"We Tortured Some Folks": CIA Lied To Congress, Senate Torture Report Reveals

[Christian Liberty]

President Obama Praises "Patriotic" Torturers, Says USA "Greatest Force For Human Dignity The World Has Ever Seen"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-1...man-dignity-wo

I'm not defending Obama here, nor do I necessarily believe he'll end torture, but consider this...

Obama is at least giving lip service to the idea that torture is wrong. Republicans regularly defend it. I tend to think Obama was a tad bit better than Romney...

[vita3]

The report needed to be released. GOP would have buried it.

Absolute worse part I picked up on was CIA psychologists who created the torture program & participated themselves. They & other private contractors had no working knowledge of Al-queda.

So the agency was just torturing people, NOT stopping new attacks, understanding the "enemy", etc.

Perpetual, fraudulent war.

Haven't heard the media focus on this crucial fact

[Suzanimal]

The report needed to be released. GOP would have buried it.

Absolute worse part I picked up on was CIA psychologists who created the torture program & participated themselves. They & other private contractors had no working knowledge of Al-queda.

So the agency was just torturing people, NOT stopping new attacks, understanding the "enemy", etc.

Perpetual, fraudulent war.

Haven't heard the media focus on this crucial fact

Just reading about that, sickening. Some were considered "too brutal", what kind of sicko does it take to come up with this stuff.

CIA paid psychologists $80m to devise and use torture techniques

A year later the contract was worth $180 million, although the contractors had been paid only $81 million by the time it was terminated in 2009.

While both psychologists had worked for the US Air Force, the report questions their suitability for the role.

"Neither psychologist had any experience as an interrogator, nor did either have specialised knowledge of al-Qaeda, a background in counter-terrorism, or any relevant cultural or linguistic expertise," it stated.

Despite that, the CIA approached them in 2002 for help after capturing Abu Zubaydah, a senior al-Qaeda figure.

They drew up a set of techniques based on the principle of "learned helplessness" - a theory developed in the 1960s from dogs that learned there was nothing they could do to avoid small electric shocks, and which continued to endure the shocks even when offered the chance of escape.

Zubaydah was kept in a brightly-lit all white room, with no facilities. His sleep was disrupted and loud noise constantly fed into the cell.

The CIA worked with Mitchell, Jessen & Associates to develop 20 enhanced techniques. Some were considered too brutal, eventually leaving 10 measures - including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and the use of stress positions.

While mock burials were not approved, the Department of Justice gave permission to allow insects to be used in a "confinement box".
...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...echniques.html

[Peace&Freedom]

Apart from the Snowden revelations, this report is probably the most important disclosure of CIA and other abusive intelligence programs since the Church hearings. Like in the '70's, we now have US Senate disclosed confirmation of massive conduct of 'evil ops' and the cover-up of same by the government. The fact that the Senate summary is doubtless cleaned up (and overstates the CIA's role to make them a scapegoat to cover the the entire establishment's sins) should not be overlooked.

Only the 600 page cleaned-up summary has been released to the public, not the 6,000 pages of classified documents that remain closed. Yet the FOX News/Neocon central command crowd claims even that is too much transparency. And that network played the "9-11, 9-11, WoT, WoT" card hard yesterday, saying that framework justifies the rough treatment "of just a couple of bad people" (Cavuto). The words "most of the tortured detainees were known to be innocent" strangely never passed the lips of the torture apologists during their all-day discussion of the report. I wonder why?

[Cleaner44]

The American public pays government employees to commit crimes against humanity.

[Suzanimal]

Of course not...

CIA unlikely to lose power in wake of interrogation report

...

The Senate report is a substantial blow to the CIA’s reputation, one that raises fundamental questions about the extent to which the agency can be trusted. And yet, as in those previous instances of political and public outrage, the agency is expected to emerge from the investigatory rubble with its role and power in Washington largely intact.

Indeed, the CIA is in many ways at a position of unmatched power. Its budgets have been swollen by billions of dollars in counterterrorism expenditures. Its workforce has surged. Its overseas presence has expanded. And its arsenal now includes systems, including a fleet of armed drones, that would have made prior generations of CIA leaders gasp.

...

“What’s happened has already happened,” said William Banks, director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University. “No, nothing will change. The CIA is right there, in every place the United States is in,” conducting lethal drones strikes and paramilitary operations and gathering intelligence.

...

Even so, the cycle of investigations has coincided with an era of dramatic expansion of authority and resources for the agency. Much of that CIA windfall has gone directly to the agency’s Counterterrorism Center, the entity that ran the secret prisons and interrogation program. The CTC’s workforce went from a few hundred to more than 2,000. Its expanded resources and authorities have enabled it to launch an array of covert programs, including the drone campaigns in Yemen and Pakistan.

Even in recent months as tensions over the interrogation report mounted, U.S. officials said, senior CIA officers who were involved in the discredited interrogation program routinely took part in classified briefings on Capitol Hill where they were congratulated on their counterterrorism work.

...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...d=pm_world_pop

[JK/SEA]

Of course not...

MIC...

thats all you need to know.

[presence]

Other detainees with broken legs and feet were inappropriately forced to sit in stress positions

You know... making detainees sit in stress positions with broken feet is pretty $#@!ed up and all... but the first thing that comes to my mind is why are there apparently so many detainees WITH broken legs and feet?

Have we been institutionally crippling detainees?

11/7/2014

Pakistani Christians Burned Alive Were Attacked by 1,200 People



 
 



By Wajahat S. Khan and Alexander Smith ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A mob accused of burning alive a Christian couple in an industrial kiln in Pakistan allegedly wrapped a pregnant mother in cotton so she would catch fire more easily, according to family members who witnessed the attack.
Sajjad Maseeh, 27, and his wife Shama Bibi, 24, were set upon by at least 1,200 people after rumors circulated that they had burned verses from the Quran, family spokesman Javed Maseeh told NBC News via telephone late Thursday.





Their legs were also broken so they couldn't run away.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pa...le-kin-n243386

[enhanced_deficit]

You know... making detainees sit in stress positions with broken feet is pretty $#@!ed up and all... but the first thing that comes to my mind is why are there apparently so many detainees WITH broken legs and feet?

Have we been institutionally crippling detainees?

Do you you have a position on torture of suspected detainees during freedom spreading ? Are you for or against torture to make America safer?


Wrongly detained, some in blatant cases of mistaken identity
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/....t...Commonweal
8 hours ago - Religion in the CIA torture report ... a minimum of 20% of tortured detainees were wrongly detained, some in blatant cases of mistaken identity.



Some declassified details from so called "CIA Torture Report"

2. Those "rough" or "hard" takedowns involved CIA officers rushing into a detainee's cell, stripping him naked and running him up and down a long hall while slapping and punching him. "As they ran him along the corridor, a couple of times he fell and they dragged him through the dirt," the report says.

6. The CIA threatened the families of detainees. It used that prisoner's "fear for the well-being of his family to our benefit," according to the report, by "using 'vague threats' to create a 'mind virus.'" In another section, the report says "CIA officers also threatened at least three detainees with harm to their families -- to include threats to harm the children of a detainee, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee and a threat to 'cut [a detainee's] mother's throat.'"

8. "At least five CIA detainees were subjected to 'rectal rehydration' or rectal feeding without documented medical necessity," the report said. More specifically, "Majid Khan's 'lunch tray' of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins was 'pureed' and rectally infused."


9. The CIA officers involved in the detention and interrogation program weren't the most savory bunch. The group "included individuals who, among other issues, had engaged in inappropriate detainee interrogations, had workplace anger management issues and had reportedly admitted to sexual assault," the report said.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/09/politi...king-passages/


And disgraced SWC appointed this Abu Ghraib "torture teacher" to White House position:

Friday, Mar 25, 2011 05:26 PM EDT

Top Bush-era GITMO and Abu Ghraib psychologist is WH’s newest appointment

UPDATED: Meet the newest member of a White House Task Force on military families

Topics: Torture

Dr. Larry James
(Updated below with White House response)

One of the most intense scandals the field of psychology has faced over the last decade is the involvement of several of its members in enabling Bush’s worldwide torture regime. Numerous health professionals worked for the U.S. government to help understand how best to mentally degrade and break down detainees. At the center of that controversy was — and is — Dr. Larry James. James, a retired Army colonel, was the Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo in 2003, at the height of the abuses at that camp, and then served in the same position at Abu Ghraib during 2004.
Today, Dr. James circulated an excited email announcing, “with great pride,” that he has now been selected to serve on the “White House Task Force entitled Enhancing the Psychological Well-Being of The Military Family.” In his new position, he will be meeting at the White House with Michelle Obama and other White House officials on Tuesday.
For his work at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, Dr. James was the subject of two formal ethics complaints in the two states where he is licensed to practice: Louisiana and Ohio. Those complaints — 50 pages long and full of detailed and well-documented allegations — were filed by the International Human Rights Clinic of Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program, on behalf of veterans, mental health professionals and others. The complaints detailed how James “was the senior psychologist of the Guantánamo BSCT, a small but influential group of mental health professionals whose job it was to advise on and participate in the interrogations, and to help create an environment designed to break down prisoners.” Specifically:

During his tenure at the prison, boys and men were threatened with rape and death for themselves and their family members; sexually, culturally, and religiously humiliated; forced naked; deprived of sleep; subjected to sensory deprivation, over-stimulation, and extreme isolation; short-shackled into stress positions for hours; and physically assaulted. The evidence indicates that abuse of this kind was systemic, that BSCT health professionals played an integral role in its planning and practice. . . .

http://www.salon.com/2011/03/25/james_4/








Related

Hands up, Don't shoot











CIA Paid Torture Teachers More Than $80 Million


Army Psychologist Addresses Students at Colloquia

| November 17, 2009
Col. Larry C. James (ret.)
Col. Larry C. James (ret.), dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University, addressed Regent University's School of Psychology & Counseling (SPC) students on November 13, as part of the Doctor of Psychology (Psy.D.) 2009-2010 Colloquia Series.

[Lucille]

After Torture Report, Our Moral Authority As a Nation Is Gone
The torture report is nauseating, and the initial response almost equally so. We are in an existential leadership crisis with no way out.
http://reason.com/blog/2014/12/11/to...-lost-its-mora

We need to be clear about the ultimate import of the torture report, which covers a period from late 2001 through 2009 and whose release was unconscionably delayed for years. It won’t be the cause of lowered international esteem for America or even attacks on overseas personnel. No, that’s all due to the same old failed interventionist foreign policy, massive and ongoing drone attacks, and the proliferation of “dumb wars” over the past dozen years under both Republican and Democratic presidents and Congresses.

The torture report is simply the latest and most graphic incarnation of an existential leadership crisis that has eaten through Washington’s moral authority and ability to govern, in the way road salt and rust eat through car mufflers in a Buffalo winter. “America is great because she is good,” wrote Tocqueville back in the day. “If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” We’ve got a lot of explaining to do, not just to the rest of the world but to ourselves. How much longer will we countenance the post-9/11 national security state, which Edward Snowden’s ongoing revelations remind us are constantly mutating into new forms and outrages?

This is all far bigger than the run-of-the-mill awfulness of the past decade-plus of bipartisan blunders, mud-slinging, and scandals.

For most of the 21st century, faith in government has been fading like the last light sent off by a star that had died long before we even knew of its existence. Record low numbers of Americans trust the government to do the right thing and record high numbers see it as the biggest threat to the future. The 2000 presidential election was essentially decided by a coin toss, an unnerving reality from which we have never fully recovered. If the highest office in the land is governed by such caprice, maybe all of government is equally unmoored to anything other than a will to power and sheer luck. George W. Bush went into Iraq under specious circumstances. Under the most charitable interpretation, his administration was simply mistaken. Elected on a promise to undo Bush’s record on civil liberties, state surveillance, and foreign policy, Barack Obama arguably has been worse on every score. Is it any wonder that control of Congress is swinging back and forth like a tetherball?

The leadership in both parties is laughable and ineffective, incapable even of pushing a budget through in the official manner while missing no opportunity to sermonize on the real and imagined evils of their legislative adversaries. The torture report taunts both sides equally because in the final analysis, the difference between “How could you support this?” and “How could you let this happen?” is morally null and void.
[...]
Amazingly, the early response to the torture report is almost as nauseating as the document itself. “I don’t want to know about it, I think people do nasty things in the dark,” whinged Fox News correspondent Jesse Watters on Outnumbered. “They didn’t even interview any of the CIA interrogators to do the report.” In the rush to avert his gaze, Watters didn’t bother reading footnote 3 on page 9 of the report, which documents how the CIA said “it would not compel CIA personnel to participate in interviews” with the committee. Watters and other critics also ignore the fact that the whole report is based on CIA documents. The investigators didn’t bother interviewing any Gitmo prisoners, either.
[...]
But such criticisms don’t blunt the power of the torture report in any way, shape, or form. Even if the release was timed to shame the new Republican majority in Congress or pull the spotlight off Obamacare architect John Gruber’s pathetic testimony (as some conservatives allege), so what? Apologists for torture really are in no position to bitch and moan about the timing of revelations.

[Suzanimal]

This man...SMDH.

Cheney defends CIA interrogation techniques, calls Senate report 'deeply flawed'



WASHINGTON – Former Vice President Dick Cheney slammed the recently released Senate report on CIA interrogation techniques Wednesday, calling it “full of crap,” and a “terrible piece of work” that was “deeply flawed.”

Cheney, speaking on Fox News' “Special Report with Bret Baier,” said some of the controversial techniques used on militants had been previously tested and the interrogations produced results.

Cheney acknowledged he had not read the entire 500-page report summary. He strongly defended the tactics, including waterboarding and rectal hydration.

“What are you prepared to do to get the truth against future attacks against the United States?” Cheney asked.

Cheney also refuted claims that President George W. Bush was kept in the dark about the interrogations.

“I think he knew everything he wanted to know and needed to know,” Cheney told Baier.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...report-flawed/

[green73]

Thank God...

REPORT: CIA Adhered to OHSA Standards When Interrogating Terror Suspects

http://dailysignal.com/2014/12/17/du...11-mastermind/

[Occam's Banana]

This man...SMDH.

Pure evil ...

h/t Bob Murphy: http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2014...ourri-250.html

Speaking of the torture report, apparently Americans aren’t too worried about it. And Dick Cheney explicitly says that he would rather torture 25% innocent people rather than allow 30% guilty people return to the battlefield. Blackstone, he’s not.

Cheney Seems Unfazed By Question About Innocent Detainee Who Died (VIDEO)
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...ocent-detainee
Caitlin MacNeal (14 December 2014)

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday continued to fiercely defend the harsh interrogation techniques employed by the CIA under the Bush administration after 9/11.

On NBC's "Meet the Press," Cheney said he would use the questionable interrogation methods "again in a minute."

Host Chuck Todd asked Cheney to respond to the Senate Intelligence Committee report's account that one detainee was "chained to the wall of a cell, doused with water, froze to death in CIA custody."

"And it turned out it was a case of mistaken identity," Todd said.

"Right," Cheney responded. "But the problem I have was with all of the folks that we did release that end up back on the battlefield."

"I’m more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent," he continued.

Todd pressed Cheney, asking if he was okay with the fact that about 25 percent of the detainees interrogated were actually innocent.

"I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. And our objective is to get the guys who did 9/11 and it is to avoid another attack against the United States," Cheney responded.

Watch the clip via NBC: [video at link - http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...ocent-detainee]

[charrob]

Occam's Banana: just listened to the Scott Horton tape that you sited from your thread on torture. What a wealth of knowledge Scott Horton is; thanks for sharing that.

What shocks me the most is the beginning of that video where he says these CIA Torture revelations are just a tiny part of what really happened. I typed out the beginning of that video because it's just shocking:

Scott Horton on the Tom Woods Show:


The torture report:
• A product of Senate Intelligence Committee staff.
• A product of their work going through the CIA papers.
• All entirely based on CIA documents given to them.

The investigation happened because when the Senate Intelligence Committee found out about the video tapes of all the torture sessions, Hose Rodriguez who had been the head of the torture program, destroyed the video tapes – which is just clear blatant obstruction of justice.

A lawyer by the name of Durham went and started a preliminary investigation to see whether to have an investigation into this obstruction of justice.

And so then they left him (Hose Rodriguez) off the hook and they ended up doing nothing with that at all.

And so the Senate Intelligence Committee decided that they were going to go through and they were going to come up with their report themselves.

-----------------------------------------------------------

What’s important to note about this is that it does NOT include the CIA’s rendition program – where the CIA would kidnap people and send them to Mubarak in Egypt, Assad in Syria, Gaddafi in Libya and have them torture / outsource torture. That’s some other report for a different day I guess. I don’t think that one has ever been done.

This report also does not include the military’s role in the torture whatsoever. So usually when somebody says “torture / Bush Administration”, you think of Abu Ghraib. Well all of that was under Donald Rumsfeld and the Special Forces. I guess CIA was running around there some, but that wasn’t one of their black sites. That was under the military.

Stanley McChrystal, the guy who lost the Afghan War, he also ran a torture prison at a place called ‘Camp Nama’ in Iraq. And there’s all kinds of – there’s a ‘Ta Guba’ report, and Inspector General reports, and books and books – and all this other work on the military’s role and really the bulk – really thousands and thousands of people were tortured by the military in these prisons during the occupations and really all over the place – in their own homes, on the side of the road, etc., during those occupations. And including more than 100 died in custody – many of those were literally tortured to death. Outright homicides during torture – all under the military.

So this report is a much narrower focus. It’s about the people who were abducted by the CIA and taken to various black sites under CIA control and tortured by CIA officers and their contractor agents working for them. So , it’s important I think to note, just how narrow a focus this is for as much horror that is in there. It’s far from any kind of whole story.

How can these people live with themselves?

[milgram]

It's worth listening to Scott's other recent interviews on this subject too.

I'm up to Marcy Wheeler, who really has a strong grasp of the pertinent details on these issues. She makes interesting points about the murky details surrounding Cheney, and about how the goal of torture was often stated as "exploitation." Exploitation can mean gathering info, but it also could be for propaganda (presumably to sell the Iraq War) or turning captives into compliant spies. So "torture worked" to achieve the last two goals, even though no one is questioned about that point on TV.

http://scotthorton.org/interviews/20...marcy-wheeler/

[enhanced_deficit]

Obama's Cowardly Response to Torture Revelations

Posted: 12/12/2014 4:23 pm EST

The United States tortures.That much became undeniably clear this week when the Senate Intelligence Committee released the executive summary of it's report on the CIA's interrogation and detention program under the Bush administration.
The secret's been out, but the five-year investigation exposed in gruesome detail the horrific and inhumane methods employed by the CIA, as well as the repeated lies the agency told the White House, Congress, and the press.
After taking office in 2009 President Obama did ban the use of torture through an executive order, and to this day says that the practice was inconsistent with our values as a nation. But that one stroke of the pen doesn't match up with the rest of his actions.
The ethos of this administration has been to look forward and not backwards. This has meant letting the architects of the Bush torture regime escape prosecution and any semblance of accountability despite clear violations of international law.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alyona...b_6317214.html

[HOLLYWOOD]

First Look Media / The Intercept has excellent details and coverage... links below

Meet Alfreda Bikowsky, the Senior Officer at the Center of the CIA’s Torture Scandals "The Unidentified Queen of Torture"



U.S. TV Provides Ample Platform for American Torturers, But None to Their Victims



Torture, 'Meet the Press' and Cheney's Quest for Revenge - The Intercept

All you need to know about this monster:

But Cheney’s response was: “I’m more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent.”

[enhanced_deficit]

..tortured some folks and killed many children.

[enhanced_deficit]

At least dDG's pup masters are willing to prosecute Idaho soldier who was in Taliban captivity for "desertion".


US soldiers raped Iraqi boys in front of their mothers
Giving a speech at the ACLU last week after the senate torture report was initially released, Hersh gave some insight into what was on the Pentagon’s secret tape.
In the most revealing portion of his speech he said that:
“Debating about it, ummm … Some of the worst things that happened you don’t know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib … The women were passing messages out saying ‘Please come and kill me, because of what’s happened’ and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.”

[Lucille]

First Look Media / The Intercept has excellent details and coverage... links below

Meet Alfreda Bikowsky, the Senior Officer at the Center of the CIA’s Torture Scandals "The Unidentified Queen of Torture"

The Queen of Torture and Michael Scheuer got married.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...nis-Shias.html

• Alfreda has married Michael Scheuer, who was her boss in the 1990s
• Mr Scheuer confirmed news but the couple is steeped in controversy
• Alfreda allegedly failed to pass on intelligence about 9/11 hijackers

Mr Scheuer confirmed the wedlock to BuzzFeed but the website said he would not comment on whether they were romantically involved when they worked together.

The couple is steeped in controversy with Alfreda allegedly watching torture sessions.

It has also previously been reported that she may have failed to give information to the FBI that could have led to the capture of the group planning the 9/11 attack.

[Lucille]

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016...of-washington/

As of time of writing, websites, and certainly not presstitute media sites, have not posted the photos of strictly illegal torture, both under US law and International law, carried out by the criminal George W. Bush regime, most likely under the orders of the criminal VP Dick Cheney, spokesman for the crazed neoconservatives whose insanity threatens the world with nuclear Armageddon.

I doubt that most Americans will ever see the photos or be aware of the shame that “their” “freedom and democracy” government, answerable only to the military/security complex, the Israel Lobby, and Wall Street, has loaded on the backs of the American people and America’s image in the world.

http://sputniknews.com/us/20160206/1...otos-aclu.html

The majority of the 1,800 or so photos will remain unreleased after US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter in November invoked his authority under the 2009 exemption provision. The ACLU said it would continue to seek the release of the remaining photos.

The US government opposes publicly releasing the photos, saying the images could provoke a violent backlash and place US forces and personnel abroad at heightened risk of attack.

So the release of the images are the problem here, not the torture itself. Got it.

[Lucille]

I care. It sickens me.

Experts Quietly Admit to Senate Torture Report's Accuracy, But Does Anybody Care Anymore?
https://reason.com/blog/2016/02/11/e...senate-torture

At the time the report was released, after years of fighting between the Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA and President Barack Obama's administration, the official pushback from the CIA was an admission that torture ("enhanced interrogation") did happen inappropriately and the oversight wasn't always the best, and they detained people that shouldn't have been detained at all, but they did get "actionable intelligence" from the process and prevented terrorist attacks. That was the story, and they were sticking with it—yes, it was terrible, but it worked.

But then, it turns out, the CIA has quietly updated its official response in such a way that validates some of the Senate torture report's claims. Much like a newspaper hiding a correction at the bottom of an inside page among the advertisements, the CIA posted a "note to readers" without telling anybody. According to Ali Watkins at BuzzFeed, it sat online for a year before outsiders noticed its existence.
[...]
When I wrote about the Senate report back when it was released, the big takeaway was not the horrible descriptions of what the CIA did to people, though that certainly got the most press. Rather, it was the depressing, bureaucracy-driven nature of the conflict trying to establish timelines of who authorized what, who knew what, where information actually came from, and trying to penetrate layer upon layer of ass-covering concealing what actually happened.

And does it even matter anymore? In the wake of new terrorist attacks on American soil we have Trump promising to do whatever the hell gets cheers from the crowd. His unpredictability, deliberate vagueness, and willingness to outsource the actual solutions to "experts," combined with the secrecy of the CIA, should be of great concern. Getting kicked out of America under President Trump might be the least of a Muslim citizen's worries.