CIA Report

[Admiral Yi]

I think the point is that it shouldn't have started in the first place.

This is presumably a different point than Malthus was trying to raise when he asked why it hasn't stopped.

[derspiess]

I think the point is that it shouldn't have started in the first place.

Then let's keep trying to unring those bells.

Yeah, it's water under the... never mind.

[Jacob]

To be honest, I don't find the trolling of Europeans here amusing in the least.  This was a pretty disgusting and disturbing report.

If CdM and Spicy were Chinese they'd get $0.50 per post. If they were Russian, they'd be drawing a straight up salary, but since they're patriotic Americans they're doing it for free.

[Monoriu]

To be honest, I don't find the trolling of Europeans here amusing in the least.  This was a pretty disgusting and disturbing report.

If CdM and Spicy were Chinese they'd get $0.50 per post. If they were Russian, they'd be drawing a straight up salary, but since they're patriotic Americans they're doing it for free.

$0.5 in RMB, right?

[Jacob]

$0.5 in RMB, right?

Yeah, I think so, but it seems the RMB and dollar are roughly equal in terms of local purchasing power.

[The Minsky Moment]

Now see, what people aren't getting is that this is the part of the American Story where we examine ourselves, bringing that which was hidden to light by our democratically elected representatives, and correct the course.  We did it after the Japanese internments with the Ringle Report, the boundaries overstepped during the Red Scare and the COINTELPRO reports with the Church Committee, and now this.  It's what we do.  Can't say that about a whole lot of governments.

Yes.
Now the objection is why not just not do the bad stuff in first place.  But power corrupts.  We still haven't figured out the durable solution to that. 

[Malthus]

I have no idea why the US doesn't put an end to this.  Quite aside from being grotesquely evil, is there even any allegation that it has actually proved useful?

It was put to an end.  All that is contained in this report occurred between 2002 and 2008, when it was finally kaboshed by President Obama on January 22, 2009.

Well, that's good to know.

Now see, what people aren't getting is that this is the part of the American Story where we examine ourselves, bringing that which was hidden to light by our democratically elected representatives, and correct the course.  We did it after the Japanese internments with the Ringle Report, the boundaries overstepped during the Red Scare and the COINTELPRO reports with the Church Committee, and now this.  It's what we do.  Can't say that about a whole lot of governments.

As far as I know, most Western democracies did not torture people in the first place - at least, recently.

Exporting Celine Dion doesn't count, you guys took her in willingly. 

Khalid Shaykh Mohammad got rectal hydration.  I say that's a win for Democracy.

Well, aside from that 'win'.

[grumbler]

Yes.
Now the objection is why not just not do the bad stuff in first place.  But power corrupts.  We still haven't figured out the durable solution to that.

Indeed.  The bleating about "publishing this info puts people at risk" is especially amusing.  If the bad shit hadn't been deliberately, and illegally, done, then there wouldn't be a report.  This should be one of those "never again" moments, and instead the villains are blaming the cops, and they appear to be getting away with it... or would be, except McCain keeps refusing to side with the criminals, and so exposes the hypocrisy of those who are.  Stay the course, John.

[jimmy olsen]

To be honest, I don't find the trolling of Europeans here amusing in the least.  This was a pretty disgusting and disturbing report.

Same here.

[CountDeMoney]

Yes.
Now the objection is why not just not do the bad stuff in first place.  But power corrupts.  We still haven't figured out the durable solution to that.

Indeed.  The bleating about "publishing this info puts people at risk" is especially amusing.  If the bad shit hadn't been deliberately, and illegally, done, then there wouldn't be a report.  This should be one of those "never again" moments, and instead the villains are blaming the cops, and they appear to be getting away with it... or would be, except McCain keeps refusing to side with the criminals, and so exposes the hypocrisy of those who are.  Stay the course, John.

Dick Cheney Was Lying About Torture
The Senate report confirms it doesn't work. As those of us on the inside knew.
By MARK FALLON
POLITICO

December 08, 2014

It's official: torture doesn't work. Waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, did not in fact "produce the intelligence that allowed us to get Osama bin Laden," as former Vice President Dick Cheney asserted in 2011. Those are among the central findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogation and detention after 9/11.

The report's executive summary is expected to be released Tuesday. After reviewing thousands of the CIA's own documents, the committee has concluded that torture was ineffective as an intelligence-gathering technique. Torture produced little information of value, and what little it did produce could've been gained through humane, legal methods that uphold American ideals.

I had long since come to that conclusion myself. As special agent in charge of the criminal investigation task force with investigators and intelligence personnel at Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq, I was privy to the information provided by Khalid Sheik Mohammed. I was aware of no valuable information that came from waterboarding. And the Senate Intelligence Committee—which had access to all CIA documents related to the "enhanced interrogation" program—has concluded that abusive techniques didn't help the hunt for Bin Laden. Cheney's claim that the frequent waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "produced phenomenal results for us" is simply false.

The self-defeating stupidity of torture might come as news to Americans who've heard again and again from Cheney and other political leaders that torture "worked." Professional interrogators, however, couldn't be less surprised. We know that legal, rapport-building interrogation techniques are the best way to obtain intelligence, and that torture tends to solicit unreliable information that sets back investigations.

Yes, torture makes people talk—but what they say is often untrue. Seeking to stop the pain, people subjected to torture tend to say what they believe their interrogators want to hear.

The report is essential because it makes clear the legal, moral, and strategic costs of torture. President Obama and congressional leaders should use this opportunity to push for legislation that solidifies the ban on torture and cruel treatment. While current law prohibits these acts, US officials employed strained legal arguments to authorize abuse.

A law could take various forms: a codification of the president's 2009 executive order banning torture, for example, or an expansion of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act so that key protections in it would apply to the CIA as well as the military. However it's designed, a new law would help the country stay true to its ideals during times of crisis and guard against a return to the "dark side."

And dark it was. Terms like "waterboarding" and "enhanced interrogation" obscure the brutal, sometimes bloody, reality. It was about the delivery of pain. The U.S. government authorized previously taboo techniques, which—along with a take-the-gloves-off message coming from the top—led to even greater horrors. You can draw a line from the "enhanced interrogation" to the barbarism of Abu Ghraib.

The ostensible purpose of torture was to save lives, but it has had the exact opposite effect. Torture was a PR bonanza for enemies of the United States. It enabled—and, in fact, is still enabling—al Qaeda and its allies to attract more fighters, more sympathizers, and more money.

Some have argued against releasing the report because they predict that it will spark anti-American anger around the world. Such a possibility, however, is an argument not against the kind of transparency and Congressional oversight inherent to a well-functioning democracy; it's an argument against torture. Indeed, by employing such an argument, people are implicitly acknowledging that torture saps the country's credibility and threatens its national security.

Over the coming days, you'll be hearing numerous torture defenders claim it kept Americans safe. Don't believe them. Many of us charged with the mission of getting information out of terrorists didn't resort to using torture. Like many Americans, we didn't want our government to use torture, and we hope it never does again.                                                                                     

Mark Fallon served as an interrogator for more than 30 years, including as a Naval Criminal Investigative Service special agent and within the Department of Homeland Security, as the assistant director for training of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center

[Valmy]

This was outrageous from the moment they announced it 10+ years ago.  Torture has a proven track record of failure in information gathering and oh my God this brilliant national security tactic has forced us to increase security.  Brilliant. 

We really go out of our way to make sure any country that cooperates with us and helps us with our policy goals regrets it.  It is just mind bogglingly short sighted and idiotic.

Not to mention this was one of those things we were supposed to never do.

I just hoped so much after the Cold War was over we could stop committing horrible atrocities across the globe, but it looks like that is what this country is all about now.

[Jacob]

Indeed.  The bleating about "publishing this info puts people at risk" is especially amusing.  If the bad shit hadn't been deliberately, and illegally, done, then there wouldn't be a report.  This should be one of those "never again" moments, and instead the villains are blaming the cops, and they appear to be getting away with it... or would be, except McCain keeps refusing to side with the criminals, and so exposes the hypocrisy of those who are.  Stay the course, John.

Good to hear the McCain is still with the good guys on this.

[CountDeMoney]

Nice to see the incoming chair of the Intelligence Committee is calling the committee's report as nothing more than a political ploy to embarrass Bush.  Because painting portraits of your feet in the bathtub isn't embarrassing enough.

Torture report divides Republicans
By Burgess Everett
POLITICO
Updated 12/9/14 7:44 PM EST

Six years after President Barack Obama took office, Republicans still find themselves haunted – and now divided — by George W. Bush's legacy on terrorism.

A 600-page summary of Bush-era interrogation practices became the latest blast from the past to rattle the GOP, the work of Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats' deep dive into the Central Intelligence Agency's practices against enemy combatants during Bush's tenure, including waterboarding and other techniques some members of both parties on Tuesday called torture.

But while Senate Democrats were united in defending the release of vivid details of CIA interrogations, Republicans were divided on multiple fronts, a reflection of the party's evolving thinking on terrorist interrogations in the post-Bush era.

Incoming Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) contended that "The only motive here could be to embarrass George W. Bush" and the current top Republican on the panel, retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), said it's "pretty clear" the report's main purpose is to attack Bush.

Yet Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said the government should be more transparent and have a moral stance against torture. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), himself a victim of torture while a prisoner of war, supported the report's release and criticized the CIA's practices as having "damaged our security interests."

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), usually in step with McCain on national security issues, criticized the report's release as timed to Democrats' losing control of the Senate, rather than taking into account the global atmosphere. "The only thing I disagreed with: Don't release it now because the world is on fire. I supported the investigation and I support making it public. I just think given the state of the world this is a bad time to do it," Graham said.

Republicans on the committee released their own report Tuesday disputing several of the Democrats' findings. Republican leaders, led by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), spent Tuesday afternoon lambasting Democrats for putting out the intelligence investigation, arguing its only utility is to infuriate terrorists. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said stridently that he's "very supportive of enhanced interrogation."

But other Republicans were more hesitant. Maine Sen. Susan Collins criticized the process behind the report's development and release — namely the fact that no interviews of CIA officials were conducted — but came to the conclusion that "torture is wrong and fundamentally contrary to American values."

McCain praised Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) for a "thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose ... but actually damaged our security interests."

"The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. It sometimes causes us difficulties at home and abroad. It is sometimes used by our enemies in attempts to hurt us. But the American people are entitled to it, nonetheless," McCain said.

Graham agreed with McCain that the practices used by the CIA "were counterproductive" but found an opening to criticize the Obama administration's policies on prosecuting terrorists that were absent from McCain's floor remarks, which focused almost solely on the efficacy of torture.

"We have now gone from one extreme to the other. We've gone from waterboarding to reading Miranda Rights and providing taxpayer-funded lawyers to foreign terror suspects within days of capture," Graham said in a statement. "The policies the Obama administration has employed treats terrorists as common criminals, not enemy combatants."

If there was one area where Republicans mostly stood together, it was on the politics of releasing the report.

"There is no reason whatsoever for this report to ever be published," Chambliss said. "This is purely a partisan tactic. And a political one."

Rather than offering a forceful defense of placing combatants in "stress positions," Republicans instead attacked Democrats for dredging up Bush administration techniques during a political low-point for their party — at a cost of possibly endangering Americans serving overseas, either in combat roles or at embassies.

Burr said there was little new in the report besides exposing "our international partners" who helped with U.S. intelligence agencies abroad. GOP Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois warned that "we may actually lose Americans now because of this report," while Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said he was "at a loss" as to how the report could possibly enhance U.S. security, as it attacks Bush to serve as a political "distraction."

"It's already out there on the street, and for whatever reason Democrats felt like they needed to get it out there yet again," said retiring Nebraska Sen. Mike Johanns, a former Bush secretary of Agriculture. "I worry about the cost. And I would side in favor of protecting Americans who are serving or people in other parts of the country that are working at our embassies."

The partisan conflict, brewing for so many months, escalated quickly Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid couldn't resist tweaking Republicans for dropping out of the documents' production process, taking the floor ahead of a marathon Feinstein speech to praise the "work done by Democrats on the Intelligence Committee. We're here today ... because of their efforts."

Democrats intimately involved with the report spent months engaged in a fierce back-and-forth with the CIA and the White House over how much of the report to redact, arguing that the CIA essentially wanted to make the report unreadable. Democrats said that Republicans are missing the point of the report by arguing it only dredged up aspects of Bush's presidency, instead claiming that their findings will serve as a beacon for the future.

"Although President Obama ended the program by signing the Executive Order in 2009, any future president could reverse that order," said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), an Intelligence Committee member and outspoken civil libertarian.

Even with their divisions, few other Republican senators joined Inhofe in his conclusion of backing techniques meticulously documented in the report, like 183 waterboarding sessions of Abu Zubaydah, a man largely believed to be behind the Sept. 11 attacks. And Republicans who have very different foreign policy views than the Bush administration trod carefully on the subject.

As he strolled to his Senate office, Paul declined to characterize the report as an attack on Bush like so many of his colleagues. Instead the Kentucky senator, who's attempting to chart a less interventionist course for the GOP as he mulls a presidential run, expressed mixed feelings on the report's release and what it says about the United States — a sharp break from his Kentucky colleague McConnell, who blasted Democrats' work as "ideologically motivated."

"It's important that people take a stand and representatives take a stand on whether they believe torture should be allowed. I think we should not have torture," Paul said. "Transparency is mostly good for government. The only thing I would question is whether or not the actual details, the gruesomeness of the details, will be beneficial or inflammatory."

[Jacob]

Well... to be honest, I think embarrassing a political opponent by bringing to light stuff they've actually done or allowed - if that's even the case here - is significantly more acceptable than manufacturing controversies or investigating minor events repeatedly in the hopes of creating a scandal.

[garbon]

it looks like that is what this country is all about now.

I think that is really an overreach to say that's what we are all about.