Torture report: Our post-9/11 shame, in stomach-turning detail

Americans have long known that, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the CIA subjected suspected terrorists to inhuman and degrading treatment that amounted to nothing less than torture. A Senate Intelligence Committee report released Tuesday documented that outrageous conduct in stomach-turning detail but also described new offenses to human dignity that border on the pornographic.

The report — actually, a 499-page executive summary of a much longer (and still classified) study — concludes that not only did the spy agency's program of "enhanced interrogation techniques" fail to turn up any vital, life-saving intelligence, but its extent and effectiveness were repeatedly misrepresented to the White House and Congress, under whose authority it was pursued.

In the inimitable words of former Vice President Dick Cheney, this country traveled to the "dark side" in the months and years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But we didn't know how dark until the release of this report. It's scandalous that Republicans in Congress and many in the national-security bureaucracy tried to bottle up even a portion of the Intelligence Committee's conclusions. In the end, opponents of disclosure resorted to arguing that publication of the report would provoke attacks on America — an argument that could be used to justify suppressing the information forever.

It is old news that, armed with dubious legal advice from the Bush Justice Department, the CIA had subjected three detainees to the brutal simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding. But the Intelligence Committee found evidence — including a "well-worn waterboard" at a dungeon-like interrogation center in Afghanistan — that suggests more widespread use of a procedure long condemned as a form of torture.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-torture-20141210-story.html