The CIA torture report

Calls Grow For Dick Cheney and George W. Bush To Be Prosecuted For Torture
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/12/09/calls-grow-dick-cheney-george-w-bush-prosecuted-torture.html

Calls Grow For Dick Cheney and George W. Bush To Be Prosecuted For Torture
By: Jason Easley
Tuesday, December, 9th, 2014, 8:43 pm


A top international official is calling for the criminal prosecution of top members of the Bush administration for torture and other war crimes.

United Nations Special Rapporteur on counter terrorism and human rights, Ben Emmerson called for prosecutions of former Bush administration officials at the highest levels,

It is now time to take action. The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today’s report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes.

The fact that the policies revealed in this report were authorised at a high level within the US Government provides no excuse whatsoever. Indeed, it reinforces the need for criminal accountability.

International law prohibits the granting of immunities to public officials who have engaged in acts of torture. This applies not only to the actual perpetrators but also to those senior officials within the US Government who devised, planned and authorised these crimes.

As a matter of international law, the US is legally obliged to bring those responsible to justice. The UN Convention Against Torture and the UN Convention on Enforced Disappearances require States to prosecute acts of torture and enforced disappearance where there is sufficient evidence to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction. States are not free to maintain or permit impunity for these grave crimes.

It is no defence for a public official to claim that they were acting on superior orders. CIA officers who physically committed acts of torture therefore bear individual criminal responsibility for their conduct, and cannot hide behind the authorisation they were given by their superiors.


snip//

The odds of the Bush administration officials being turned over for prosecution are zero, but those who have referred to the Bush administration as war criminals have new justifications for their claims.

They also have the agreement of the international community that what George W. Bush and Dick Cheney engaged in was criminal, and officials in their administration deserve to be prosecuted.

12 things to keep in mind on the Torture report
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 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.


https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/02/x-things-keep-mind-ever-get-read-torture-report/

The Most Gruesome Moments in the CIA ‘Torture Report’ -- Trevor Trimm
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/09/the-most-gruesome-moments-in-the-cia-torture-report.html
The Most Gruesome Moments in the CIA ‘Torture Report’
The CIA’s rendition, interrogation, and detention programs were even more nightmarish than you could imagine.

Interrogations that lasted for days on end. Detainees forced to stand on broken legs, or go 180 hours in a row without sleep. A prison so cold, one suspect essentially froze to death. The Senate Intelligence Committee is finally releasing its review of the CIA's detention and interrogation programs. And it is brutal.

Here are some of the most gruesome moments of detainee abuse from a summary of the report, obtained by The Daily Beast:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/09/the-most-gruesome-moments-in-the-cia-torture-report.html

‘Well Worn’ Waterboards

The CIA has previously said that only three detainees were ever waterboarded: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zabaydah, and Abd Al Rahim al-Nashiri. But records uncovered by the Senate Intelligence Committee suggest there may have been more than three subjects. The Senate report describes a photograph of a “well worn” waterboard, surrounded by buckets of water, at a detention site where the CIA has claimed it never subjected a detainee to this procedure. In a meeting with the CIA in 2013, the agency was not able to explain the presence of this waterboard.

Near Drowning

Contrary to CIA’s description to the Department of Justice, the Senate report says that the waterboarding was physically harmful, leading to convulsions and vomiting. During one session, detainee Abu Zabaydah became “completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open full mouth.” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded at least 183 times, which the Senate report describes as escalating into a "series of near drownings."

The Dungeon-Like ‘Salt Pit’

Opened in Sept. 2002, this “poorly-managed” detention facility was the second site opened by the CIA after 9/11. The Senate report refers to it by the pseudonym Cobalt, but details of what happened there indicate that it’s a notorious “black site” in Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit. Although the facility kept few formal records, the committee concluded that untrained CIA operatives conducted unauthorized, unsupervised interrogation there.

(snip)

Standing on Broken Legs

In Nov. 2002, a detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to the floor died, apparently from hypothermia. This case appears similar to the that of Gul Rahman, who died of similarly explained causes at a Afghan site known as the "Salt Pit," also in Nov. 2002. The site was also called ‘The Dark Prison’ by former captives.

(snip)

Forced Rectal Feeding and Worse

At least five detainees were subjected to “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration,” without any documented medical need. Others were deprived of sleep, which could involve staying awake for up to 180 hours—sometimes standing, sometimes with their hands shackled above their heads.

Some detainees were forced to walk around naked, or shackled with their hands above their heads. In other instances, naked detainees were hooded and dragged up and down corridors while subject to physical abuse.

(snip)

other stuff outlined in article--->

Non-stop Interrogation

Lost Detainees

No Blockbuster Intelligence

Contractors and Shrinks

Lies to the President

Cover-Ups




http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/09/the-most-gruesome-moments-in-the-cia-torture-report.html

The Most Gruesome Moments in the CIA ‘Torture Report’
The CIA’s rendition, interrogation, and detention programs were even more nightmarish than you could imagine.

Interrogations that lasted for days on end. Detainees forced to stand on broken legs, or go 180 hours in a row without sleep. A prison so cold, one suspect essentially froze to death. The Senate Intelligence Committee is finally releasing its review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs. And it is brutal.

Here are some of the most gruesome moments of detainee abuse from a summary of the report, obtained by The Daily Beast:

‘Well Worn’ Waterboards

The CIA has previously said that only three detainees were ever waterboarded: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Abd Al Rahim al-Nashiri. But records uncovered by the Senate Intelligence Committee suggest there may have been more than three subjects. The Senate report describes a photograph of a “well worn” waterboard, surrounded by buckets of water, at a detention site where the CIA has claimed it never subjected a detainee to this procedure. In a meeting with the CIA in 2013, the agency was not able to explain the presence of this waterboard.

Near Drowning

Contrary to CIA’s description to the Department of Justice, the Senate report says that the waterboarding was physically harmful, leading to convulsions and vomiting. During one session, detainee Abu Zubaydah became “completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open full mouth.” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded at least 183 times, which the Senate report describes as escalating into a “series of near drownings.”

The Dungeon-Like ‘Salt Pit’

Opened in Sept. 2002, this “poorly managed” detention facility was the second site opened by the CIA after the 9/11 attacks. The Senate report refers to it by the pseudonym Cobalt, but details of what happened there indicate that it’s a notorious “black site” in Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit. Although the facility kept few formal records, the committee concluded that untrained CIA operatives conducted unauthorized, unsupervised interrogation there.

A Senate aide who briefed reporters on the condition that he not be identified said that the Cobalt site was run by a junior officer with no relevant experience, and that this person had “issues” in his background that should have disqualified him from working for the CIA at all. The aide didn’t specify what those issues were, but suggested that the CIA should have flagged them. The committee found that some employees at the site lacked proper training and had “histories of violence and mistreatment of others.”

Standing on Broken Legs

In November 2002, a detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to the floor died, apparently from hypothermia. This case appears similar to the that of Gul Rahman, who died of similarly explained causes at an Afghan site known as the “Salt Pit,” also in November 2002. The site was also called “The Dark Prison” by former captives.

The aide said that the Cobalt site was was dark, like a dungeon, and that experts who visited the site said they’d never seen an American prison where people were kept in such conditions. The facility was so dark in some places that guard had to wear head lamps, while other rooms were flooded with bright lights and white noise to disorient detainees.

At the Cobalt facility, the CIA also forced some detainees who had broken feet or legs to stand in stress-inducing positions, despite having earlier pledged that they wouldn’t subject those wounded individuals to treatment that might exacerbate their injuries.

Non-stop Interrogation

Starting with Abu Zubaydah, and following with other detainees, the CIA deployed the harshest techniques from the beginning without trying to first elicit information in an “open, non-threatening manner,” the committee found. The torture continued nearly non-stop, for days or weeks at a time.

The CIA instructed personnel at the site that the interrogation of Zubaydah, who’d been shot during his capture, should take “precedence over his medical care,” the committee found, leading to an infection in a bullet wound incurred during his capture. Zubaydah lost his left eye while in custody. The CIA’s instructions also ran contrary to how it told the Justice Department the prisoner would be treated.

The CIA forced some detainees who had broken feet or legs to stand in stress-inducing positions, despite having earlier pledged that they wouldn’t subject those wounded individuals to treatment that might exacerbate their injuries.

Forced Rectal Feeding and Worse

At least five detainees were subjected to “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration,” without any documented medical need. “While IV infusion is safe and effective,” one officer wrote, rectal hydration could be used as a form of behavior control.

Others were deprived of sleep, which could involve staying awake for as long as 180 hours—sometimes standing, sometimes with their hands shackled above their heads.

Some detainees were forced to walk around naked, or shackled with their hands above their heads. In other instances, naked detainees were hooded and dragged up and down corridors while subject to physical abuse.

At one facility, detainees were kept in total darkness and shackled in cells with loud noise or music, and only a bucket to use for waste.

Lost Detainees

While the CIA has said publicly that it held about 100 detainees, the committee found that at least 119 people were in the agency’s custody.

“The fact is they lost track and they didn’t really know who they were holding,” the Senate aide said, noting that investigators found emails in which CIA personnel were “surprised” to find some people in their custody. The CIA also determined that at least 26 of its detainees were wrongfully held. Due to the agency’s poor record-keeping, it may never be known precisely how many detainees were held, and how they were treated in custody, the committee found.

No Blockbuster Intelligence

The report will conclude that the CIA’s interrogation techniques never yielded any intelligence about imminent terrorist attacks. Investigators didn’t conclude that no information came from the program at all. Rather, the committee rejects the CIA’s contention that information came from the program that couldn’t have been obtained through other means.

“When you put detainees through these [torture sessions] they will say whatever they can say to get the interrogations to stop,” the Senate aide said.

The Senate Intelligence Committee reviewed 20 cited examples of intelligence “successes” that the CIA identified from the interrogation program and found that there was no relationship between a cited counterterrorism success and the techniques used. Furthermore, the information gleaned during torture sessions merely corroborated information already available to the intelligence community from other sources, including reports, communications intercepts, and information from law-enforcement agencies, the committee found. The CIA had told policymakers and the Department of Justice that the information from torture was unique or “otherwise unavailable.” Such information comes from the “kind of good national-security tradecraft that we rely on to stop terrorist plots at all times,” the Senate aide said.

In developing the enhanced interrogation techniques, the report said, the CIA failed to review the historical use of coercive interrogations. The resulting techniques were described as “discredited coercive interrogation techniques such as those used by torturous regimes during the Cold War to elicit false confessions,” according to the committee. The CIA acknowledged that it never properly reviewed the effectiveness of these techniques, despite the urging of the CIA inspector general, congressional leadership, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Contractors and Shrinks

The CIA relied on two outside contractors who were psychologists with experience at the Air Force’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school to help develop, run, and assess the interrogation program. Neither had experience as an interrogator, nor any specialized knowledge of al Qaeda, counterterrorism, or relevant linguistic expertise, the committee found. In 2005, these two psychologists formed a company, and following this the CIA outsourced virtually all aspects of the interrogation program to them. The company was paid more than $80 million by the CIA.

Lies to the President

An internal report by the CIA, known as the Panetta Review, found that there were numerous inaccuracies in the way the agency represented the effectiveness of interrogation techniques—and that the CIA misled the president about this. The CIA’s records also contradict the evidence the agency provided of some “thwarted” terrorist attacks and the capture of suspects, which the CIA linked to the use of these enhanced techniques. The Senate’s report also concludes that there were cases in which White House questions were not answered truthfully or completely.

Cover-Ups

In the early days of the program, CIA officials briefed the leadership of the House Intelligence Committee. Few records of that session remain, but Senate investigators found a draft summary of the meeting, written by a CIA lawyers, that notes lawmakers “questioned the legality of these techniques.” But the lawyer deleted that line from the final version of the summary. The Senate investigators found that Jose Rodriguez, once the CIA’s top spy and a fierce defender of the interrogation program, made a note on the draft approving of the deletion: “Short and sweet,” Rodriguez wrote of the newly revised summary that failed to mention lawmakers’ concerns about the legality of the program.

Threats to Mothers

CIA officers threatened to harm detainees’ children, sexually abuse their mothers, and “cut [a detainee’s] mother’s throat.” In addition, several detainees were led to believe they would die in custody, with one told he would leave in a coffin-shaped box.

Detainees wouldn’t see their day in court because “we can never let the world know what I have done to you,” one interrogator said.

Sexual Assault by Interrogators

Officers in the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program included individuals who the committee said, “among other things, had engaged in inappropriate detainee interrogations, had workplace anger management issues, and had reportedly admitted to sexual assault.”

This will be an extremely difficult subject for people to discuss here without some serious mud slinging.

In actual fact, I find myself with a slight toe in the other camp, having wished this sort of treatment to be meted out on the bastards connected to the Tube Train/Bus attack on 7th of July 2005, as did I wish similar treatment to those who organised and carried out the IRA bombing campaigns in Britain and Northern Ireland.
I can therefore have some sympathy with the feelings of Americans who will no doubt post here with all guns blazing.

But that's where it stops, with my personal feelings. Everyone's allowed those, and would not be normal if they didn't harbour some of that stuff regarding 9/11 or other similar atrocities.

And that is where Governments should step in and make sure that certain standards are maintained, and lines not crossed.
Governments should always maintain the moral high ground, or at least be seen to be doing that.

By treating suspects in such a manner, on such a large, seemingly organised scale, America has shamed itself in front of the world, and for some reason, has gone out of its way to then make sure that every living being around the world can read every single, sordid detail.

Maybe it is because it has been done on such an industrial scale it is now considered necessary to publish and be damned, as some sort of sackcloth and ashes response, who knows?

All I know is that if this was a British report, it would never have seen the light of day. Good or bad, again who knows? But the dirty linen of our establishment would never have been allowed to get into the wrong hands and possibly used against us.
The people concerned would have been dealt with and possibly a few scapegoats would be ritually sacrificed, and actions taken behind closed doors to prevent such a thing ever happening again, but only a few would ever know that it had all kicked off in the first place. A top secret would have been stamped on the file, and a fifty year (probably more) hideaway notice imposed.

All power to the USA for washing such mindblowing dirty linen in public. It will probably drag our poodle government at the time into the firing line as well, to a certain extent.
I just envisage all this serving as a better recruiting tool for the fanatics than Iraq ever was.

Whoever let this all get so out of hand in the first place now needs to be seen to be tried and punished. The USA have chosen to open their very own Pandora's box, so they will find it almost impossible to now just snap it shut without the necessary bloodletting.


A total establishment cock up from the moment the Twin towers came down, basically.

Now, let the sides be taken and the point scoring begin......



Ding ding.....

Imagine the conflict at my house: my wife is a 30yr veteran of the CIA.

So far her only question has been to me: "How bad is it?"
"Pretty bad."
"I heard Bush was lied to and kept in the dark by Cheney et al."

Total conversation on the report at breakfast yeaterday. We eat breakfast in a local restaurant two or three times a week and we will sit and talk nonstop for an hour or two.

She still has sources and she will be better informed than me in a few days. There's no doubt, she knows this report is true and is the tip of the bad iceberg underneath it.

I understand the mixed feelings. I have them, too. Its the eternal never ending struggle between rights and security.

And you and I and my wife all know this needs to come out and be dealt with, that as the American people we need to decide how much of our freedom needs to be sacrificed for whatever it is that security is and how much ethical and moral values will we sacrifice for it.

The top ranks will close sufficiently so as to allow a couple of minions to get shat upon, no doubt.

I wonder how many files and emails are being deleted at this very moment?

Fortunately, there are truly patriotic watchers on the wall at CIA. The bad actors will never hide it all or even most of it. Arrogance precedes hubris.

I think there will be a huge come to Jesus moment here in the US over race and even this event has a lot to with race and what we think we can do to others with impunity.

Polish ex-president admits to secret CIA prison after U.S. torture report released
Source: AP/Reuters

The release of a U.S. senate report on harsh CIA interrogation techniques has elicited condemnation, a call for prosecution – and new revelations from the countries involved in the Americans’ global intelligence-gathering plans.

After denying the fact for years, a former Polish president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, acknowledged Wednesday that Poland had let the CIA run a secret prison on its territory but insisted that Polish officials did not authorize the harsh treatment or torture of its inmates.



Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/world-reacts-to-us-torture-report/article22020356/

Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown
Social science is being militarised to develop 'operational tools' to target peaceful activists and protest movements

US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term "warfighter-relevant insights" for senior officials and decision makers in "the defense policy community," and to inform policy implemented by "combatant commands."

Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD 'Minerva Research Initiative' partners with universities "to improve DoD's basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US."

Among the projects awarded for the period 2014-2017 is a Cornell University-led study managed by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research which aims to develop an empirical model "of the dynamics of social movement mobilisation and contagions." The project will determine "the critical mass (tipping point)" of social contagians by studying their "digital traces" in the cases of "the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the 2011 Russian Duma elections, the 2012 Nigerian fuel subsidy crisis and the 2013 Gazi park protests in Turkey."

Twitter posts and conversations will be examined "to identify individuals mobilised in a social contagion and when they become mobilised."


http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jun/12/pentagon-mass-civil-breakdown?CMP=share_btn_fb

I wouldn't bet on it. I expect that this will be forgotten by the weekend.

The Democrats placed Bill Clinton above the law and let him commit a long string of felonies in the White House. They now have no standing to complain about any Republican crimes (especially since the Republicans were trying to save American lives).

The rest of the world gave a barely stifled yawn when American soldiers were tortured over the past century. They now have no standing to complain about any torture carried out by Americans.

Probably zero. Although a few years ago the CIA did incinerate the video recordings of all the waterboarding.

"The rest of the world gave a barely stifled yawn when American soldiers were tortured over the past century. They now have no standing to complain about any torture carried out by Americans."

Two wrongs brings everyone down to the gutter. Like I said, up until recent times, America held the high ground. Now you can never, ever lecture other countries about freedom and human rights.

That's a big comedown. Massive.

One thing that I have noticed already is the childish thumbdown tactic.

Bobsal, no matter what you think of him, has reported this pretty factually so far, and posted a couple of comments and observations based on his personal life and how this is already affecting it.

To thumb him down to zero within minutes of this thread starting shows a very immature attitude for someone to bring to such a serious and important issue.

Thumbing doesn't really bother me on most topics here on a2k, but when it comes to serious adult stuff.....please give it a rest.

If you feel strongly enough to show disagreement or disapproval, please at least have the balls to actually post your comment so that it can be discussed, rather than a sneaky thumb down because you are not adult enough to prevent your personal feelings from controlling your actions on the playground.


Personally, I'd love to see the thumb thing disappear altogether.

What a load of bushwa, pervert.

We're guilty of what we do independent of whatever else anyone else has done.

definitely my first thought when the news started coming out about the report

Heard an interview on the radio this a.m. ... the snippet that stopped me, literally in my tracks ... "Abu Ghraib was the recruiting and training ground for ISIS"

the west has a lot to answer for, continuing to think it can mess around with the Middle East without significant consequences

who the hell thought it was a good idea in any way?

takes me back to the thread my dad started 10/11 years ago

Absolutely.

It is hard to understand people thumbing down news reports.

If this topic is going to going to distress people to the point that they can't even read news reports, I think they need to stay out of threads like these.

I've finally learned to avoid my hot button topics here. Took a while, but I got there.

Some Editorial Cartoons from around the country: