news-informatio...study-on-detention-interrogation-program.html
War has zero to do with keeping your ideals,
War had nothing to do with being a nice guy.
War is about killing, war is about domination, war is about imposing your beliefs and ideals on another people for your own peoples benefit.
It is just lip service and denial to try and label war as anything but what it is.
War is state sanctioned murder plain and simple there is NO high ground and there is NO low ground there is only WIN because in the end the victors write the history and the losers become fertilizer. I truly despise war because I see the truth and you all read the propaganda.
Conservatives love to use that quote when a liberal says "gun-control" but when dealing with government sponsored torture and the infamous Patriot Act, they just love getting ripped of their freedom by the government in exchange of some security...
(And no, by "liberals" I don't mean "Democrats" : Obama extended and then reauthorized the Patriot Act, showing to the American people that, when, it comes ot their freedom, he is not better than Bush).
Mayhem
Banned
Thank God you used an unbiased source that isn't scurrying to save it's own ass, otherwise you'd just be wasting everyone's time.
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