The report summary has been released, and you can read it here. Early reports from news organizations that saw an advance copy depict utterly depraved, immoral and illegal behavior by CIA operatives, carried out in our name. But we knew that. Kudos to the Obama administration and Senate Democrats for releasing the summary, however belatedly and redacted.
ETA: The more I read the report summary, the more convinced I am that the CIA should be disbanded. Just burn it down and start over. Despite its massive budget, extraordinary reach and absurd amount of autonomy, it hasn’t been very effective anyway.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Not the report, the summary.
Which is bad enough. Apparently the report – which we will not be allowed to read even though we paid for everything that happened – is far, far worse.
I’ll take what I can get.
cahuenga
Militarized police, openly corrupt ‘bought’ politicians, mass domestic spying and torture. It’s hard to understand why countries balk when we attempt to enforce our values over there.
GregB
The Pinocheting of America.
schrodinger's cat
Is the courtier press even a tiny bit ashamed for providing cover to the psychopathic Bush administration.
Eric U.
@schrodinger’s cat: both sides do it
Edmund Dantes
You don’t get credit for doing what you are supposed to do – paraphrasing Chris rock.
samiam
Just for starters, Hayden seems to be a big part of this. That evil fukkk should not get off scott free. Trying these aholes for war crimes will never happen but has got to be something that can be done.
Cheney would be the next one to go after but that on is probably a harder nut to crack. Can;t do anything about G Dubya the Texas sized dummy. He can just claim ignorance and even I will believe that.
Bill Arnold
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
The first 6 pages are summary, the rest is report. At least I hope so at 525 pages. (“Findings and Conclusions” start at page 7)
C.V. Danes
Read it and know that, horrendous as it is, it is merely the tip of the iceberg. The reality was certainly far, far worse.
srv
Surely, this is not what Dick meant when he said “the gloves are off”
How could anyone misunderstand that?
But this is children’s tea time compared to what happened in the 80’s in Central America. We just trained other people to do it for us.
RedDirtGirl
Betty – How is your dog doing?
Cervantes
@GregB:
Actually, it was Pinochet’s regime that was the Americanizing of Chile.
You could even say we were, quite literally, their September 11.
Betty Cracker
@Edmund Dantes: Sadly, we’ve come to expect our government to engage in appalling abuses and cover it up. When an administration breaks that pattern, it deserves credit for behaving with more honor and integrity than its predecessors.
Judge Crater
Just reading the first few pages is appalling.
EconWatcher
Home of the brave, indeed. We suffered one horrible terrorist attack that completely pales in comparison to what many countries saw on a regular basis in WWII, and for that we were willing to openly abdandon all of our supposed principles. It’s sheer cowardice. Don’t call Cheney a barbarian; he’d wear that with pride. Call him what he is: a snivelling, pathetic coward.
TooManyJens
Can’t wait to get called an America-hater by people who are OK with America doing the things in this report.
shelley
Have to laugh how so many on the right are bleating that this could give fodder to our ‘enemies.’ LOL, you think any of this will a shock to them?
Betty Cracker
@RedDirtGirl: Better, thanks! She has a “sprained tail,” if you can believe it.
scav
Ah yes, that Bright and Shining City on a Hill, Illuminating All as a Blessed Vision of Utter Moral Perfection Foam Fingers Amen that we were supposedly exporting and bringing others at the point of benevolent fully-automatic arms. Here beginith the teaser to the real gospel. Let us attend: The Acts of Redacted.
BGinCHI
American Exceptionalism!!
Also, fuck pants-pisser Nicolle Wallace.
America is Great because shut up that’s why. Great countries panic with Great Alacrity!
I hate these people.
beltane
They hate us for our freedoms!
Joseph Nobles
The torture is going to get the headlines. But the real story is the lengths the CIA went to in order to avoid oversight.
shelley
@TooManyJens: There was some chick on ‘Morning Joe’ who kept repeating how she’d want our country ‘to do anything, anything to find things out and keep us safe…’ I swear to god she was practically salivating.
After more reading here…could that have been Nicolle Wallace?
rikyrah
is anyone actually surprised by the report?
come on, now.
D58826
Unfortunately nothing good will come of this. One political party views torture as a patriotic virtue and the other party won’t leave the house because they are terrified of their own shadow.
All the report will due is drive the partisan poison even deeper into the political system. Truely a sad day for America and all of it self-inflicted.
Iowa Old Lady
It wouldn’t surprise me if violence broke out in response to this summary. I’m sure the right will say they told us so and how could we do that? But releasing it is the right thing to do for our understanding of and control over our own government’s actions.
EconWatcher
@shelley: That was Nicole Wallace.
D58826
@shelley: The chick was Nicolle Wallace, former Bush flack
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
Only that they were actually able to release it.
Iowa Old Lady
One of the most important elements of this summary is the conclusion that torture was unnecessary for getting good information. The idea that torture works is far too widespread.
We used to watch a TV show with a CIA agent. I can’t anymore. The torture porn is too sickening.
dedc79
This is a nice, concise example of all that was wrong about the Bush era CIA/Justice Department:
beltane
@shelley: Our “enemies” were the ones at the receiving end of these crimes, of course they were aware of it. The only “fodder” on offer here is for those of us who will give an answer of “F-ck You!” to those idiots who bleat “But why do they hate us?”
Cacti
After WWII, the US tried Japanese military prison guards for war crimes for the practice of waterboarding captured American military personnel.
The GOP now defends the practices of the Imperial Japanese Army.
scav
@rikyrah: Surprised, no. The report isn’t for us or our ilk.
Cervantes
@Bill Arnold:
No, the full report is thousands of pages long, if you care to imagine such a document.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@shelley: Nicole Walllace.
And no one pointed out, I’m sure, that three thousand people were, in fact, blown out, obliterated on a New York City morning, three months after Condi Rice did or did not read aloud to her boss a memo that she believes was entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike In The United States”, and about three weeks after the Idiot Princeling of Walker’s Point told a CIA official “Okay, you’ve covered your ass now.” Nine months after DIck Cheney disbanded the committee charged with tracking Bin Laden, et cetera, et cetera. And we didn’t torture anybody to get the intelligence her bosses ignored.
Iowa Old Lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The amazing thing about Nicole Wallace is that even she couldn’t stomach Sarah Palin. She says she didn’t vote for McCain.
ETA: Sorry, Palin is way OT from this serious subject but I am still amazed.
schrodinger's cat
Its not just Bush and his cronies and the courtier press who are to blame. The people who vote for the Republicans election after election are culpable too.
schrodinger's cat
@Iowa Old Lady: Too uncouth for Ms. High Mighty, was she?
beth
And how long before Lindsey Graham shows up on my tv to tell me the report is full of shit? I’m guessing this afternoon some time.
Spinwheel
What leads any of you to believe that this still sn’t going on right now?
Belafon
“Now that we know that the President once authorized torture, the President, Obama, should be punished, and Democrats should not be allowed to be president.” – Generic Republican
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Not when you consider that the man who wanted to put her at the center of these discussions and a heartbeat away from these decisions is still treated as a Elder Statesman and policy Wise Man by the people who control our political discourse.
JMG
Let’s face the facts. Republicans are criticizing this report because they believe torture of nonwhite foreigners is a political winner and they’re right. In a national referendum, torture would win by a mile. That report is who we are as a country.
cmorenc
@Iowa Old Lady:
B.b.but according to the movie “Zero Dark Thirty” info extracted via torture was essential to finding and getting Bin Laden. Query: how many people will read this Senate report compared to how many people saw the movie?
Iowa Old Lady
@cmorenc: God. I may have to despair.
SatanicPanic
@Spinwheel: What leads you to believe that it is?
schrodinger's cat
@Iowa Old Lady: You can thank 24 for that.
schrodinger's cat
Has the MSM’s favorite Senator and POW offered any nuggets of wisdom yet?
Bobby Thomson
@Bill Arnold: No, the actual report is thousands of pages.
Tom Q
@cmorenc: if you took that away from Zero Dark Thirty, you saw something I didn’t see. The movie acknowledged torture took place; at no point did it explicitly say the info gained was crucial, or even helpful.
Sorry if this is an old argument for some, but I think Zero Dark Thirty is an excellent, thoughtful film, and I think it’s been politically mischaracterized from the start.
samiam
Wankers always gotta find something to wank about. All of you wanking off about oh noezzz it’s just a summaryzzzzz. The full report is reported over 6000pages. Not one of you whiners are going to read that. I doubt any of you has read war and piece which comes in at around 1400pages and 560,000 words.
None of you wankers are going to read the 600 page summary either. You are too busy looking for the next shiny object to wank over….when not getting distracted by laser pointers
beth
@JMG: Precisely – these are people who just spent the last few weeks and months convincing themselves that Michael Brown, Eric Garner. John Crawford and Tamir Rice got exactly what they deserved – and they were Americans! Who cares what we do to the scary Mooslim terrorists.
D58826
The sad fact is that ‘American exceptionalism’ means we don’t have to play by any rules and the ends justify any means
Jim, Foolish Literalist
He’s got a relevant quote that I can’t copy.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Bill Arnold: Nope, that 525 pages is all “executive summary”. The actual report is about 3500 pages long.
RP
Anyone who says that Obama, Feinstein, et al don’t deserve credit for this can blow me. This is a big f**king deal and I’m proud to be a Democrat because of stuff like this.
Mandalay
@D58826:
The report was produced solely by the party that you claim are terrified of their own shadow.
You might want to revise your trolling tactics.
Bob In Portland
But it’s okay because nothing changes.
Everything’s the same. There is no change.
No One of Consequence
@samiam: I would advise going and rubbing one out before commenting further. You seem to have wanking on the forebrain and it is coloring your prose…
– NOoC
GregB
@schrodinger’s cat: Christ…”all people…even our enemies deserve basic human rights”..
He’s grown 10 feet in stature.
Outstandingly defending release and disclosure and commending Sen. Feinstein.
Mandalay
@schrodinger’s cat:
He completely supports the release of the report and its findings: http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/12/09/bgcom-feinstein/U9iXNkIZfmxCiZpVHo6WHP/story.html
McCain is still an asshole, but not on this issue.
Cacti
@RP:
I’m fairly ashamed of John Kerry’s behavior in trying to get the report buried.
Mike in NC
@Iowa Old Lady: “I Spy” starred Robert Culp and a lovable guy by the name of Bill Cosby.
Torture and rape are great American traditions.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@GregB: That’s McCain? I’ll be damned. If he could let go of some of his arrogant delusions he would almost the man he thinks he is.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@JMG: Quoted for simple truth.
@Spinwheel: Hope for a better world dies hard. It probably still is going on.
boatboy_srq
@Iowa Old Lady: “Violence” is breaking out anyway, and has been for a considerable amount of time, long before this. The GOTea would like back to this event if there were a riot in Baghdad twenty years from now. This is not a circumstance where they will ever admit they were wrong about that prediction, no matter how long it takes them to be “proven” right.
@TooManyJens: Given that to the Teahad there are only Gawd-Fearing Xtian Hetero Real Ahmurrican Patriots™ and Evil IslamoFascoSoshulist Takers™, I expect that you’d (we’d) be called that already, and that having that name flung at you (us) isn’t much of a stretch. “Ahmurrca-Haters” includes anyone advocating responsible progressive taxation and rational environmental/corporate/financial/labor regulations, after all.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Cacti: I’m horrified. The man has just sold off any claim to heroism he ever had, which puts him in good company with John McCain, who only now is taking the right side of the issue now that he understands it will be another hit to the black guy he hates so much.
Iowa Old Lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: McCain’s POW experience is relevant here for a change. Apparently being tortured yourself teaches you what havoc you can create for your own people if you decide the Geneva Convention is optional
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
John McCain has been consistently anti-torture.
schrodinger's cat
Well good for McCain! How many other principled Republican Congress critters agree with him?
Valdivia
Glad to see McCain saying what he is saying but will be supremely annoyed that the news will be his bravery instead of the awfulness of this report. And–that many people have been saying what he is saying today but the Village only credit it and believe it when he says it. Ugh, enraged today.
Michael Bersin
From 2008:
A Small Clique Of Legal Extremists…
There’s so much more to this:
“International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
– in force September 8, 1992
Article 4. 1 . In time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation and the existence of which is officially proclaimed, the States Parties to the present Covenant may take measures derogating from their obligations under the present Covenant to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, provided that such measures are not inconsistent with their other obligations under international law and do not involve discrimination solely on the ground of race, colour, sex, language, religion or social origin.
2. No derogation from articles 6, 7, 8 (paragraphs I and 2), 11, 15, 16 and 18 may be made under this provision. 3. Any State Party to the present Covenant availing itself of the right of derogation shall immediately inform the other States Parties to the present Covenant, through the intermediary of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, of the provisions from which it has derogated and of the reasons by which it was actuated. A further communication shall be made, through the same intermediary, on the date on which it terminates such derogation.
Article 7. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.
Article 16. Everyone shall have the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”
And in court:
“United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT
Argued September 14, 2007 Decided January 11, 2008
No. 06-5209
SHAFIQ RASUL ET AL.,
APPELLANTS/CROSS-APPELLEES
v.
RICHARD MYERS, AIR FORCE GENERAL ET AL.,
APPELLEES/CROSS-APPELLANTS
Consolidated with
06-5222
Appeals from the United States District Court
for the District of Columbia
(No. 04cv01864)
….We believe that RFRA’s use of “person” should be interpreted consistently with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of “person” in the Fifth Amendment and “people” in the Fourth Amendment to exclude non-resident aliens. Because the plaintiffs are aliens and were located outside sovereign United States territory at the time their alleged RFRA claim arose,26 they do not fall with the definition of “person.” Accordingly, the district court erred in denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ RFRA claim…. ”
Gee, one paragraph solves the whole problem, doesn’t it?
different-church-lady
@samiam: I’ve read Ulysses, so fuck you. :-p
ETA: you’re not wrong about the laser pointers.
schrodinger's cat
@Bob In Portland: I suggest moving to the bastion of free thought and liberty that is Putin’s Russia.
Mandalay
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
You are right about Kerry – his behavior was despicable. But you are completely wrong about McCain jumping on the bandwagon – he has a long record of condemning torture.
Epicurus
I’m starting to come around to support the suggestion, made this morning on the Times Op-Ed page by the head of the ACLU; let Obama go ahead and pardon Bush, Cheney et al. We all know they will never be prosecuted, but at least by pardoning them, there will be a tacit understanding that these were criminal acts. Let a bit of sunshine in, shall we?
schrodinger's cat
@Mandalay: But he embraced Bush all the same to become his party’s nominee. Not so principled actually.
schrodinger's cat
@Epicurus: There is no statute of limitations on war crimes is there?
Just One More Canuck
@schrodinger’s cat: nuggets of wisdom or turds of wisdom
different-church-lady
@Cacti: Anne Laurie is not sorry she left you with that impression.
Belafon
@schrodinger’s cat: And wouldn’t this report make it even harder for Bush and Cheney to leave the country?
Valdivia
@RP: agreed.
artem1s
I think the assumption that no one will be shocked by the report is going to be surprised. The media, TV, Faux News, chickenhawks, etc. have been selling the idea that torture ain’t so bad for a long time. How many times has O’Reilly or Limbaugh implied that if liberals had their way, the CIA, NSA, whoever, wouldn’t even be allowed to ask harsh questions or speak in raised voices. They have pretty much sold the lie that the Geneva Convention pretty much caused 9/11.
I think a lot of people will be shocked because they don’t sit around all day dreaming up ways to hideously hurt people and can’t imagine what that would actually look like. They hear torture and they imagine Jack Bauer slugging some guy for a couple of minutes and then he spills his guts. I’ve only read one small excerpt and my immediate reaction was “who in hell would imagine that this would lead to anything but psychotic ranting and incoherent desperate lies?”
The guys who did this weren’t trying to get evidence. They were psychotic serial killers providing snuff p0rn to Shrub and Gonzalez when they got tired of watching death row inmates get fried. Maybe, some people will finally get an idea of just how depraved these fuckers were/are.
schrodinger's cat
So how many Sunday talk shows will feature Dick Cheney or the Cheney Spawn?
Citizen_X
Speaking of torture pr0n, “rectal fucking feeding“???!!!???
Time for a update of Human Centipede.
KG
@artem1s:
we’ve known since the middle ages that torture (or putting one to the question, as they use to say) would lead to prisoners saying anything, usually “what they think you want to hear”, just to make it stop.
Iowa Old Lady
@artem1s: I think about the people who carried out the torture policy. Either they were sickened and followed orders anyway, in which case I hope the VA gave them better mental health coverage than we’ve read about. Or they weren’t sickened, in which case, I hope they’re not in positions of power over other people now.
srv
See, government bureaucracy can be very efficient when you cut out all the middle men.
Mandalay
@schrodinger’s cat:
Hardly relevant, and I would never accuse McCain of being principled. But his opposition to torture is rock solid. If you have links that show otherwise let’s see them.
Mandalay
Lindsay Graham is live on the Senate floor assuring us that the CIA had good intentions, and questioning the accuracy of the report.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/12/09/bgcom-feinstein/U9iXNkIZfmxCiZpVHo6WHP/story.html
KG
@Mandalay: oh, Senator Butters… I’d say bless his heart, but I think I despise him too much to even go that way
catclub
@Edmund Dantes:
Also Jesus. Love your enemy. It is easy to love your friend.
Cacti
Fans of waterboarding:
1. General Hideki Tojo, Imperial Japanese Army
2. Vice President Richard Cheney, United States of America
Thank you. That is all.
Spinwheel
@Mandalay: McCain certainly looks better than Obama in all this.
schrodinger's cat
@Mandalay: He opposed torture but embraced the torturer-in-chief and his policies. Well Ok then, that is very principled.
D58826
@Mandalay: Not really. The D’s went along with the entire Iraqi misadventure, they haven’t exactly had Obama back on Gitmo,, support for the patriot act, largely silent on the NSA data collection. While they deserve credit for releasing the report, all to often they have simply gone along so as not to look weak on national defense. The GOP has been wielding that hammer since at least 1950 and it still seems to work.
KG
ok, so I just clicked over to Hewitt’s blog just to see what folks on the right are saying. Basically, it’s irresponsible to release the summary/report and anything that happens abroad is now the fault of releasing the summary/report. But this is my favorite part:
that’s some impressive cognitive dissonance ya got there.
ETA: shockingly, nothing about the report at NRO (home of John Yoo)
Cacti
Question for any waterboarding apologist out there:
Was the US wrong for trying Japanese prison guards as war criminals for waterboarding American soldiers?
Spinwheel
@D58826: Or maybe Americans think Democrats suck on foreign policy after promising to get us out of a ten-year nightmare in Iraq and Afghanistan and then Obama lied us into another ten-year war in Syria.
Jack the Second
@srv:
Surely not. You’d almost certainly want to wear gloves to do most of the things they did.
scav
@srv:
It really was run exactly like a modern business.
lol
@Mandalay:
He voted against the 2008 anti-torture bill and urged Bush to veto it.
so principal
much maverik
wow
D58826
@Spinwheel: can’t argue with you on that one. And don’t forget Libya!
different-church-lady
@Spinwheel: Oh heck, Obama hasn’t even gotten us out of Germany yet.
different-church-lady
@D58826: …because it’s idiotic.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mandalay: And a long record of voting to allow it, and an even longer record of helping elect people who do it.
That’s not principled. That’s rank hypocrisy.
Cacti
@Spinwheel:
Okay, stop right there.
Which Democrat campaigned on getting us out of Afghanistan?
Quotes please.
Alex S.
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Even 6700 pages, as it says in the foreword.
Mike E
@Cacti:
ftfy
wilfred
No attempt or even thought of justice, eh? Kudos for what, precisely?
schrodinger's cat
Pravda on the Potomac is still calling it “interrogation techniques”.
D58826
@Cacti: I think Obama talked about ending our combat role by 2015 but it wasn’t a central part of the campaign. That promise of course is no ‘inoperative’ as a former leader once said.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
There is a UN Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity (1968).
You can guess whether the US has signed or ratified this convention.
Alex S.
I think that the culpability of the Bush government is limited though, this is primarily the ‘fault’ of the CIA. Of course, the Bush government was still responsible for the Iraq War itself and the ‘flexibility’ in interpreting the definition of torture/enhanced interrogation, but the CIA employed some sick puppies who took it to the extreme. It must have been the ‘Deep State’ that fought the release of this report, i.e. the bureaucrats and semi-public figures of the intelligence agencies. Extremely dirty stuff. The fault of the Bush government then was to invite this perversion by blurring the lines. Cheney must be responsible for loosening the leash on the CIA.
Mandalay
@CONGRATULATIONS!: You said McCain is “only now is taking the right side of the issue”. That’s just complete bullshit.
And if you really want to get high and mighty about hypocrisy on voting records, let’s see you calling out Clinton, Kerry, Biden, Feinstein, et al for their past actions as well. They gave plenty of support to Bush and the CIA, and none of them have come close to McCain in their opposition to torture.
Betty Cracker
@wilfred: Please see previous reply to a similar question.
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: How is your doggie’s tail? How did she manage to sprain it? Was it Patsy Marie or Daisy?
Bill Arnold
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I hope that use of the term “executive summary” is at least slightly a sly joke.
Tree With Water
There’s no crying in baseball, and no kudos in ‘redacted’.
Betty Cracker
@schrodinger’s cat: It was Patsy Marie, and she is better, thanks for asking, though not yet her waggy self. We think she injured her tail when hubby’s brother came over to visit this weekend. I didn’t see it, but hubby said she was leaping for joy (BIL is a favorite and hadn’t been over in a while) and landed awkwardly. He didn’t notice any issue with her at first, but they were outside and there were a lot of distractions. It was only later when we noticed she was hurt.
Suffern ACE
@schrodinger’s cat: No. But apparently they are bothered by “furries.” It’s an odd bunch.
Suffern ACE
@Bill Arnold: 200 pages are in a chapter called “Notes for your elevator conversation.”
wilfred
@Betty Cracker:
Maybe, but those are still terribly low expectations when the crimes are so heinous. I hope some of the outrage generated by the Brown and Garner killings, extra-judicial murders, as it were, is applied to what was far worse.
It’s hard for me to understand how the absence of accountability here, the absence of justice, does not imply the absence of justice elsewhere. To me, it’s all of a piece and this moment should be seized.
Cervantes
By what measure has the agency not been very effective?
D58826
@Alex S.: Nice try but the buck stops in the oval office. Bush was the ‘decider’ remember! The ‘I know nothing’ defense didn’t work at Nuremberg and neither did the ‘i was only following orders’.
Betty Cracker
@wilfred: I agree the standards are abysmally low, but see the polling data in Tim’s post above. That’s the world we’re living in.
Bob In Portland
@schrodinger’s cat: So your position is “America, Love It Or Leave It”?
And I bet you thought that you were a liberal, didn’t you?
D58826
@Betty Cracker: Our bassett broke his tail when he slide into a door while chasing his ball. We didn’t notice anything until the Vet mentioned it on the next visit. Only impact was it would have disqualified him from being a show dog. Of course the only thing Uncle Wally wanted to ‘show’ was how quickly he could get to the dinner bowl.
Betty Cracker
@Cervantes: By the measure of its organizational mission, which is as follows:
The CIA has repeatedly been caught with its pants down, from 9/11 to the rise of ISIS.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
If that’s meant as a defense of anything, it’s somewhat pitiful.
Michael Bersin
@Cacti:
“Changi Prison, October 1943
… The Japanese were trying to establish that there was a spy organization in Changi Prison which received and transmitted by radio telephony, which had established contacts in the town for the purpose of sabotage and [12937] stirring up of anti-Japanese feeling, and which collected money from outside for this purpose. In fact, there was no organization, no radio transmission and no attempt to promote anti-Japanese activities outside the Camp…[12939]
…Usually interrogations started quietly and would continue as long as the inquisitors got the expected answers. If, for any reason, such answers were not forthcoming, physical violence was immediately…
…[12940] employed. The methods used were:
(1) Water Torture. There were two forms of water torture. In the first, the victim was tied or held down on his back and a cloth placed over his nose and mouth. Water was then poured on the cloth…
International Military Tribunal for the Far East – Proceedings, p. 12,936.”
“The witness saw Chinese, Malay and Indian prisoners tortured and stated that three Chinese died after undergoing water torture.
International Military Tribunal for the Far East – Proceedings, p. 12,959.
(5) The prisoner was blindfolded, then a large quantity of water slowly poured into his mouth and nostrils, so that the prisoner suffocated.
International Military Tribunal for the Far East – Proceedings, p. 12,982.
MR. JUSTICE MANSFIELD: These documents describe the torture of the witnesses by… who beat and kicked them and ordered them to be tortured by the water method.
International Military Tribunal for the Far East – Proceedings, p. 13,186.
When…did not succeed in getting anything out of me, he gave me the water test. ..I was tied to the bench with my hands cuffed on my back. At a certain moment my agony was such that I broke the handcuffs…
International Military Tribunal for the Far East – Proceedings, p. 13,684.
…Professor DE VRIES suffered the watertest 22 times during a period of 2 months, and his interrogation amounted to 500 hours in toto. Prosecution document 5750.
International Military Tribunal for the Far East – Proceedings, p. 13,686.
TORTURE
Various tortures were administered during interrogation, the main one being ‘Water Torture,’ which is done by laying a person flat on a bench with his head overhanging one end. A funnel is then placed in the mouth and water forced into the abdomen and the lungs. The torturer then jumps on the stomach of his victim, producing a drowning sensation.
International Military Tribunal for the Far East – Proceedings, p. 14,168.
The water treatment consisted of lashing a man down face up across the desk top. A bath towel is then so rolled as to form a circle around his nose and mouth, and a five-gallon can of water, which was generally with the vilest of human refuse and other filth, such as kerosene, was then put handy. The man was then [14182] questioned, and if he did not respond, the water was poured into the space made by the bath towel, forcing the prisoner either to swallow and…
…inhale the vile concoction or to strangle himself. This is kept up, questioning between doses, until the man is at a point of unconsciousness. Shortly before unconsciousness is reached, the man is frequently beaten across the belly with a small iron rod.. After consciousness has left, he is usually suspended by the heels from a tackle overhead and the water allowed to drain out of him. When he has sufficiently recuperated, the treatment is resumed.
International Military Tribunal for the Far East – Proceedings, p. 14,181.”
Bobby Thomson
@Mandalay: some cracks in that rock.
skerry
I find it noteworthy that while the names of the staffers who assembled the report are known, those of the torturers are redacted.
Valdivia
wow I go away and come back and now McCain is the hero in this and Obama is the bad guy. Backs away slowly and goes to another thread.
schrodinger's cat
@Bob In Portland:
Not at all. I have been critical of US policies right here in this thread. You on the other hand seems to think that Mother Russia is never wrong.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker:
There is a lot of ambiguity in that mission statement.
Tree With Water
@wilfred: The United States hanged Japanese war criminals/torturers a mere 70 years ago for the same crimes that Bush/Cheney nowadays publicly exalt as being righteous. Those were the days…
wilfred
You have to laugh, really. Below this is a post on prosecuting the police, with the absolute uncertainty that no one will be prosecuted for torturing and maiming brown people. Does anyone actually need to have the dots connected here?
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes: I am not defending anything, least of all torture. I am just tired of BiP’s posts (in any and every thread) of how about how terrible everything is over here and how Russians are the paragons of all virtue.
Bobby Thomson
@Mandalay:
OK, they all suck on this and he’s the coolest kid in Sunday School class.
schrodinger's cat
@Valdivia: Funny isn’t it how everything is Obama’s fault. According to NYT the policy brutality against black men is also too, Obama’s fault and is going to mar his legacy or some such crap.
different-church-lady
@Bob In Portland:
I believe Cat’s position could be more accurately described as, “Kindly shut the fuck up.”
different-church-lady
@Cervantes:
I believe Cat had the ball on that play.
Bobby Thomson
@Betty Cracker: That’s Republican logic; i.e., even after spending money on public education some kids don’t graduate, so public education doesn’t work.
catclub
@Mandalay:
But not his votes. I wondered if you are being ironic.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2008/02/13/19566/mccain-waterboarding-fail/
schrodinger's cat
@Betty Cracker: Aaww poor thing, hope she feels better soon. My boss cat has a kinky tail, I wonder if it is birth defect or whether he broke it when he was a kitten and before we adopted him.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
Glad your retort was not meant as a defense. As for his comment — the one to which you responded — your paraphrase (in bold) seems untethered from he actually said, which was a comparison to what we did in Vietnam, not an encomium to Russians.
But never mind me. Just carry on.
Betty Cracker
@Bobby Thomson:
Oh bullshit. It’s like saying, “Hey, the Department of Education not only DIDN’T help kids graduate, it removed their brains via power drills and shop-vacs, so let’s rethink this Department of Education thing.”
bluefoot
Does anyone know where I can find a pdf that I can download that doesn’t require a login?
Michael Bersin
@Cervantes:
“Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties
– entered into force internationally on January 27, 1980
Article 53. Treaties conflicting with a peremptory norm of general international law (jus cogens). A treaty is void if, at the time of its conclusion, it conflicts with a peremptory norm of general international law. For the purposes of the present Convention, a peremptory norm of general international law is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of States as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character.”
Though the United States isn’t a signatory to this convention, it is to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and and Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The ICCPR specifically states that derogation of the prohibition of torture by order, law, or treaty is never a possibility under the treaty (we signed and ratified it) even in a “time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation.” That means torture is never acceptable, nor can anyone be “pardoned” (at least under international law) for the crime of torture if they haven’t faced the judgement of a competent tribunal.
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes: I usually don’t read his wall of comments, since they all say the same thing. The United States is evil and Russians are poor misunderstood folks, and Ukrainians are fascists.
ETA: He does make an occasional point that is not completely moronic. Anyway, flame away.
Betty Cracker
@bluefoot: Right here.
bluefoot
@Betty Cracker: Awesome. Thank you.
Cervantes
@Michael Bersin:
Sure, but the question was specifically about a statute of limitations.
Cacti
The real head scratcher for me is the Republicans’ objection that this information damages our standing abroad.
The entire world already knows that we tortured detainees. The only remaining questions were about the scope and the exact methods used.
No One of Consequence
@Betty Cracker: I would add to that Pakistan setting off a nuke. Seems like the CIA should have known a little something about that one, before they heard the atomic ‘booom’…
– NOoC
Michael Bersin
There are four major human rights which are non-derogable under the peremptory norms of international law (jus cogens).You have the right to live (a prohibition of the extrajudicial killing of a human being – this could evolve over time to a prohibition of capital punishment). You have the right to not be enslaved. You have the right to not be tortured. You have the right to not be retroactively prosecuted (for doing something that was legal when you did it, but is now illegal).
Michael Bersin
@Cervantes:
I’m not certain there’s a statute of limitations on violations of non-derogable human rights.
wilfred
@Michael Bersin:
We’ll just have to wait til the end of forever.
Bill Arnold
@Suffern ACE:
The section titled “Executive Summary” starts at page 27, and claims to be 499 pages long.
What do people think of the redactions? Are there any that people are finding especially odious?
Bob In Portland
@schrodinger’s cat: What is it that America releases a report on torture and you feel obligated to defend it by telling me to leave America?
As you may remember, I was told a few days ago that America wasn’t fascist because killing black men is merely a continuation of Jim Crow laws. It’s an odd defense of America, but hey, maybe our torture is merely a continuation of the torture we did in Vietnam, so maybe Mnem is right. Nothing’s changed, so it’s not so bad to drag out the “F” word that we’re not supposed to use here.
Not that looking into the special forces/Green Beret formation and finding out that ex-Nazis were brought into Fort Bragg to teach interrogation techniques to our heroes. Or that those techniques were in turn taught to our freedom-loving allies at the School Of The Americas.
My only comment on Putin here is that he is acting rationally on behalf of his country and if you don’t understand his rationality you don’t understand anything beyond the propaganda being directed at Russia.
But we weren’t even talking that. We were talking about torture. I just pointed to our historical use of it. It didn’t start with Bush and Cheney.
Bob In Portland
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m looking over my original post, which was about America’s Phoenix Program. You know what? Not a word about Russia or Putin. I guess as far as cat is concerned I’m discussing Russia even when I’m not discussing Russia.
Let’s try again. The US spent seventy years backing Ukrainian fascists by supporting a guerrilla war there into the early fifties. The US imported tens of thousands of Nazis and fascists into the US (and Canada, too) and with the help of various religious and political formations exported more fascists to places all around the world. Many post-war governments set up under the US umbrella were made up of ex-fascists. You may or may not have known that.
Vicky Nuland said that the US spent five billion on regime change in Ukraine. There was a coup. Nuland’s predictions for the coup government were remarkably accurate. There are now Ukrainian military units wearing swastikas on their helmets, killing people in eastern Ukraine.
So a torture report comes out and you feel obligated to defend America by saying, “America, love it or leave it.” Okay, cat.
schrodinger's cat
@Bob In Portland: Show me a comment where I defend torture?
Bobby Thomson
@Betty Cracker: No, because you’re just looking at publicized failures. You don’t have the counterfactual in which the CIA never exists, so you don’t know what events would have happened that didn’t, and vice versa.
Bob In Portland
@schrodinger’s cat:
You feel obligated to defend the “situation” of America torturing by telling me, “America, love it or leave it.”
Your comment was an attack on me. You were defending something, or do you just knee-jerk snarl at any comment I make? What were you defending?
You see, that’s why I’ve suggested that BJers might consider a deeper look at American propaganda and how they’ve been affected by it. You reacted just like how right-wingers reacted in 1968.
I would also suggest that having a contest to see who has more blame is wasted effort. Bush, Obama, Cheney, McCain. Because if I linked to, say, something about Cheney and Rumsfeld working on martial law plans back in the 80s or 90s, you would think that showing details of the behind-the-scenes scaffolding of the new order is merely conspiracy theory and then you’d be obligated to mention that Putin rides horses and doesn’t wear a shirt.
You would do better to try to understand how torture has been and continues to be part of our nation’s bag of tricks since WWII.
Yes, I know that Mnem will pop up to defend the US by saying that someone in 1922 tortured someone else, so it’s all part of the Great Mandala of the US, so nothing’s changed. My position is that it has changed and chumps like you didn’t notice and now won’t admit it. I’m not even sure if there’s any proof that would make you reconsider.
I can still see myself pinned against a car by two Young Americans for Freedom while a third approached me swinging a wrench. Election day, 1968, downtown Newark. Things haven’t changed that much. You’re not that much different than that guy with the wrench.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Vicky Nuland said that the US spent five billion on regime change in Ukraine
No, she didn’t.
There was a coup
No, there wasn’t.
There are now Ukrainian military units wearing swastikas on their helmets, killing people in eastern Ukraine.
No, there aren’t.
schrodinger's cat
@Bob In Portland: In your world, sarcasm=threat of violence. Got it. Bye now, it has been delightful chatting with you.
Betty Cracker
@Bobby Thomson: Now who’s making a classic Republican argument? The CIA has perpetrated too many horrors to document in this space, even BEFORE 9/11. The way it has operated has been a disgrace to this country, and moreover, an INCOMPETENT disgrace. Burn it down and start over.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
À propos of nothing, would you say that thuggery and intellectual thuggery are similar?
DQuirk
@samiam: right on the mark
The Hague criminal tribunal must prosecute !
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes: 1. Define intellectual thuggery. 2. Did you just call me a thug?
If being sarcastic of BiP’s commentary makes me a thug, then so be it.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
Your (1) is the question I asked you.
My answer to your (2) is no.
different-church-lady
@Bob In Portland:
So people were sick of your shit even back then?
Cervantes
@different-church-lady:
“Young Americans for Freedom” were Bill Buckley’s wild boys. If they were sick of you, you were doing something right.
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes: I had no idea, so BiP called me a hoodlum for Bill Buckeley. Wow. I am speechless. In my comments here or on my own blog, I have never threatened anyone, not even in jest.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: You gave me a dirty look once. I was hurt by it.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
No idea who meant to call you what but, yes, Buckley’s YAF was a thing back then; and no, you don’t strike me as the malevolent type, either, for what it’s worth.
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Beware, I am a menacing thug all 5 ft 3 inches of me. Next time it won’t just be a look. I might say something snarky.
different-church-lady
@Cervantes: What a shame Bob stopped.
Villago Delenda Est
At the behest of the deserting coward and the Dark Lord.