What was released today is not the full 6000-page report but rather the redacted executive summary of the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee. IMHO it is only a matter of time until someone releases the entire report.
I thought some here might appreciate links to coverage other than MSM.
The Intercept of course is all over this. Glenn Greenwald is ‘live-blogging’ it:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/09/live-coverage-release-senate-torture-report/
Last week, The Intercept’s Dan Froomkin wrote “12 Things to Keep in Mind When You Read the Torture Report”:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/02/x-things-keep-mind-ever-get-read-torture-report/
Andrew Sullivan also is ‘live-blogging’ it at The Dish:
Darkness Visible: Live-Blogging The Torture Report
Marcy Wheeler also is on top of all things torture-related. Here’s a post from yesterday she called “The Debate about Torture We’re Not Having: Exploitation”:
And here’s what she had to say today:
Obama Would Not — Cannot — Deem Any Activities Authorized by Gloves Come Off Finding Illegal
ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero has what I’m sure he believes to be an out of the box op-ed in the NYT. In it, he calls on President Obama to issue pardons for all those who masterminded the torture program.
But with the impending release of the report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I have
come to think that President Obama should issue pardons, after all — because it may be the only way to establish, once and for all, that torture is illegal.[snip]
But let’s face it: Mr. Obama is not inclined to pursue prosecutions — no matter how great the outrage, at home or abroad, over the disclosures — because of the political fallout. He should therefore take ownership of this decision. He should acknowledge that the country’s most senior officials authorized conduct that violated fundamental laws, and compromised our standing in the world as well as our security. If the choice is between a tacit pardon and a formal one, a formal one is better. An explicit pardon would lay down a marker, signaling to those considering torture in the future that they could be prosecuted.
Mr. Obama could pardon George J. Tenet for authorizing torture at the C.I.A.’s black sites overseas, Donald H. Rumsfeld for authorizing the use of torture at the Guantánamo Bay prison, David S. Addington, John C. Yoo andJay S. Bybee for crafting the legal cover for torture, and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for overseeing it all.
There are many many problems with this proposal, some of which Kevin Jon Heller hits in a piece that notes this would not be pardon, but blanket amnesty.
But Romero’s proposal (if it is intended as anything beyond a modest proposal meant to call Obama’s bluff) fundamentally misunderstands the situation — a situation the ACLU has been at the forefront in exposing.
Obama would not — categorically cannot — admit that what Tenet and Bush and Cheney did on torture is illegal. That’s because he has authorized war crimes using the very same Presidential Finding as the
Bush Administration used to authorized torture.
As I have laid out at length, the torture program started as a covert op authorized by the September 17, 2001 Gloves Come Off Memorandum of Notification. And along with torture, that Finding also authorized drone strikes. The drone strikes that Obama escalated.
Just 3 days after he assumed the Presidency, a drone strike Obama authorized killed as many as 11 civilians, including one child, and gravely injured a 14 year old boy, Farim Qureshi. And several years into his Administration, Obama ordered the CIA to kill American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki with no due process. As far as we know, both of those things were done using that very same Finding, the Finding that Romero would like Obama to declare authorized war crimes.
When the 2nd Circuit ruled the President — President Obama, not President Bush — could keep a short phrase hidden making it clear torture had been authorized by that Finding in ACLU’s very own torture FOIA, it did so because the Finding still authorized intelligence activities. The Finding authorizing torture was still active — President Obama was still relying on it — at least as recently as 2012.
For Obama to pardon Bush, Cheney, and Tenet, he would have to admit that the same Finding that he used to authorize drone strikes that have killed hundreds of civilians authorized war crimes. There is absolutely zero chance Obama is going to do that.
====================================================
Now, honestly, wouldn’t you have thought that the Senate Judiciary Committee would have gotten involved at some point over the last decade? My mind is boggled by both what was done in our names and that so few seem to care enough that people are held accountable.
Internal ties to CIA as far back as the Kennedy administration
From our local standpoint, can it be determined what the committee’s chairman, Leahy, has done or what direction did he lead the committee on this issue?
John M. Medeiros from Putney, concludes his letter to the editor of Dec. 4 about excessive police militarization by saying::
“”I often wonder if this all started on Nov. 22, 1963, when our president was assassinated and his assassination was followed by the greatest effort ever in all of human history to conceal and destroy the evidence of who committed that murder. I must say that the United States of America has become a society where the people in authority wish to commit murder without being held accountable for their violence. Is this new or has it always been this way? The Republican Party openly advocates trying to win elections by “voter suppression.” Please note that the word “suppress” is similar in meaning, in this context, to “repress” and “oppress.” This policy is the same thing as saying that obstructing the democratic process is a legitimate method to get elected to office. Is this new or has it always been this way? Is this a new America or America as usual?””
http://www.reformer.com/letterstotheeditor/ci_27070242/your-opinions
When you factor in the cover up of the “within and without” 9/11 attacks, our so-called leadership and their operatives have been getting away with murder for a long time.
https://www.ibrattleboro.com/sections/oped/911-unfinished-business
WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday issued a sweeping indictment of the Central Intelligence Agency’s program to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks, drawing on millions of internal C.I.A. documents to illuminate practices that it said were more brutal — and far less effective — than the agency acknowledged either to Bush administration officials or to the public.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/senate-intelligence-committee-cia-torture-report.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
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No Judiciary Committee action...
…related to US torture that I have seen reported. If anyone else has seen anything, I would love to know about it.
Yesterday I saw references to 30 pages of “the torture report” dedicated to the lies told to Congress and the general public. Wouldn’t you hope that our US representatives with responsibility for upholding the rule of law would do something about rampant perjury, false statements, and obstruction of justice never mind the pesky issues of torture, homicide, rape (aggressive “rectal infusions” of Ensure, anyone?) that Senator Leahy & Company apparently don’t see as their jurisdiction.
Wash Post on discrepancies between Hayden testimony & report
Then CIA Director Michael Hayden testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on April 12, 2007. The Washington Post compiled a list of apparent discrepancies between his testimony & what was included in the Exec Summary of the Committee’s report yesterday:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/cia-interrogation-report/hayden-testimony/
Jon Stewart covered the release:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/10/jon-stewart-torture-report_n_6299888.html
Damage is done
It is interesting hearing folks get bent out of shape about the “damage” this report will cause our country. The damage was done by the torturers, politicians and public officials. George Bush looks pretty bad for lying directly to the American people even after he was briefed on the realities of this “enhanced interrogation program.”
Yes, anger was running high in the years after 9/11/01. But some of the damage in the “war on terror” has been self-inflicted. Barrack Obama has a short window of opportunity to take the high ground. I do not see it happening.
Andy Davis
Worse Than Fiction
Some of the things they did to people were worse than 24. I used to think 24 was pretty extreme, and I guess the CIA did more psychological stuff than outright physical violence like on the show, but it still turned my stomach to read about it. Very hard to sanction. I just worry that it might now be business as usual, making it harder to change. Then again, if it’s unacknowledged, it probably can’t be changed.
Brazil, anyone? Now there’s a fun holiday flick that’s once again apropos.
Banality of torture
Brazil has the scene where, while waiting for his friend to be done torturing someone, Sam Lowry i stuck in the reception area. The secretary is busily typing away, almost without thought, transcribing the torture going on. (A glimpse of what she’s typing looks like: “AEEYYYAHHH! Stop Owww…” etc.). She looks up, removes her earpiece for a moment so we can hear the screaming she’s transcribing, then she goes back to her job.
So, do they really hate us for our freedoms, or do they hate us because we can be such awful people?
The Dish is totally kicking it...
…on the issue of US Torture Policy.
I have resisted subscribing to The Dish since I rarely have had time in recent months to do more than scan headlines & blog posts. But I sure do appreciate the resources and attention Andrew Sullivan is devoting to the response of the release of The Torture Report so prob will take the plunge now.
Here’s the link again for those interested:
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/
Honoring those in military & CIA who said "no" to torture
The ACLU has a campaign to call on President Obama to formally recognize & honor those who tried to stop or expose torture:
https://www.aclu.org/blog/human-rights-national-security/cia-agents-said-no-torture
From the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer’s post:
“In December 2004, as the leadership of the CIA was debating whether to destroy videotapes of prisoners being waterboarded in the agency’s secret prisons, President Bush bestowed the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, on George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A. director who had signed off on the torture sessions. In 2006, the Army major general who oversaw the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo was given the Distinguished Service Medal. One of the lawyers responsible for the Bush administration’s “torture memos” received awards from the Justice Department, the Defense Department, and the National Security Agency.
“The video [at the above URL] highlights some of the soldiers and public servants who tried to expose and end the abuse of prisoners in American detention centers. We should formally recognize and honor these people. As Siems and I wrote, honoring the people who stayed true to our values is “a way of encouraging the best in our public servants, now and in the future.” It is also a way of honoring the best in ourselves.”
Parsing former VP Cheney
Conor Friedersdorf has article in The Atlantic on former VP Cheney’s recent interview with Chuck Todd:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/dick-cheney-defends-the-torture-innocents/383741/?single_page=true#disqus_thread
Self-incriminatory? Perspective of a sociopath? Paving the way for future use of torture as official US policy?
lalala…obviously nothing to see here. Back to cooking quince!
Tom Tomorrow cartoon on "Tortured logic"
Meant to post this link earlier:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/15/1351734/-Cartoon-Tortured-logic
I appreciate that this cartoon and articles like the one in The Atlantic always will be part of the historical record of this sad chapter in our nation’s life.
Jail!
So when will we see Cheney, Yoo, et all in jail.
Truly sick, awful people who’ve made us all look much worse than we are to others around the globe. Their arrogance and lies set the country back farther than most will admit.
And yet we “don’t look back” with the current President. I’m looking for a candidate next time around who will investigate Bush and Obama era policies, and work to reverse most of the damage done.