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[font size="4"]Senate Report Released: US Detained and Tortured Innocent People[/font size]
Senate Intelligence Committee's report says CIA abuse violated "U.S. law, treaty obligations, and our values." Journalists, experts and human rights advocates are responding by reminding the American people that torture program under Bush administration was systematically orchestrated by top officials, not one simply executed by rogue agents.
by Jon Queally, staff writer
Common Dreams, December 09, 2014
The executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA torture was released on Tuesday morning. As the document itself (PDF) was posted online, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Chairperson of the committee, took to the Senate floor and to lay out the case made within the 500+ page report. Watch video of Feinstein's remarks here.
What the report shows, according to its introduction, is that the abuse performed by the CIA and documented by the investigation was found to be in direct "violation of U.S. law, treaty obligations, and our values."
According to Feinstein, the four key findings of the report include:
1. The CIAs enhanced interrogation techniques were not effective.
2. The CIA provided extensive inaccurate information about the operation of the program and its effectiveness to policymakers and the public.
3. The CIAs management of the program was inadequate and deeply flawed.
4. The CIA program was far more brutal than the CIA represented to policymakers and the American public.
SNIP...
Moyers & Company is preparing a detailed analysis of the report for later publication. A quick overview of what the report contains can be found in the Senate Intelligence Committees 20 findings, reprinted here.
#1: The CIAs use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.
#2: The CIAs 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 CIAs Detention and Interrogation Program.
#6: The CIA has actively avoided or impeded congressional oversight of the program.
#7: The CIA impeded effective White House oversight and decision-making.
#8: The CIAs operation and management of the program complicated, and in some cases impeded, the national security missions of other Executive Branch agencies.
#9; The CIA impeded oversight by the CIAs Office of Inspector General.
#10: The CIA coordinated the release of classified information to the media, including inaccurate information concerning the effectiveness of the CIAs 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 CIAs management and operation of its Detention and Interrogation Program was deeply flawed throughout the programs duration, particularly so in 2002 and early 2003.
#13: Two contract psychologists devised the CIAs enhanced interrogation techniques and played a central role in the operation, assessments, and management of the CIAs Detention and Interrogation Program. By 2005, the CIA had overwhelmingly outsourced operations related to the program.
#14: CIA detainees were subjected to coercive interrogation techniques that had not been approved by the Department of Justice or had not been authorized 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 CIAs 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 marginalized and ignored numerous internal critiques, criticisms, and objections concerning the operation and management of the CIAs Detention and Interrogation Program.
#19; The CIAs Detention and Interrogation Program was inherently unsustainable and had effectively ended by 2006 due to unauthorized press disclosures, reduced cooperation from other nations, and legal and oversight concerns.
#20; The CIAs Detention and Interrogation Program damaged the United States standing in the world, and resulted in other significant monetary and non-monetary costs.
SOURCE: http://billmoyers.com/2014/12/09/20-quick-take-aways-senate-report-cia-torture/
CONTINUED w/ongoing coverage, links & additional info and analysis...
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/12/09/senate-report-released-us-detained-and-tortured-innocent-people
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)message that was sent.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)The goal of wholesale surveillance, [font color="green"]as (Hannah) Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism, is not, in the end, to discover crimes, but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population. [/font color]And because Americans emails, phone conversations, Web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there will be more than enough evidence to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This information waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant.
Chris Hedges, The Last Gasp of American Democracy
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)saw it. Put it on a DC march poster in 2005.
My heart and soul weep for those tortured...
Octafish
(55,745 posts)They are victims of genocidal war criminals.
The U.S. and the UK Committed Genocide Against the Iraqi People
by Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate
TRANSCEND Media Service, 22 September 2014
USA/UK committed genocide against Iraq people between 1990/2012 killing 3.3 million including 750,000 children through sanctions and war.
On September 11, 2014 US President Obama, on the anniversary of 9/11, in his speech promised the world more war, and especially the people of Iraq and Syria when he promised that together with his coalition partners, they would kill every ISIS person in Iraq, Syria, or anywhere in the world they may be. He described ISIS as cancer cells and promised they would be all killed off. His Speech was chilling and had the desired effect of reminding us all just how low morally and intellectually the American administration, and their Coalition, has sunk.
For the President to ignore the fact that the USA/UK, NATO, have committed genocide against the Iraq people between 1990/2012 killing 3.3 million including 750,000 Iraqi children through sanctions and war, not including subsequent wars by USA/NATO, against Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, and their attempted and well funded efforts through a proxy war to destroy Syria, is criminal. The Iraqi war (as indeed is the war against Gaza by Israel) is a classic definition of Genocide. These past and current foreign policies of military aggression break all International Laws, to which the President makes no reference, and will only result in more killings and more hatred of the West.
That the US Administration plans to escalate military attacks in Iraq and Syria and to increase funding and training of moderate rebels in Syria, is a betrayal of all those people in these countries struggling through peaceful and nonviolent ways to solve their problems without guns and violence. If the US wants to stop ISIS, it can remove its funding and arms, which are coming from US allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and others and from the US itself, through intermediaries like the Syrian rebels. It is the USA and their allies that have created the conditions, funded and facilitated the growth of these reactionary Jihadist organizations. If USA/UK really want to stop ISIS they should work with the Syrian Government, support the people who have been the main victims of ISIS, and support the Syrian peace and reconciliation movement who are working to stop the violence and bring real change in their country.
The USA administration policy of air strikes against ISIS in Syria and increasing funding for the moderate rebels is illegal under international law, as it is illegal for the US to fund, train, weaponize and co-ordinate to overthrow the regime of a sovereign state. Also the airspace of any country is its own and USA must get Syrian authorization to fly over Syria. (Illegally Israel continues to fly over and bomb Syria). Having visited Iraq before the second war, and Syria in 2013 and 2014 and witnessed that the people of both countries were brave and courageous and trying to solve their problems ( in Syria, a proxy war with thousands of foreign Jihadists) through peace and reconciliation. In Syria, they asked that there be no outside interference and aggression on their country, as this would make things worse, not better. Under International Law the US Gov. NATO and any coalition forces should respect the wishes of the people of the Middle East and Syria, and recognize it is for the people of Syria to modify or change their government and not for the US or Saudi Arabia or NATO. Ending militarism and war is possible and restoring justice, human rights and dignity for all the people, will bring peace and we must each do all in our power to Resist and Stop this latest drive to war and demand our governments withdraw from this Coalition of war with USA.
Mairead Corrigan Maguire is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book The Vision of Peace (edited by John Dear, with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available from www.wipfandstock.com. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See: www.peacepeople.com.
https://www.transcend.org/tms/2014/09/usauk-committed-genocide-against-iraq-people/
ETA: You are absolutely correct, Mnemosyne: That image in the OP, with a father's gentle hand on his child's distressed forehead, displays the humanity of the Iraqi people. What the United States has done to them is genocidal, no matter the rationale for war.