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The Torture Report Released

 
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Plain Meaning



Joined: 18 Oct 2014

PostPosted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 10:24 am    Post subject: The Torture Report Released Reply with quote

The New York Times:

Senate Torture Report Condemns C.I.A. Interrogation Program

Quote:
A scathing report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday found that the Central Intelligence Agency routinely misled the White House and Congress about the information it obtained from the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects, and that its methods were more brutal than the C.I.A. acknowledged either to Bush administration officials or to the public.

The long-delayed report, which took five years to produce and is based on more than six million internal agency documents, is a sweeping indictment of the C.I.A.'s operation and oversight of a program carried out by agency officials and contractors in secret prisons around the world in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It also provides a macabre accounting of some of the grisliest techniques that the C.I.A. used to torture and imprison terrorism suspects.

Detainees were deprived of sleep for as long as a week, and were sometimes told that they would be killed while in American custody. With the approval of the C.I.A.'s medical staff, some C.I.A. prisoners were subjected to medically unnecessary “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration” — a technique that the C.I.A.'s chief of interrogations described as a way to exert “total control over the detainee.” C.I.A. medical staff members described the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, as a “series of near drownings.”

The report also suggests that more prisoners were subjected to waterboarding than the three the C.I.A. has acknowledged in the past. The committee obtained a photograph of a waterboard surrounded by buckets of water at the prison in Afghanistan commonly known as the Salt Pit — a facility where the C.I.A. had claimed that waterboarding was never used. One clandestine officer described the prison as a “dungeon,” and another said that some prisoners there “literally looked like a dog that had been kenneled.”

During his administration, President George W. Bush repeatedly said that the detention and interrogation program, which President Obama dismantled when he succeeded him, was humane and legal. The intelligence gleaned during interrogations, he said, was instrumental both in thwarting terrorism plots and in capturing senior figures of Al Qaeda.


What follows is the TL;DR portion:

Seven Key Points from the Torture Report

Quote:
1. The C.I.A.’s interrogation techniques were more brutal and employed more extensively than the agency portrayed.

2. The C.I.A. interrogation program was mismanaged and was not subject to adequate oversight.

3. The C.I.A. misled members of Congress and the White House about the effectiveness and extent of its brutal interrogation techniques.

4. Interrogators in the field who tried to stop the brutal techniques were repeatedly overruled by senior C.I.A. officials.

5. The C.I.A. repeatedly underreported the number of people it detained and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques under the program.

6. At least 26 detainees were wrongfully held and did not meet the government’s standard for detention.

7. The C.I.A. leaked classified information to journalists, exaggerating the success of interrogation methods in an effort to gain public support.



Torture Report Questions and Answers

Quote:
Q. Why has it taken so long for the report to be released?

A. The Senate study was originally intended to take a year, but took far longer. It was approved in a committee vote in December 2012 and given to the C.I.A. for review. The agency claimed it was full of inaccuracies, and wrote a lengthy rebuttal, which is still secret. Last year, the Senate committee accused the C.I.A. of spying on its work on the report by intruding into the computers used by committee staff members and removing some documents. The C.I.A. subsequently accused the Senate staff of looking at material it was not authorized to see. Eventually, the current C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, acknowledged that the agency had inappropriately spied on the Senate computers and apologized. In August, the C.I.A. produced a heavily redacted version of the report’s summary for public release, but Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Intelligence Committee’s Democratic chairwoman, objected that far too much information was blacked out. The two sides have been negotiating a compromise since then.


The Obama administration wanted to bury the Torture Report until a Republican became head of the Intelligence Committee.

Quote:
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, warned of "violence and deaths" abroad in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" and called the report's release "a terrible idea.


It is likely that outgoing Senator Udall (D-CO) and his threats to leak the Torture Report were what lead to the Obama administration agreeing to release the report now.

I will comment more on this once I have had a chance to review the Report. Here is a New York Times liveblog.
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guavashake



Joined: 09 Nov 2013

PostPosted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 3:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Torture under Obama
By Nat Hentoff

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/torture-under-obama

Some of the increasing number of critics, from the left and the right, of President Barack Obama’s abuses of civil liberties and human rights make an exception by praising his executive order in the first month of his term banning torture as a form of interrogation on matters of national security. There is credible reason, however, to dispute the credibility of that presidential pledge.

“Torture’s Loopholes” (New York Times, Jan. 20) is by Matthew Alexander, a 14-year veteran of the U.S. Air Force and Air Force Reserves. In 2006, he led the U.S. interrogation team that tracked and found Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the insatiable killer who commanded al-Qaida in Iraq and was then terminated by coalition forces. Alexander went on to write a book that was not endorsed by Dick Cheney: How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq.

This is what Alexander, who describes himself as “an investigator turned interrogator,” has to say about Obama allegedly banning torture — and the accompanying decision last August by Attorney General Eric Holder to remove responsibility for interrogating detainees to a new FBI-directed High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group that will constrain itself to use only “noncoercive” methods or those approved by the Army Field Manual.

Unequivocally, Alexander states: “If I were to return to one of the war zones today…I would still be allowed to abuse prisoners.” How come? In August, Holder’s task force on interrogation, commissioned by the president, “recommended no changes” to the Army Field Manual, thereby retaining the torture loopholes focused on now by the tracker of al-Zarqawi.

To begin, an appendix to the Manual allows a detainee (a.k.a. prisoner) to be kept in solitary confinement indefinitely. As Alexander point out, “extended solitary confinement is torture, as confirmed by many scientific studies.” And the prestigious Manual allows suspects just four hours sleep in 24 hours. “As if this wasn’t enough,” Alexander continues, a loophole permits interrogators, Mr. President, ‘to give a detainee four hours of sleep — and then conduct a 20-hour interrogation, after which they can ‘reset’ the clock and begin another 20-hour interrogation followed by four hours of sleep.”

You certainly keep physically fit, Mr. President, but I wonder what your definition of torture is if you allowed yourself, as part of a clinical test, to be interrogated for 40 hours straight?

Until this change in the Army Field Manual, Alexander points out, an interrogator going beyond 20 straight hours of interrogation (as if that weren’t inhumane enough) was referred to as “monstering” in that line of work.

Well, Barack Obama did campaign as a much-needed agent of change...
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guavashake



Joined: 09 Nov 2013

PostPosted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 7:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Meanwhile, the only person who is sitting in prison in regards to torture is John Kiriakou, the person who exposed the truth about the program.
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Joined: 18 Oct 2014

PostPosted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 7:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

guavashake wrote:
Meanwhile, the only person who is sitting in prison in regards to torture is John Kiriakou, the person who exposed the truth about the program.


You are right. The report itself seems to highlight the lack of accountability surrounding it. Feinstein appears as if she has exhausted all her political capital just negotiating the release of the program, but we should not trust that appearance, and instead ask why it is (almost?) nobody from Congress has asked for the torturers to be tried.
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guavashake



Joined: 09 Nov 2013

PostPosted: Wed Dec 10, 2014 12:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Of course they don't want to expose the war you don't see. (By the way, The War You Don't See, by John Pilger is a good documentary.)

And, it has been pointed out that the Obama administration has availed of the Espionage Act more than all previous administrations combined to get the people who expose the war you don't see.
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GENO123



Joined: 28 Jan 2010

PostPosted: Wed Dec 10, 2014 1:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Obama is a good Republican. Completely destroyed the left wing in the US.
Republicans everywhere ought to thank him.

Next president is either Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney (inventor of Obama care ) . Not much of a difference there. Liberals celebrated when Obama got elected. But the joke is on them. Anyone want to differ?
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Joined: 18 Oct 2014

PostPosted: Wed Dec 10, 2014 6:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

GENO123 wrote:
Obama is a good Republican. Completely destroyed the left wing in the US.
Republicans everywhere ought to thank him.

Next president is either Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney (inventor of Obama care ) . Not much of a difference there. Liberals celebrated when Obama got elected. But the joke is on them. Anyone want to differ?


^

This is 85% correct. The only part that is wrong is that its too early to call the race for the Presidency for 2016. Its too early to even know who will run.

-----------------------------------

Remember the Senate decided to investigate the CIA after they discovered the CIA not only lied to them, but destroyed video evidence and concealed the existence of that evidence. It amazes me that Obama was able to stall release of the report for approximately two years.
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catman



Joined: 18 Jul 2004

PostPosted: Wed Dec 10, 2014 7:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

CIA torture: Fox News says 'the US is awesome'

Quote:
Fox News has condemned the release of a damning report into the CIA's use of torture as a political manoeuvre designed to show Americans "how we’re not awesome".

The broadcaster's National Security Analyst K.T. McFarland argued that the techniques were both "legal and justified" by the 9/11 terror attacks.

And she denounced the publication of the Senate Intelligence Committee report as a move made by Democrats to "do harm" to the country by angering terrorists.

...

She was backed up by Out Numbered host Andrea Tantaros, who said the country didn't need the CIA to be transparent because it is "awesome".

"The United States of America is awesome, we are awesome," she said. "The reason they want to have this discussion is not to show how awesome we are. This administration wants to have this discussion to show us how we’re not awesome."

Fox News correspondent Jesse Watters also told the hosts of Out Numbered that the American people did not need to know about torture at the CIA because “people do nasty things in the dark especially after a terrorist attack.”

“Senate Democrats, they’re just trying to get one last shot in at Bush before they go into the minority,” he said.
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Joined: 18 Oct 2014

PostPosted: Fri Dec 12, 2014 8:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/fox-news-catches-dick-cheney-dissembling-about-torture/383690/2/

Conor Friedersdorf wrote:
Andrew Sullivan wrote:
Cheney is told about a prisoner, Gul Rahman, who died after unimaginable brutality—beaten, kept awake for 48 hours, kept in total darkness for days, thrown into the Gestapo-pioneered cold bath treatment, and then chained to a wall and left to die of hypothermia. The factors in his death included “dehydration, lack of food, and immobility due to ‘short chaining.” This is Cheney’s response: "3,000 Americans died on 9/11 because of what these guys did, and I have no sympathy for them. I don’t know the specific details … I haven’t read the report … I keep coming back to the basic, fundamental proposition: how nice do you want to be to the murderers of 3000 Americans?"

But Gul Rahman had nothing whatsoever to do with the 9/11 plot.

He had engaged in no plots to kill Americans. He was a guard to the Afghan warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, part of an organization that began by fighting the Soviets in occupied Afghanistan. It had alliances with al Qaeda at the time, but subsequently engaged in peace negotiations with the Karzai government. His brother claims Rahman was even involved in rescuing Hamid Kharzai in 1994. To equate him with individuals who committed mass murder of Americans or who were actively plotting against Americans is preposterous. He was emphatically not a threat to the US. Yet we tortured him to death. And the man running the torture camp was promoted thereafter.


When Cheney tries to associate everyone tortured by the CIA with the people who perpetrated 9/11, he's using the same cheap misdirection that allowed him to respond to that attack by calling for America to wage war against Saddam Hussein.

Cheney is a capable bullshitter.

But the more we find out about the torture program, the more he is reduced to increasingly naked expressions of his actual "argument": terrorism 9/11 9/11!!!! Take the moment in the Fox News interview when Baier brings up Senator Mark Udall's statement about former CIA Director Leon Panetta's review of CIA torture, and the fact that it reaches some of the same conclusions as the Senate report.

Here is Cheney's actual retort: "Well, I don't know where he was on 9/11, but he wasn't in the bunker."


Facts are slowly closing in on Dick Cheney.
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young_clinton



Joined: 09 Sep 2009

PostPosted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 10:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The people that got "tortured" can go **** **********. One of them is now the head of ISIS ordering beheadings. I don't want abuse of prisoners from my country, but for those people I won't lose any sleep over it for sure.
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catman



Joined: 18 Jul 2004

PostPosted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 11:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

young_clinton wrote:
The people that got "tortured" can go **** **********. One of them is now the head of ISIS ordering beheadings. I don't want abuse of prisoners from my country, but for those people I won't lose any sleep over it for sure.


They admit to torturing innocent people too.

Oh well.
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slothrop



Joined: 03 Feb 2003

PostPosted: Sun Dec 14, 2014 11:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

edit

Last edited by slothrop on Sun Jan 11, 2015 5:07 am; edited 1 time in total
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Joined: 18 Oct 2014

PostPosted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 8:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

young_clinton wrote:
The people that got "tortured" can go **** **********. One of them is now the head of ISIS ordering beheadings. I don't want abuse of prisoners from my country, but for those people I won't lose any sleep over it for sure.


Stop and think about what you just said. The CIA tortured someone. That person now has become a higher-up in ISIS.

Creating New Terrorists
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Joined: 18 Oct 2014

PostPosted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 3:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Psychologist admits he waterboarded al Qaeda suspects: report

Quote:
Mitchell said the waterboarding of Mohammed, which the report said occurred 183 times, was actually "83 pours (of water) that lasted between one to 10 seconds” each. The Senate report said the sessions evolved into a “series of near drownings.”

Mitchell also disputed the report’s assertion that he and Jessen reaped $81 million from their company's contract with the CIA from 2005 until it was terminated in 2009. He said most of the money was earmarked for "overhead, operating expenses, and salaries for employees."

"I wasn't living hand to mouth, but it wasn't $81 million," Mitchell was quoted as saying. The Senate report said he and Jessen earned as much as $1,800 a day.
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Fox



Joined: 04 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Mon Dec 15, 2014 4:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Plain Meaning wrote:
young_clinton wrote:
The people that got "tortured" can go **** **********. One of them is now the head of ISIS ordering beheadings. I don't want abuse of prisoners from my country, but for those people I won't lose any sleep over it for sure.


Stop and think about what you just said. The CIA tortured someone. That person now has become a higher-up in ISIS.

Creating New Terrorists


Right. Even from a purely utilitarian perspective, torture is absurd, and from a perspective actually concerned with justice, it's unconscionable.
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