"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."
Politico, by Mark Fallon
The really bad thing about the whole abuse program and abuse propaganda is how quick and easy it was to bring down the ethics of a nation which believed to be the "good guy". This should be a warning to everybody who trusts his government with programs even only in the periphery of censorship, mass surveillance - or warmongering.
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Excerpts from the report's published executive summary:
The Committee makes the following findings and conclusions:#1: The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.(...)#2: The CIA's justification for the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness.(...)#3: The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others.(...)#4: The conditions of confinement for CIA detainees were harsher than the CIA had represented to policymakers and others.(...)#5: The CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice, impeding a proper legal analysis of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program.(...)#6: The CIA has actively avoided or impeded congressional oversight of the program.(...)#7: The CIA impeded effective White House oversight and decision-making.(...)#8: The CIA's operation and management of the program complicated, and in some cases impeded, the national security missions of other Executive Branch agencies.(...)#9: The CIA impeded oversight by the CIA's Office of Inspector General.(...)#10: The CIA coordinated the release of classified information to the media, including inaccurate information concerning the effectiveness of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.(...)#11: The CIA was unprepared as it began operating its Detention and Interrogation Program more than six months after being granted detention authorities.(...)#12: The CIA's management and operation of its Detention and Interrogation Program was deeply flawed throughout the program's duration, particularly so in 2002 and early 2003.(...)#13: Two contract psychologists devised the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques and played a central role in the operation, assessments, and management of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program. By 2005, the CIA had overwhelmingly outsourced operations related to the program.(...)#14: CIA detainees were subjected to coercive interrogation techniques that had not been approved by the Department of Justice or had not been authorized by CIA Headquarters.(...)#15: The CIA did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate accounting of the number of individuals it detained, and held individuals who did not meet the legal standard for detention. The CIA's claims about the number of detainees held and subjected to its enhanced Interrogation techniques were inaccurate.(...)#16: The CIA failed to adequately evaluate the effectiveness of its enhanced interrogation techniques.(...)#17: The CIA rarely reprimanded or held personnel accountable for serious and significant violations, inappropriate activities, and systemic and individual management failures.(...)#18: The CIA marginalized and ignored numerous internal critiques,criticisms, and objections concerning the operation and management of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program.(...)#19: The CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program was inherently unsustainable and had effectively ended by 2006 due to unauthorized press disclosures, reduced cooperation from other nations, and legal and oversight concerns.(...)#20: The CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program damaged the United States' standing in the world, and resulted in other significant monetary and non-monetary costs.
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Torture was a tool these guys had been using, secretly or through proxies, for many years. What's different this time is that it has been publicly acknowledged. The idea is to create terror in the minds of potential enemies. It's the same with the NSA scandal, earlier whistle-blowers were ignored by the media as conspiracy theorists, but they used Snowden's revelations to let everyone know that they were always in danger of being watched. Now when no one is brought to justice after these torture revelations, everyone will know that the security authorities in the US are above all law and can do as they please.
ReplyDeleteOderint dum metuant
If intelligence is that blown up and riddled with inefficient methods, the fall of the United States to a more capable competitor with a different vision of the world can not be far away in time.
ReplyDeleteFirst thing I noticed is that I could not read the title of your blog. The camouflage background works too well.
ReplyDeleteCheney is a psychopath. So are the leaders of the CIA. Interesting how the talking heads rushed to defend our "honorable" CIA - an organization that has been terrorizing the rest of the world for decades.
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