Senate releases CIA torture report

[Dawn Meredith]

Let's hope that this report builds up enough political willpower in the White House/Congress to unclassify the last million pages of CIA records re: JFK.

I predict they will simply move the date again. All the files on JFK are never going to be released.
They lie, just like this report saying they lied to the WH. W and the gang all knew and approved of torture.

[Michael Barwell]

....sadly, many Americans are rather oblivious to the harm and danger we have been and pose...outside and in....

I grew-up reading about Britains post-colonial wars, Malaya & on the Arabian Peninsula; these were won thru' 'hearts & minds'. The contemporary approach is to not engage 'hearts & minds', but to destroy them, and hence the apparent shitstorm the world's facing. It's not a case that ppl and govts are getting any more sophisticated, au contraire, they're throwing around their weight and pissing masses of ppl off; I gather within a couple of months towards the end of 2003, they'd off'ed more civilians in Iraq than died on 9-11, in the name of, er, well what was that all about? -the war on terror, crime, drugs and squirrels... Boo-yah, mo-fo. It really does seem as tho' there's a cabal of psychopaths running riot atm.

I'm finding a load of similarities on the tv about the torture programs, but I'v not read much as yet - threats to friends, family etc, and predictions of their death and profound illnesses. Some refs I've had too, like Herr Doktor "Grayson".

Not heard anything which resembles electromagnetic torture techniques yet, tho' some of the reports have a certain familiarity - attention grasp, facial hold - as in microwave lasers to the face, sleep dep., insects - some weird sound effect I had very loudly in my head - I was led-on to be thinking it was beatles in my head and later 'told' it was Lorenz waves (?) whatever they are, a windy, whistling, scratching noise, and mock burial - I've had thousands of refs to this.

[Peter Lemkin]

Never forget all of this torture was done in the name of the 'war on terror' which was begun with the false-flag and domestic plot called 9-11....so it was all for nothing in every possible interpretation of that concept. Disgusting in the extreme....but I fear like the Rockefeller Report and other such, it will soon be forgotten and repeated, with worse new and ongoing activities not only by the CIA, but by the military, various privatized paramilitary, and other intelligence agencies and their contracted partners around the World. That 'shining light on the hill' is now a smoldering pile of excrement, ethically....it has hit the fan many times...but no one stops the slinging, nor the fan. We all get hit.

[Tracy Riddle]

CIA interrogation report: The 20 key findings


Guantanamo Bay camp, where many interrogations were carried out
The US Senate Intelligence Committee has released a summary of a report into the CIA interrogation program established by US spy chiefs after the terror attacks of 11 September 2001.
The full report is 6,000 pages long and the unclassified summary is 525 pages - but it highlights 20 key findings.
We've summarised them below, and more details on each are available in the full release..

What did the Senate committee find out?1) The CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining co-operation from detainees.
2)The CIA's justification for the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness.
3) The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others.

4) The conditions of confinement for CIA detainees were harsher than the CIA had represented to policymakers and others.
5) The CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice, impeding a proper legal analysis of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program.
6) The CIA has actively avoided or impeded congressional oversight of the programme.
7) The CIA impeded effective White House oversight and decision-making.
8) The CIA's operation and management of the programme complicated, and in some cases impeded, the national security missions of other executive branch agencies.
9) The CIA impeded oversight by the CIA's Office of Inspector General.
10) The CIA co-ordinated the release of classified information to the media, including inaccurate information concerning the effectiveness of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.
11) The CIA was unprepared as it began operating its Detention and Interrogation Program more than six months after being granted detention authorities.
12) The CIA's management and operation of its Detention and Interrogation Program was deeply flawed throughout the programme's duration, particularly so in 2002 and early 2003.
13) Two contract psychologists devised the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques and played a central role in the operation, assessments, and management of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program. By 2005, the CIA had overwhelmingly outsourced operations related to the programme.

14) CIA detainees were subjected to coercive interrogation techniques that had not been approved by the Department of Justice or had not been authorised by CIA headquarters.
15) The CIA did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate accounting of the number of individuals it detained, and held individuals who did not meet the legal standard for detention. The CIA's claims about the number of detainees held and subjected to its enhanced interrogation techniques were inaccurate.
16) The CIA failed to adequately evaluate the effectiveness of its enhanced interrogation techniques.
17) The CIA rarely reprimanded or held personnel accountable for serious and significant violations, inappropriate activities, and systemic and individual management failures.
18) The CIA marginalised and ignored numerous internal critiques, criticisms, and objections concerning the operation and management of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program.
19) The CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program was inherently unsustainable and had effectively ended by 2006 due to unauthorised press disclosures, reduced cooperation from other nations, and legal and oversight concerns.
20) The CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program damaged the United States' standing in the world, and resulted in other significant monetary and non-monetary costs.

[Albert Doyle]

Any committee or investigation done by the American government of itself is just a moral laundry designed to excuse government crimes and move on. The American government is now rogue and dangerous - just like they want it to be. It is no longer credible towards democracy or credible check and balance - again, just like they want it to be. The sad truth is the American public isn't victimized by this but is consciously participating in it instead. The people prefer hostile, hypocritical fascism to hard fought democracy. The founding fathers would have executed Cheney and Bush.


Meanwhile the individual citizen faces an increasing level of government power and application of law. There is no such self-excusing process for crimes for the individual. The neo situation is, an increasingly arrogant and hostile government assumes the right to apply this new Homeland rule towards the individual with its new laws brought into being by admitted government criminals while the individual has no right to defend themselves from it or demand check and balance accountability. Again, just like they want it. The main intention of 9-11 and the War On Terror was always the destruction of the constitutional powers that restricted these new American fascists from doing this very thing. Those ragged terrorists overseas were just the diversionary excuse.

What these new American government fascists didn't tell you is they were also doing war on the terrorists who formed America and its Constitution. Seig CIA!

[Drew Phipps]

Gee, Albert, I find your view point on this extremist, and hope you realize that you don't speak for "the people." Most people that I know actually prefer democracy, as imperfect as it may be.

It's not hopeless. If you don't like America, go out and vote, write your congressman, run for office, or find some other meaningful way to add something of value to the community in which we all live.

[Tracy Riddle]

Gee, Albert, I find your view point on this extremist, and hope you realize that you don't speak for "the people." Most people that I know actually prefer democracy, as imperfect as it may be.

It's not hopeless. If you don't like America, go out and vote, write your congressman, run for office, or find some other meaningful way to add something of value to the community in which we all live.

15 or 20 years ago, I would have agreed with you, Drew. But we're way beyond that stage now.

Don't you understand that there is an unelected government that dwarfs the thin layer of elected representatives on top, like an iceberg below the surface of the water? That this unelected government goes on and on and grows more powerful, while temporary elected officials come and go and change nothing?

[Lauren Johnson]

Gee, Albert, I find your view point on this extremist, and hope you realize that you don't speak for "the people." Most people that I know actually prefer democracy, as imperfect as it may be.

It's not hopeless. If you don't like America, go out and vote, write your congressman, run for office, or find some other meaningful way to add something of value to the community in which we all live.

15 or 20 years ago, I would have agreed with you, Drew. But we're way beyond that stage now.

Don't you understand that there is an unelected government that dwarfs the thin layer of elected representatives on top, like an iceberg below the surface of the water? That this unelected government goes on and on and grows more powerful, while temporary elected officials come and go and change nothing?

Tracy, you just like soooo negative. I mean we have a democracy in which the majority rules. Since corporations are persons and we are now in a one dollar one vote system, well, there you. Very simple. Democracy. ::face.palm::

[Jim Hargrove]

Don't you understand that there is an unelected government that dwarfs the thin layer of elected representatives on top, like an iceberg below the surface of the water? That this unelected government goes on and on and grows more powerful, while temporary elected officials come and go and change nothing?

Indeed, and it sure seems to me that the henchmen of this cabal are called CIA, NSA... and their intel brethren. For decades, I wondered if these organizations were rogue or ultimately directed by the elected power structure, but now I believe the question has become irrelevant.

I'm so ashamed that I can't stop my tax dollars from funding these horrors. Who do I see about this problem?

[Drew Phipps]

That's just not true that nothing changes. You guys have all been watching current events very carefully, but why don't you attribute any significance to what you see? You've got a terror report that roundly criticizes in a couple dozen ways the very people you think run the iceberg. You don't think that is a harbinger of change? Obama beat the polls and the pundits to get re-elected in 2012? That's not significant? What about Snowden exposing the secrets of the NSA? There are hundreds, if not thousands, of reputable scientists and engineers speaking truth to power about 9/11.

These little surface events are the things that bring abiding change to the "deep structures" of government, if we can but teach the next generation to expect and demand it. Remember Rosa Parks? (This reminds me of that Who song, "Won't Be Fooled Again." Go and listen to it, or Lennon. I wonder where we would be today without those little messages of hope in our ears as kids?)