The Torture Report

by Headmistress, zookeeper 

12-11-2014

John Kiriakou, the only official who has gone to jail in connection with the CIA’s torture program is the one who fought to end it.

Johnathan Turley at USA Today says that one of the first takeaways from the Torture Report is that the CIA defies laws and does so with political immunity. He has two others, which you can read at the link. He explains why it doesn’t matter if it’s effective, because it’s morally wrong.

Thiessen disagrees, and has a story on how the CIA used waterboarding to identify a terrorist who now is no longer a threat.

The world cannot accept efficiency as an excuse for what is essentially “criminal behavior” on the part of the CIA, says Snowden, in videotaped remarks at this link.

It seems that torture yielded inaccurate information that led to the Bush administration’s claims of WMD in Iraq. But we don’t know all the story (do we ever, when gov’t is involved?) Because the Obama administration redacted much of the information and refuses to release other parts of it. That might be why the CIA looks so bad here. This story will probably not get as much attention as others because it questions the ‘Bush lied’ narrative.

Andrew McCarthy neither defends or criticizes torture in this story (he may do one or the other elsewhere)- but does point out that it’s logically flawed to say that torture should not be used because it results in flawed information. Every interrogation method, he points out, results in some flawed information.

The Daily Beast outlines the worst of the Torture report, including a paragraph about why we might have reason to suspect that the CIA used waterboarding with more than 3 suspects/victims. To be honest- that paragraph was okay, but I quite reading shortly after that. It’s pretty ugly stuff.

Another round up here (includes some of the same links I found above), and offers a summary starting with the CIA lied to everybody.

Outgoing Senator Udall says the CIA lied and continues lying, and Obama needs to stop the coverups and fire some people.

Lots of first hand information here- including the 500 plus page report itself, and a map of the CIA’s secret overseas prisons.

Seven take away points listed here, again, all pretty much summer up by The CIA are lying, power hungry jerks.

This one kind of amuses me, though:

7. The C.I.A. leaked classified information to journalists, exaggerating the success of interrogation methods in an effort to gain public support.

The report found that the C.I.A. provided classified information to journalists but that the agency did not push to prosecute or investigate many of the leaks. C.I.A. officials asked officers to “compile information on the success” of the program to be shared with the news media in order to shape public opinion. The C.I.A. also mischaracterized events and provided false or incomplete information to the news media in an effort to gain public support.

Of course they do. Every bureacratic institution, pretty much anybody who is public enough that reporters write about them use that fact to their advantage, to sway public opinion, to get out in front, to insert the narrative they want the public to follow. Reporters should be more cynical about their sources- even ‘Deepthroat’ of the Watergate links had his own personal, quite petty agenda behind the leaks.

NYT says it, too- the CIA used media links for their advantage. Oh, say it ain’t so. I am shocked, shocked, I tell you (please watch Casablanca if you haven’t already).

In fact, even now the release of the report- redacted, with key documents held back, is more of just such an attempt to manipulate the media and thus the public- according to a former CIA deputy director.

This photo montage of front page stories on the torture report from around the world’s newspapers is worth looking at.