The enhanced interrogation report makes you sick to hear. The fact that Congress and the President were lied to is inexcusable–criminal even.
The report cost $40 million dollars and took years to complete. Was it wise to release the report? I guess it had to be. Are we now under greater terrorist threat? Apparently. Should those who broke the law be prosecuted?
Probably. This report is distressing and not reflective of America’s finest hour.
Here’s the thing. This report could not have been written without the cooperation of the CIA. Feinstein claims that the CIA obfuscated the truth, yet the agency provided the documentation needed by the Senate Intelligence Committee to do this report. This is in direct contrast to the IRS, which has refused to turn over many, many documents related to the Lois Lerner investigation.
Despite this inconsistency (i.e the CIA was supposedly covering up, yet still provided the documentation needed to prove the cover-up), Feinstein saw no reason to talk to the people involved. That is a very curious decision. Sometimes records by themselves are incomplete or are not sufficient to provide a full accounting.
You would think the committee would want to obtain the testimony of the CIA leadership under oath. It might also want to find a whistle blower that speaks truth to power. It is as if the committee did not want to allow any rebuttal to its interpretation.
They had to turn over certain information. They couldn’t say no.
We can argue on to infinity about whether or when the report should have been released, if there was anything new in it (I, for one, had never heard about “rectal feeding” or whatever they called it. Haven’t these guys ever heard of I.V. lines? Ugh!), or if it harms or helps American security. But I think we’re missing the point.
As Wolve has pointed out, waterboarding and stress positions pale in comparison to what we’ve done as a nation in the past. Our nation was founded on an economic system that relied on human slavery to function, and believe me, a lot of slaves would have preferred stress positions to the whippings, castration, “hot box” and many other treatments they received. We regularly butchered women and children in our efforts to eradicate indigenous populations that were in our way as civilization moved across the country. We have eliminated duly elected leaders of other countries and invaded countries that were no threat to us in order to secure their (or regional) resources. We stood by as minority Americans were abused, murdered and discriminated against. We turned ships full of Jewish refugees away that were later sent to their deaths. And of course, we firebombed and nuked whole populations of non-combatants. There’s more, but we all get the idea.
I think the overarching point here is that there is good and evil in the world. In spite of all the above, I think our nation is on the good side. The reason I think that is because we have strived to constantly evaluate and correct our course. The only way we ever corrected our course was to first bring the problem into the light of day. We need to have this discussion on torture and decide as a nation if this is what we want our legacy to be. This is bigger than waterboarding. Since 9-11, we have militarized our police forces, begun regular electronic spying programs directed toward citizens, begun seizing assets of citizens without charging them with a crime, and initiated a torture program using tactics that were war crimes in the past. Americans need to decide if this is the direction they want their country to continue on.
@middleman,
Not sure I agree with it all but you sure have given us a lot to think about.
It comes down to what rights and principles we, as a nation, are willing to compromise in the name of security. In WW II, we set the line at waterboarding- that was torture. After 9-11, it wasn’t. If waterboarding works, why not try other techniques that might get information faster or more accurately (they apparently waterboarded some people more than 50 times)? Even pulling out fingernails, while painful, isn’t permanently damaging, as I’ve heard some say is “the line” they would draw- why not that? Why not bring in wives and children of the suspected terrorists and threaten harm to them, even maybe just hurt them a little to show we’re serious? That might elicit information quicker. It’s a slippery slope down to the level of the evil we’re trying to prevent from taking over the world.
Do the ends justify the means?
Waterboarding by every standard is considered torture – anyone who disagrees does not understand what torture is nor what water boarding is.
The Senate committee released the report – Not the administration, but Obama gets the blame anyway.
The CIA Directors of the present and past talk in a very very lawyerly way – i.e., the program did not do this or that – and when questioned they are very very specifically talking about a particular program – i.e., not talking about tactics in general.
Why were the video tapes destroyed? I know the answer to that.
The most ardent protectors had no problem with the release of Valerie Plame’s name and also want all the info on the NSA spying program revealed – even though the NSA program can prove that it has uncovered more intel with no torture of anyone and has also prevented several large scale plots.
Excellent point, Pat. No one had a problem destroying Valery Plame’s name, career or the people she worked with overseas. I call that cherry picking.
The destroyed videos are what caused this entire investigation…that and the spying on Congress. Now that takes elephant nads in my opinion.
Another thing – just because someone was briefed on a classified program does not mean that that person had a say in any of it. They do not get to vote nor approve of the activity – they are just being told about it. Knowledge of it does not mean that they can shut it down.
I cannot believe the number of people that think torture is ok. We are (were) better than that.
@Pat.Herve
The Obama administration gets the blame for this report, because it has classification authority. If it had decided to classify the lurid details in the report, then the Senate could not have released them.
The issues that bother me are that the basic techniques used by the CIA were already revealed and the program has already come to an end. So this report was not needed to put an end to these practices. In the final analysis, this will accomplish nothing except to perhaps endanger people who are already in harm’s way.
I am not opposed to debate. By all means, go ahead and discuss the morality of water boarding and stress positions. But a debate does not require access to the lurid details that were released in this report.
Thee war crimes behavior was done in our name. I want it released I agree its shameful and I understand why anyone who had anything to do with it would want it scrubbed from the earth.
One has to ask themselves…what sick bastard thought this stuff up and what sick bastards implemented it?
Frankly, if we know we have someone who orchestrated 9-11, try them quickly and then execute them. Done. Public firing squad works.
I am really disgusted by all of this war crime stuff.
Good. I am glad he gets the credit for releasing something repugnant. I wonder what else there is to uncover under that administration? Follow Cheney’s pawprints and I am sure there will be something.
The whole discussion about whether it’s okay to torture prisoners is brain-dead. It exists only because the Republican party found it advatageous to project an air of “doing what is possible to protect America”, i.e. to get potential voters to think that a vote for the GOP is a vote to fight terrorism.
In reality, we didn’t get any good intel from torture. None. If there were any, we would have heard about it. Some would argue that there probably was some good intel gleaned, but that it’s still highly classified. Yeah, right; tell me another one. The good intel gathered from torture is sitting roight next to the WMD that the CIA assured us was really there.
Closest thing to “proof” that the torture had any positive effect for us was when the CIA manipulated the makers of “Zero Dark Thirty” into spinning a false narrative for them.
Given that it produces false info rather than true info, we should be able to skip the arguments about morality and just not do it.
@Rick Bentley
Its so nice to know that you have an information pipeline into the CIA’s classified information and you KNOW that we didn’t get anything from it. It is so amazing that the Senate report is completely partisan in its findings. Almost as if….it is making stuff up via spin.
The CIA directors are just defending something that doesn’t work, earning themselves all this bad pr because they are just meanies.
Btw..the WMD was there. Did you know see the NYT paper last month that pointed that out by saying that BUSH! got American troops injured and killed because they didn’t handle the WMD “correctly.”
@Pat.Herve
IF it is the Senate oversight committee that is briefed, they sure can shut it down. Congress is not helpless.
Ha. Obama is pushing to get this budget passed.
there is something odious in it…I can’t remember what now.
@Moon-howler
There is a lot of odious things in this “budget” and both sides are sanctimoniously complaining even though ALL of it was decided upon by party negotiators.
“the WMD was there”
My God, thanks for giving me a good laugh this morning Cargo.
@Kelly_3406
Kelly – most of the information was already declassified – i.e., it was well known back in 2007 that water boarding was used as a method. Even the John Yoo memo was released before Obama was President.
There is more to the report that is still remains classified.
@Rick Bentley
Take it up with the NY Times. It was their report, just a few months ago. They described our troops being injured while dealing with chemical weapons.
@Pat.Herve
That is exactly my point — there is nothing new in the report except that it provides the details of how the enhanced interrogation techniques were applied, their duration, the precautions taken, and the expected responses from the detainees. These details should not have been allowed to be disclosed.
The report was written to elicit an emotional response for political gain. But that emotional response is not limited to Americans and the result could be casualties in the field.
It is hard not to notice that armchair quarterbacks have unanimously sidestepped the issue of potential casualties resulting from this disclosure.
Kelly, you are advocating government secrecy, as though Americans didn’t have the good sense to decide what is morally appropriate for the government to do on their behalf.
I think the report was written to inform. The fact that we all have an emotional response to the repugnant measures taken in our name was a side issue.
Okay, Cargo, I see how you can make that argument. But it’s disingenuous. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/10/16/new-york-times-reports-wmd-found-in-iraq
So I rephrase my line above to read :
“The good intel gathered from torture is sitting right next to the less-than-ten-years-old WMD that the CIA assured us was really there.”
Kelly, you can’t argue both sides of this issue- either everything was known, so there can’t be much of a reaction to the report, or there’s new information in it that may cause a reaction. To me, there was a lot of new information in there that Americans need (and have a right) to know.
I have no idea what you knew, but in the press at least I had not heard many of these details before, such as “anal hydration,” the number of times some were waterboarded, the deaths and disfigurements from the torture, the fact that contractors did much of the torturing and made millions from it, etc. We did already know that waterboarding originated during the Spanish Inquisition and that Japanese soldiers were executed during WWII for doing it to American soldiers.
It’s interesting how the conservatives have shifted the argument once again- from whether or not to torture to whether it was wise to release a report done by our elected officials with taxpayer dollars. What happened to the GOP call for transparency?
From the conservative (and some non-conservative) response to this report, it’s obvious that it needed to be made public. A lot of folks are still advocating these torture techniques and the American people need to decide if this is how they want their government to conduct itself.
Do we take the high road, be the “shining city on the hill,” and protect all human rights, even our enemies as George Washington did, or do we continue to adopt the tactics of those with no regard for human dignity or life itself? That’s the choice, and why the report HAD to be released.
@middleman
I’m sure President “Drone Kill” Obama will get right on that “protect all human rights.”
I agree with you on this one, Cargo. I’d like to see a congressional report on the drone program AND on NSA electronic surveillance. Obama’s likely in a glass house here.
But what do we get instead? Yet ANOTHER Benghazi investigation!
@middleman
I most certainly can argue both sides. The basics of enhanced interrogation techniques were already known–water boarding, stress techniques, sleep deprivation had already been disclosed. That is enough information to debate the morality of using these techniques. One either agrees or disagrees that water boarding is okay. Diane Feinstein has known about these practices for years–she could have put an end to it by denying funding in intelligence appropriations.
Transparency is indeed important but there are key exceptions. If the release of certain operational information has the potential to get somebody killed, it should not be disclosed. For example, the details about how certain military forces are employed are probably withheld. You and I do not have the right to access that type of information.
She couldn’t do much about it alone. She is but one person.