The Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report will be released “in a matter of days,” a committee staffer tells The Intercept. The report, a review of brutal CIA interrogation methods during the presidency of George W. Bush, has been the subject of a contentious back-and-forth, with U.S. intelligence agencies and the White House on one side pushing for mass redactions in the name of national security and committee staffers on the other arguing that the proposed redactions render the report unintelligible.
Should something emerge, here are some important caveats to keep in mind:
1) You’re not actually reading the torture report. You’re just reading an executive summary. The full Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA’s interrogation and detention program runs upward of 6,000 pages. The executive summary is 480 pages. So you’re missing more than 80 percent of it.
2) The CIA got to cut out parts. The summary has been redacted – ostensibly by the White House, but in practice by officials of the CIA, which, lest we forget, is the agency that is being investigated, that spied on and tried to intimidate the people conducting the investigation, and whose director has engaged in serial deception about the investigation. The original redactions proposed by the White House included eliminating even the use of pseudonyms to let readers keep track of major recurring characters, and appeared intended to make the summary unintelligible.
3) Senate Democrats had their backs to the wall. Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein faced enormous pressure to get the summary out in some form, before the incoming Republican Senate majority could do the White House a solid and squelch it completely.
4) The investigation was extremely narrow in its focus. Committee staffers only looked at what the CIA did in its black sites; whether it misled other officials; and whether it complied with orders. That is somewhat like investigating whether a hit man did the job efficiently and cleaned up nicely.
5) The investigation didn’t examine who gave the CIA its orders, or why. The summary doesn’t assess who told the CIA to torture – despite the abundant evidence that former vice president Dick Cheney and his cabal architected, choreographed and defended its use, with former president George W. Bush’s knowing or unknowing support.
6) Torture was hardly limited to the CIA. In fact, the worst of it was done by the military. Want to read a quality investigation of the U.S. torture of detainees? Go read this 2008 report from the Senate Armed Services Committee. That committee’s inquiry didn’t just expose the horrific, routinized abuse of detainees at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, it also laid out a clear line of responsibility starting with Bush and exposed his administration’s repeated explanation for what happened as a pack of lies. For some reason, it never got anywhere near the attention it deserved.
7) Senate investigators conducted no interviews of torture victims. As the Guardian reported in late November: “Lawyers for four of the highest-value detainees ever held by the CIA, all of whom have made credible allegations of torture and all of whom remain in US government custody, say the Senate committee never spoke with their clients.”
8) Senate investigators conducted no interviews of CIA officials. As the Washington Times reported in August, committee staffers never spoke to either the senior managers of the torture program or the directors who oversaw it.
9) In fact, Senate investigators conducted no interviews at all. “We did not conduct interviews, but did make significant use of transcripts of interviews done by the CIA IG [Inspector General] and others during the program,” a Senate Intelligence Committee staffer emailed me recently. “That, together with the literally millions of pages of contemporaneous documents, emails, chat sessions, etc. make us confident in the accuracy and comprehensive nature of the report.” So it’s basically aggregation.
10) Bush and Cheney have acknowledged their roles in the program. Bush and Cheney have both publicly acknowledged approving the use of waterboarding and other abusive forms of interrogation that are nearly universally considered torture. Cheney said in 2008 that he was “involved in helping get the process cleared.” “Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” Bush said in 2010. “I’d do it again to save lives.”
11) The report’s conclusion that torture didn’t do any good is a big deal. You may argue, as I do, that even if torture sometimes “worked”, it’s still immoral, criminal and ultimately counterproductive. As I wrote during the “Zero Dark Thirty” furor, torture is not about extracting information, it’s about power, revenge, rage and cruelty. It’s about stripping people of their humanity. Throughout its history, its only reliable byproduct has been false confessions. But the pro-torture argument is simple: The ends justify the means. So if the evidence is overwhelming that torture achieves nothing — or less than nothing — then we win the argument by default.
12) No one has been held accountable. Aside from a handful of low-level soldiers at Abu Ghraib, no one has been held accountable for the U.S.’s embrace and widespread use of torture after the terror attacks of 9/11. And there are no signs that anyone will be. As a result, torture critics conclude that despite President Obama’s decision not to torture, there is no reason to assume that we won’t do it again in the future.
Photo: Charles Dharapak/AP
Revisiting ” How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations “, Glenn Greenwald, 02/24/24.
From the article by GG (Glenn Greenwald), titled: ” How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations “, 02/24/24, we know the lengths that covert secret agents – called “perps” for those specifically associated with domestic mind control torture operations – will go to, to advance their cancer to the fabric of this nation. To victims, this has long been old news, but thanks to Edward Snowden, vindication does taste sweet. But now, you get to see them in action. Right here.
One of the main tools of the mind control torture program psyops is to make everything possible to attempt to discredit and smear the characters of truly targeted individuals, especially those who articulate their abuse more accurately and more credibly. By smearing the person, they hope to wrestle the narrative away from the person and into their hands, where manufacture and package versions of their own sordid operations whose objective is to deflect, deceive, derail, narrow down the scope, trivialize the damage done to, while mocking the, victims. And to somehow explain away the rampart suicides both in the civilian and military populations, and the mass killings done by some targets so inflicted with pain that the only way out for them, was the unfortunate act of violence onto themselves and others.
A disinformation operator must meet a specific psychological and personality profile. They are devoid of all conscience. They have severe deficits in affect and possess no sense of morality. They are incapable of deriving any form of mirth except through infliction of pain on another human being. Possibly tortured animals as children.
They possess utter contemptous despise for the constitution and all the laws that flow from it, and would spit at the flag of the United States long before an external enemy even gets around to thinking about doing it. They are likely paid from 2.3 TRILLION dollars that disappeared from the Pentagon ledgers on September 10, 2001, and which no one can account for to this day. They call the subversion of very foundations of the United States, patriotism.
They are borderline bright, and most of the time, given a long rope, will hang themselves and betray the proximity to the torture operations of the person they smear. They, for example, bragged on how they liked my “bathroom practices”, which they know from the videos clandenstinely places in my house to monitor the behavioural effects of the torture. These, their torture masters will destroy before congress ever lays their hands on them, like they have done numerous times before.
Their main goal is to “own” the narrative of the torture industry, and wrestle it away from the victims who are credible – by smearing them, and substituting their own version of the torture industry – a watered down version that is fashioned along the lines of the heavily deducted 6,000 page to 450 page, much awaited ‘Torture Report’.
In action:
1) They lurk in websites such as the Intercept or other progressive-oriented websites, “fellow-travellers” that hide among the good people, observing, reporting and smearing when they no longer can stand the effectiveness of their target in exposing their crimes.
2) They have more digital tools than the ordinary user…The comment page of this website ‘pushes’ comments onto the stack; the last being on top and the first at the very bottom except when a comment is in response to a pre-existing comment. The same perp here managed to post his/her drivel at the BOTTOM of the stack. The only commenter with that ability.
3) Once a target who articulates and exposes the crimes painfully effectively, they pounce on them, and exhibit more enthusiams to accuse targets and organizations and owners of organizations who support genuine targets, most of them targets themselves like the Director of FFCHS that the perp cites in his drool about Pat B., than genuine targets.
4) They use multiple handles so that it may appear that more than one person is on the attack when it is infact just one individual.
5) Even though the handles are multiple, they may have different IP addresses; they use targets’ computers to conduct transactions as they did with my MacBookPro, despite the fact that it had NEVER been online.
6) They will do anything to steer the reader away from a genuine target’s blogs or posts if they feel that the exposure of their crimes is too damning.
7) In order to appear legitimate, they feign being targeted themselves.
But it never works! They tried it with Martin Luther King. Today, they have to close their offices once every January of each year in his honour. They tried it with Mandela: it did not even take ground. But being heavily invested in evil, they have nothing else to do but to keep trying. But they will never have me down. Never.
Please do a little bit of research on your own, folks, when you have a chance. It won’t take too long. After looking at Pat B’s journal, take a look at FFCHS
(Freedom from Covert Harassment), Dr. Robert Duncan, Dr. John Hall, etc…and draw your own conclusions. The so-called “experts” are 2-bit con artists exploiting
fears and paranoia. And Pat isn’t crazy; she just plays one online. I wouldn’t be so callous, if I thought she was at all sincere.
You know the government cannot read your mind, Pat B, nor are they using “a variety of electromagnetic, scalar and nanoparticle weapons systems” on you.
But, all your gibberish does do a great job at distracting some people from the reality that our government’s very long and well-documented history of
targeting, exposing, disrupting, misdirecting, discrediting, and neutralizing any dissent from individuals or groups deemed subversive is re-emerging with a
vengeance. Generally, the government, its contractors and minions use mostly old-fashioned, tried–and–true methods, like creepy overt surveillance and stalking,
sabotage, mail tampering, computer hacking, other electronic surveillance, slander and smear campaigns, blackmail, black bag jobs (breaking and entering homes,
offices and cars for a variety of reasons, like theft and moving things around to “gaslight” the victim), threats, vandalism, prank phone calls, noise campaigns, and
mobbing (orchestrated verbal and physical harassment by strangers, co-workers and sometimes neighbors). Of course this growing psyop is using all the
new technology at their disposal; but the whole “electronic harassment” from exotic weapons is elaborate disinformation that has effectively prevented competent
journalists from digging into and exposing what is essentially COINTELPRO Version 2.0.
Wow, sorry for all that formatting craziness. It looked neat and tidy when I posted it. Oops.
Well said, ICHH. No worries about the formatting — the rest of it is right on the mark.
It’s trickle-down torture and it’s time for it to be exposed.
Chris Hedges, yesterday:
“Hannah Arendt warned that once any segment of the population is denied rights, the rule of law is destroyed. When laws do not apply equally to all they are treated as “rights and privileges.” When the state is faced with growing instability or unrest, these “privileges” are revoked. Elites who feel increasingly threatened by the wider population do not “resist the temptation to deprive all citizens of legal status and rule them with an omnipotent police,” Arendt writes.
This is what is taking place now. The corporate state and its organs of internal security are illegitimate. We are a society of captives.”
Pat B –
As far as the 2.3 trillion bucks that “disappeared,” please take a look at the following:
2.3 Trillion Missing? for a starting point for further research and at least a little context.
12) ” No one has been held accountable. ”
Emboldened by precisely this toothlessness in the report, the torturers, who have not only highly refined their skills but also long migrated from contact torture to remote, no touch versions that employ a variety of electromagnetic, scalar and nanoparticle weapons systems, continue to torture thousands of innocent Americans as we speak, while likely laughing in knowing no one will ever be held accountable for the misery, disease and death that they have visited upon their victims.
I have been tortured so severely these last 2 days alone that I did not know I’d make it. If you are new to this website, please read the following and share it with as many as you can. Thank you.
http://freedomfchs.lefora.com/topic/7442322/nanodevices-in-sensory-overload-mind-control-torture
“Who you jivin’ with that Cosmik Debris?”
Pat B. and FCHS (Freedom from Covert Harassment) are part of an elaborate disinformation campaign designed to obscure the fact that COINTELPRO is indeed alive and doing quite well at targeting a sample group of mostly Americans, with mostly old-fashioned thuggery, like overt surveillance and stalking, black bag jobs, gaslighting, intimidation, etc. (without all the disinformation about exotic nanoparticle, scalar, electromagnetic or microwave weapons; planes; satellites; skin burns; and genital tingling).
This very real, domestic psychological operation appears to be part COINTELPRO, part CHAOS, part East German Stasi’s Zersetzung, with a nifty, negative application of anchoring – from neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).
Problem is, just about every online, rational discussion about this latest incarnation of COINTELPRO is flooded and conflated with absolute gibberish about exotic weapons, nanoparticles, and “translucent cylindrical rods with no coloured segments but which emitted light at the terminal ends of the rod instead” (from Pat B’s linked-to account of her “torture”).
Most journalists know by now to run the other direction when they hear anything about “targeted individuals,” COINTELPRO Version 2.0, Zersetzung, or electromagnetic weapons. As they flee, however, journalists run right past the truth that there are indeed some very nasty, domestic psyops being employed by our government, its contractors and misguided minions to squash dissent by targeting a sample population of activists, whistle-blowers, truth-tellers, free-thinkers and other undesirables or dissidents.
So far, no serious journalist has tried to tackle COINTELPRO Version 2.0, without getting entangled in all the clever disinformation (and sad misinformation from people who are indeed mentally ill – or are teetering on the brink after months or years of truly being targeted/harassed – and have bought into all this cosmic debris).
ICHH wrote, “As they flee, however, journalists run right past the truth that there are indeed some very nasty, domestic psyops being employed by our government, its contractors and misguided minions to squash dissent by targeting a sample population of activists, whistle-blowers, truth-tellers, free-thinkers and other undesirables or dissidents.”
Again, right on the mark. And well said.
What Pat B. has posted is disinformation.
If one wants to get at the truth of ongoing Cointelpro-MKUltra crimes, then stop painting victims as “crazy.” How about it “Pat B.”?
What???? Pat. B.’s comment posts and other benign comments don’t?
I was wondering if my 2 comments — one posted last night and another the night before — ever made it to T//I?
For some reason, many of my comments don’t ever appear; or, if they do appear, my held, mostly duplicate comments appear at once — days after they were posted — which hurts the message and messenger (makes me look like an obsessive commenter posting basically the same thing over and over, when in reality, I have to post duplicates, because for some reason, my initial comments don’t appear). And when my comments are posted, all at the same time, days late, they are stale and most of the readers have moved onto other discussions.
Other comments of mine have appeared but then disappeared sometime later. What gives?
If you decide to be gracious, please post only my last comment (the most recent one from last night), to avoid duplicates. If my post from last night doesn’t appear, I’ll try to repost a similar one in about 15 minutes. Perhaps my comments did get lost in cyberspace?
Thanks
I’m having the same problem, ICHH.
“Navy Nurse Should Not be Punished for Declining to Force-Feed Guantánamo Detainees”
“PHR Welcomes American Nurses Association’s (ANA) Statement Supporting Nurses’ Professional Autonomy”
http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/press/press-releases/navy-nurse-should-not-be-punished-for-declining-to-force-feed-guantanamo-detainees.html
Nurses, like physicians, have professional duties to respect the autonomous decisions of their patients and never participate in ill-treatment or torture,” said Dr. Vincent Iacopino, PHR’s senior medical advisor. “This nurse has shown exemplary commitment to his profession’s ethics by refusing to comply with a military policy that has no clinical justification and is inherently harmful. The Navy should not punish him for refusing to compromise established ethical principles.”
Today’s statement represents the first time the ANA has spoken publicly about force-feeding at Guantánamo, signaling the wider nursing community’s interest in the nurse’s situation and the military’s treatment of medical professionals. The ANA also released communications it had with top defense officials urging them not to punish the nurse for exercising his professional rights and duties. PHR emphasized that the codes of conduct for nurses and physicians mandate respect for patient autonomy and the principle of doing no harm, and that military clinicians are legally and ethically bound to comply.
The Navy is considering holding an administrative trial that could lead to the nurse’s discharge from the Navy, in which he has served for 18 years. His decision not to participate in force-feeding was revealed through Abu Wa’el Dhiab, a Guantánamo detainee challenging his force-feeding in federal court. Dhiab’s case has shed light on the cruel and unnecessary methods used at Guantánamo, including the use of five-point restraint chairs and forced cell extractions.
“All physicians and nurses share a duty to put their patients first and act in their best interests, no matter the circumstances,” said Widney Brown, PHR’s director of programs. “Punishing this nurse for upholding the humane treatment of his patients sends a message that medical professionalism is not respected at Guantánamo.”
The World Medical Association and the American Medical Association are among the leading medical groups that prohibit force-feeding of competent adults. PHR said that health professionals should never take part, and pointed out that the main purpose of the Department of Defense’s force-feeding policy is to keep detainees from protesting over a decade of indefinite detention without charge. In response to criticism of these practices, the U.S. government has applied secrecy rules to any information regarding its treatment of hunger strikers.
PHR calls on the U.S. government to:
Immediately end the practice of force-feeding hunger strikers and institute policies and procedures consistent with the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Tokyo and Declaration of Malta on Hunger Strikers;
Ensure that no health professionals are compelled to participate in force-feeding, and that those who refuse do not face disciplinary or retaliatory actions for complying with their professional obligations; and
Commit to full transparency around hunger strikes at Guantánamo and medical management policies and protocols, including the release of Dhiab’s force-feeding videotapes.
Torture most certainly does “work” if one understands the goal. Like mass spying, it does Our Dear Leaders no good when carried on in secret. Like mass spying, the most important goal is to intimidate critics into silence, self-censorship, and inaction.
Given the almost complete lack of resistance to Our Dear Leaders, my conclusion is that torture, police repression, and mass spying have been successful (so far) beyond the wildest fantasies of Our Dear Leaders. These policies will not end without a revolution, either non-violent or otherwise.
It’s being printed…
http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/cia-torture-report-release-next-week/?dcz=
Diane Feinstein: “We’re in the process of printing it,” she said. The report is expected to be released next week.
Nurse, will you please reveal here the things you’ve witnessed so that The Intercept might be moved to investigate?
America has always tortured their perceived enemies but kept it hidden now it shows the world what it really is.
WTF. I don’t want to throw a monkey wrench into this thing because everthing written here is great stuff. But isn’t it about time we all woke up anb realized our society is in the process of collapse because this has never been “The land of the free and home of the brave.” It is and always has been “The land of the greedy and home of the envious.” This “show” didn’t start with the battles of Lexibgton and Concord, it started when Columbus set foot on an island in the Bahamas and saw an Taino Indian chief wearing gold ornaments. I can imagine Coloumbus’ eyebally buldging out of his head. “Wow! Look at what the dude is wearing! This is what I came here to find. Queen Isabella is gonna wet her throne. And lucky me. I was afraid if all I came back with were some coconuts that’s be it; life in her dungeon. I mean, you know, she really spent some bucks when she financed this excursion and she was looking for a good ROI. Phew!
That’s where “America” started and that’s what it started with; Greed. Isn’t it about time somebody wrote a history book that actually is a book of history and not just a book of “his” stories? Don’t we owe kids the truth? Don’t we owe ourselves the same? Isn’t it about time we all got to marching in the streets and not just about Michael Brown and the police or even all the multi-trillion dollar Wall Street thieves or all of Obama’s failures; about George Bush and Dick Cheney’s crimes againt humanity but about the whole stinking ball of wax. Damn! Where is our minds? Just because some of us wear a three-piece suit doesn’t mean we don’t have a pair of pain-spattered blue jeans out in the garage we can wear when we get arrested and tossed into the back of a police van just like Matt did. I was arrested once by a sociopathic (psychopathic) cop because he was bored sitting in his cruiser for eight hours and needed something to relieve it. (I live in a very small town. There is no “crime” here, just some people out of work with no place to go and so they wander the streets looking for a freeway bridge to spend the night under.) My own story is dramatically different but it hardly matters. The police everywhere are out of control. They have been for at least forty or more years. That’s about when the collapse of society began. The collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to happen overnight only to those who weren’t paying attention. The process of the collapse of America has been going on for at least as long, but we just haven’t been paying attention. Think of how many people point a finger at Congress (and, yes, at Obama too) and say “That damn government. What a bunch of fuck-ups.” Doesn’t anybody read the Constitution… that part about “We the people…”? Doesn’t anybody look in the bathroom mirror and think “Oh yeah. That guy is a member of “The” government”. Fuck it. It’s how we got to where we are; its how we got to ALL of it, from Sandy Hook to Abu Grahib.
But, not to worry. The quickest way to ensure all the shit gets wiped up is to do NOTHING. Yeah. That’s what I said “Do NOTHING.” Clean up the drug epidemic not by giving the addcts new needles and Methadone but just let them overdose and then send out trucks to pick up the dead bodies. Once enough have died, the Mexican drug cartels will have run out of customers and then have to go aout of business. Why save all the starving children? They’ll all just grow up and have more kids and add a few more billions to our already over-populated planet. This all has to end somewhere. Go see INTERSTELLAR. That is the future today’s kids will be living in–dying in–in fifty years or less. No joke, folks. (Kip Thorne advised the director about what a Black Hole would look like.)
Now what we need is somebody smart enough to write another book describing the black hole we call America.
I’m done. I need a double Esppresso.
PS – – – Don’t concern yourselves about not publishing my email address. The NSA already knows it… just as they know all of your’s.
Be well.
Andrew Sullivan takes note of “the other torture report,” the one from ICC at The Hague.
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/12/04/the-other-torture-report/
The first commentator does have a perceptive comment on “complementarity,” by which The Hague can’t prosecute if the host country does. As to the other commentators’ doubts about whether the ICC can prosecute at all, there’s the fact that (a) such crimes against humanity transcend nationality and ICC participation and (b) they have just as much jurisdiction as, say, the US did to prosecute Japanese and German criminals after WWII for similar offenses.
And this — “…The United States has one of the most developed and effective military justice systems in the world, which has the demonstrated ability and willingness to hold its own accountable for violations of the law …” — is risible, for a number of reasons.
You know what’s torture? Reading yet another DAN FROOMKIN article! Talk about baseless facts, obvious inconsistencies, and hilarious yet glaring accuracy with total consequences! Yeah, that was the joke. Torture was the funny part. Why is no one laughing? That’s because they are all recuperating from the fact that they projected their psychoses in the wrong direction and now normal human beings have to accept antipsychotic medication as the result of their sociopathic instruments. It’s hard to laugh while you are being tortured, sometimes torture is so funny that you laugh until you cry. Another torturous consequence of torture itself is the fact that you wind up with no money and deal with rotten banks in their lowest and Scorpionic form. Yeah, the low Scorpio. You know the type. I think El-P knows a few of those types. Listen to El-P – Fantastic Damage if you don’t believe me. Yeah, now you know the modern American banking system. But wait! Maybe they won’t threaten my life over the fact that I no longer possess income of any form! Maybe they won’t send the one trustworthy male in my life known as my adult father to embarrass me publicly in front of well-known hypocrites. Because yeah, if I get another check I’m sure I could take a shower and deposit it in a more reputable bank. But maybe KeyBank has a more legal response than the opposite of murder, theft and robbery of felonious natures. Any bank would be better as a counter-offer! Any takers that want income that is handled in a responsible, fair way without the prospects of jeopardizing your banking business in any way, shape or form? Because KeyBank was infuriated with the concept of a responsible account holder, and yeah I paid the price for never having very many transactions. Yeah, thanks for the “check”. And Facebook is the bastion of Internet innovation. I like that. That’s all it takes to make it on the Internet? Yeah, a Like button. Great idea, guys! Now I owe Facebook $27 for no fucking reason! Good thing the legal system exists, because embarrassment in front of the Law will be counterintuitively amusing from a Moses-like perspective. Who would have thought that the legal system was based on Law. After all, we’re all Americans! Consider the obvious before you send any more hilarious death threats in my direction. And yeah, when a door is locked, it means you should knock and see if you can come in first. Another obvious fact that very many have neglected to observe. Have a good one. I will await the idiotic responses from the torrent of morons who think they outsmarted the planet by not reading the article in the first place, and I have a feeling that me and Dan Froomkin will laugh at the thought that we should give a shit about their opinions in the first place. I have a great idea, guys! Write your own fucking articles and start an equally successful and influential, yet informative and accurate website about current events! I mean, all of these writers are terrible and Glenn Greenwald is retarded! I like that! Anyway, have a good one. Yeah, I’m nervous about death threats over $20. Clearly, these people are acting like corrupt white trash drug dealers from high school. Good thing I have a lock on the door.
“CIA torture report to be published on Monday without the word ‘torture'”
Published time: December 04, 2014 17:19
http://rt.com/usa/211487-cia-senate-torture-redactions/
From the article:
“Although the summary report is said to not use the word ‘torture,’ officials said it would describe practices that any layman would understand as torture.”
What bullshit. If that were the case, there’s no reason not to use the word ‘torture’. What a farce.
So, what will they call it, then? “Unpleasantness?”
It is torture, and should be called such but to claim that “any layman” would understand it as such, without making it clear that is, in fact, torture, is bullshit.
Indeed. Mealy-mouthed bullshit.
I wept for America
and then I realized
there is no America
no shinning cities
no great peoples
all its dreams have faded
like its Constitution
only dust remains
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6Oov1YY9MQ
I don’t think we will ever see an unintelligible torture report summary. Even the intelligence committee is in on the fix.
The American will never know the extend of international laws we transgressed upon and the number of victims we tortured.
As long as those who ordered this breach of our international commitments and our constitution are roaming free on earth, there will be no justice nor peace.
This presentation format takes the prize. The highlights of the document. What the reader can expect and not expect to find in the document. That the document is infact a mere summary of the report.
Thanks for organizing this so cleverly…now let me prepare my real comments that they will intercept and torture me severely for…
Dan–
Nice job. Classic Froomkin: clear, concise, competent and credible. i look forward to reading more of your incisive analyses. Excellent photo of Cheney, too!
Actually, Dan, I’m probably going to have trouble keeping just 1 thing out of my mind when reading the report summary. “WTF???”
Friday evening is typical for government mea culpas…
Another descent into lawlessness under the Obama administration….Barack, we barely knew ya!
A picture says a thousand words.
The picture at the top of this article is also a portrait
of the Obama administration.
There is no way the Obama administration would ever let anyone hold Cheney and Bush accountable.
They are all too dear to each other.
I think the release of all those pictures Rumsfeld said were a lot sicker than the ones we saw would show those acts were used at camps other than Abu Ghraib and were approved tools, not the actions of a few as stated. Obama saved Bush and Cheney’s rear by ignoring the FOI requests.
Alongside this torture report, the torture that is occurring in the prisons in the US, to US citizens, ought to be reported on. Perhaps that would open at least some people’s eyes to the absolute wrongness of torture?
First of all, Danny, I’ll believe it when I see it… maybe.
Secondly, I don’t believe torture ever *works* in that a.) people will say anything upon the rack b.) assumes the tortured have information not in evidence and c.) assumes, even if the tortured have information desired, that the information could not be obtained by other means.
xo,
bah.
Excellent work Mr. Froomkin!
This link: http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/pdf/12112008_detaineeabuse.pdf ——-is journalistic artwork.
I do hope that people take the time to read it.
Thank you.
The mere fact one branch of our government wrote a report on another branch that endorsed and embraced the use of TORTURE, is living proof alone how deep our government has sunk in the cesspool of evil. It doesn’t matter anymore what the report says. Human beings indured and are STILL induring insidious torture at the hands of these depraved sub-human psychopaths. The only reason this report exists, is the government attempt at covering it’s own ass, and stopping any further debate. When that cockroach Obama flippantly said..”we tortured some folks”..it was living proof of the disgusting use of an ephumisms to render their criminallity as something to be taken with a grain of salt, while back here in my universe, these pondscum should be hanged..if not facing a firing squad. Until such time as these war crimminals are held accountable, the stench will remain lingering on the face of this nation for eternity. I for one, have already written a letter to be handed down from my grandchildren to their great grandchildren, describing the henious acts of this government, so they will know the truth about the dispicable “nation” they are forced to “Pledge Allegiance” to. At least they will have the knowledge that the so called education system will have re-written history and it is a bald faced lie.
Edward Alden: “Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government’s foreign policy apparatus…”
Seems they never gave it up, and even now are destroying our position in the world. Which makes them usurpers and traitors.
There’s a steady increase in blatant lawbreaking on the part of the executive branch, starting with Nixon and then Ford’s pardon, then the more blatant lawbreaking of the Reagan Administration, to the point where obeying the law isn’t even under consideration as a guiding principle. It’s not like I believe that previous Presidents weren’t breaking the law at times, but we are reaching the point where the law will simply have no meaning except as a tool for those in power to grind the rest of us.
Is it breaking the law if you are the President? Is that George W Bush or Richard Nixon?
Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon and Obama isn’t going to do anything meaningful to go after Bush for violating the Geneva Convention.
And while the debate continues about torture at CIA black sites, it continues in the U.S. in the form of covert actions, zersetzung campaigns and electronic harassment. I hope it doesn’t take 13 years more for this revelation to be reported. To all the military personnel out there who swore to uphold the Constitution and who believe in our nation’s avowed values, I ask you to consider serving your country in the bravest way today and reveal these crimes.
While this list of “caveats” is mostly helpful,
#3 “Senate democrats had their back to the wall”
is a piece of democrat propaganda.
If you think that Feinstein and Company really wanted to reveal anything then I would like to sell you
some fairy dust, and at a bargain price too!
ALSO,
Isn’t being held in a military prison for over a decade without a trial a form of torture AND
isn’t bombing the crap out of innocent people after LYING about those people another form of torture?
This is a report about torture from people who continue torturing innocent victims for corporate profit.
More used toilet paper for the masses.
I’m unable to locate the Newsday piece by Phelps. Does anyone know where one might find it?
And what Mona said: “Mark Udall must read the entire report into the congressional record.” We’ll soon know what he’s made of…
Maybe I’m quibbling here, but I’d argue False Confessions are a form of information extraction. Disinformation yes, but operationally the false confession is a key asset for any authority “fixing the facts to the policy”, as the Cheney regime did with Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi for example. Or the Chicago PD’s torture of African American’s for that matter. The false confession is the primary feature of torture, not its bug. If it serves the policy, then torture “works”. SNAFU. It isn’t necessarily a product of irrational rage and vengeance, it can just as well be a rational calculation within institutions of authority.
And the “ticking time bomb scenario” may be irrational on its face, but it still makes sense to many Americans in “good faith”, because it speaks to their sense of exceptionalism (and thus fragility). The 1% Doctrine makes many people “feel safe”, and that seems to be plenty.
“The false confession is the primary feature of torture, not its bug.” Very well said. And both of you are right.
So torture does “work”. The torturer gets revenge and the false confession (à la “Rosewater”) gives authorities support for their version of history. Average American citizens can see clearly that the false confession is the point of torture when they read about Henry VIII, but if we advance to the present day the average American doesn’t see the similarities.
The question remains, now what? Those of us who have been watching this soap opera knew from all the drama that IF the report gets released, it will be so watered down and redacted as to have no value, well maybe as entertainment. I can’t speak for others but I had a shred of hope that our government might just be listening to the people for once and possibly returning to a semblence of sanity. When President Obama gave his flippant and casual remark “We tortured some folks”, it became crystal clear to me that the US ruling elite have no intention of holding anyone responsible for torture. I’ll withhold my rage ’til the report’s debut, but It sure is building. There should be a way for citizens to opt out of things our government does, a list of sorts, where we can disavow things like torture, or drone strikes anywhere the President, ordering the CIA, using information from the NSA, deems necessary. They have done and are doing these immoral, illegal, just downright disgusting things in OUR names people. Speak up people.
Most “people” think it’s ok. The end justifies the means. They just don’t pay attention to the things and people that say it’s not effective.
Hey, jgreen7801 –
You have a really great idea – a “Not in My Name List” – sort of like a “do not call list”
I’m sure the gov’t won’t, but maybe some org or individual can start some online site where citizens could add names (even if screen names) against things like drone strikes or torture, etc..
Shouldn’t be THAT hard to do… :-)
Agree feline16 and jgreen7801.
Great idea!
That would clearly document the true public sentiment as opposed to MSM “polls” which generally reflect results based on partisan groups.
I would most certainly support and sign that “Disavow” list for numerous government policy and action issues.
The coalition of groups who spearheaded ‘internet is down’ days should likely have the infrastructure to put this in place. But it should also have an economic component such as a ‘Red Friday’ when people would boycott spending.
All right, jgreen7801, Lyra , and EC –
I’m with you on this 100% – as a “declaration” as well as possibly encompassing an economic component. Aftter all, hitting TPTB in the wallet is probably the only thing they might respect.
So EC – I like that idea —- any idea how to get those orgs to do this?
The late, great political researcher John Judge (check out his YouTube interviews!), had the best idea.
When we file our income taxes every April we should all have the same pie chart where we can fill in what percentage of our taxes we want to go toward the military, the surveillance state, health care, education, the environment, infrastructure job creation etc.
One copy goes to a local county clearinghouse where “folks” can all go to help catalog the responses, another copy goes to the IRS (not that they would care) and a copy would go to your Congressional representative.
At least this way all the counties could compile the data and release it to the media so they could keep tabs on the way our “representatives choose to spend our money.
Mark Udall must locate his testicles. This diversion about to be released is a joke, for all the reasons described above.
If we are going to learn the extent of torture by our civilian and military agencies, Mark Udall must read the entire report into the congressional record. If he doesn’t do that, then he is a craven slug who knew the right thing to do, but couldn’t tolerate that others might say mean things about him for doing it.
But he would get kicked out of the club, for life. And that would sacrifice all the good work he could still do “within the system”. blehh..
Yes, he’ll have to relinquish all
future holidays at Club Corruption. What a terrible, terrible fate.
The government pension and the future highly paid “service” on the boards of various organizations are strong incentives for Senator Udall to demonstrate that he can be trusted to play by the rules. Others may think he has nothing left to lose now that he has lost re-election, but Senator Udall knows differently. He is my senator and I hope he is willing to make the sacrifice that is within his power to make.
I will also recall that given all</strong of this, the White House (read: Obama administration) has still done everything it can do to stop this report from reaching the public. In whatever shape it arrives – assuming it does arrive – and no matter how incoherent it might be – given the fights over pseudonyms, etc – Obama has done all he can to protect the previous administration and the alphabet-soup agencies and agents from any accountability whatsoever. The entire performance consistently recalls this [ http://obrag.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Obama-hugs-Bush.jpg ] for me.
Chilling stuff. Maybe one day I’ll read the full report.
link to “this 2008 report” broken
Appears to be working now.