Editorials & Other Articles

Jefferson23

(30,099 posts) Thu Dec 18, 2014, 07:25 PM Dec 2014

CIA 'torture report': Agency conduct was driven by pressure to link Iraq to al-Qaeda following 9/11

Patrick Cockburn
Sunday, December 14, 2014

The CIA tortured al-Qaeda suspects because it wanted evidence that Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11 in order to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The agency was under intense pressure from the White House and senior figures in the Bush administration to extract confessions confirming co-operation between the Iraqi leader and al-Qaeda, although no significant evidence was ever found.

The CIA has defended its actions by claiming that it was “unknowable” if torture had produced results, although the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, maintains torture produced nothing of value.

A second line of defence put forward by defenders of the CIA is to say that the agency was swept up in the reaction to 9/11 in the US and needed to find out quickly if there were going to be further attacks.

Telling evidence about the motives of the CIA in instituting its torture programme comes in a report on detainee abuse issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2009. It cited a former US Army psychiatrist, Major Charles Burney, who had been stationed at Guantanamo Bay, as saying interrogators were compelled to give priority to one line of questioning.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cia-torture-report-agency-conduct-was-driven-by-pressure-to-link-iraq-to-alqaeda-following-911-9924552.html

8 replies

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CIA 'torture report': Agency conduct was driven by pressure to link Iraq to al-Qaeda following 9/11 (Original Post) Jefferson23 Dec 2014 OP

but the Bushes are a "good family, wonderful people" grasswire Dec 2014 #1

Of course by W and Cheney who wanted an excuse to go in and steal the oil. Another fact varified. jwirr Dec 2014 #2

K&R. nt OnyxCollie Dec 2014 #3

Torture program linked to discredited, illegal CIA techniques bemildred Dec 2014 #4

No better than the worst scum out there, going back decades. How special we are..look at us. n/t Jefferson23 Dec 2014 #5

At least back to the Spanish-American war, probably plenty of that in the Indian wars too. nt bemildred Dec 2014 #6

Absolutely..it's just that we pretend that we evolved since then. Gives us the ability, somehow, to Jefferson23 Dec 2014 #7

with the right amount of torture they could have linked Saddam Hussein to the kidnapping of the Douglas Carpenter Dec 2014 #8

grasswire

(50,130 posts)

1. but the Bushes are a "good family, wonderful people"

Reply to Jefferson23 (Original post)

Thu Dec 18, 2014, 07:36 PM

Dec 2014

Sigh.

jwirr

(39,215 posts)

2. Of course by W and Cheney who wanted an excuse to go in and steal the oil. Another fact varified.

Reply to Jefferson23 (Original post)

Thu Dec 18, 2014, 07:38 PM

Dec 2014

OnyxCollie

(9,958 posts)

3. K&R. nt

Reply to Jefferson23 (Original post)

Fri Dec 19, 2014, 03:24 AM

Dec 2014

bemildred

(90,061 posts)

4. Torture program linked to discredited, illegal CIA techniques

Reply to Jefferson23 (Original post)

Fri Dec 19, 2014, 07:36 AM

Dec 2014

Torture methods employed by the CIA under the guise of its “enhanced interrogation techniques” program can be traced back — through personnel and decades of research — to human experiments designed to induce the subjugation of prisoners through use of isolation, sleep and sensory deprivation, psychoactive drugs and other means, according to details contained in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, a summary of which was released last week.

While many have focused on the brutal physical distress inflicted on detainees — beatings, extreme cold and heat, painful rectal force-feedings, waterboarding, and more — a close reading of the 500-page summary also suggests other disturbing aspects of the CIA’s means of breaking down prisoners.

The CIA chief of interrogations under the Bush administration, whose name was redacted in the Senate report, previously used a discredited training manual, Human Resource Exploitation (HRE), which was identified as using torture on political opponents of 1980s Latin America regimes — he was even admonished by the agency over the matter. That handbook, according to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee report, drew “significant portions” from an even earlier 1960s CIA interrogation handbook that advocated rapport-style interrogations and, when CIA found it was needed, the torture of suspects. Both manuals were heavily influenced by the work of the CIA’s MKULTRA program.

And MKULTRA is the stuff of nightmares — a multimillion-dollar program that endorsed the use of LSD, hypnotism, sensory deprivation, and sleep deprivation, among other physiological, psychological and behavioral techniques. The goal was to gain total psychological control over people and, in particular, prisoners held by the CIA or military intelligence agencies in the 1950s and ‘60s.

http://america.aljazeera.com/blogs/scrutineer/2014/12/18/torture-mitchelljessenmkultra.html

Jefferson23

(30,099 posts)

5. No better than the worst scum out there, going back decades. How special we are..look at us. n/t

Reply to bemildred (Reply #4)

Fri Dec 19, 2014, 03:11 PM

Dec 2014

bemildred

(90,061 posts)

6. At least back to the Spanish-American war, probably plenty of that in the Indian wars too. nt

Reply to Jefferson23 (Reply #5)

Fri Dec 19, 2014, 03:16 PM

Dec 2014

Jefferson23

(30,099 posts)

7. Absolutely..it's just that we pretend that we evolved since then. Gives us the ability, somehow, to

Reply to bemildred (Reply #6)

Fri Dec 19, 2014, 03:20 PM

Dec 2014

imagine we can call others terrorists and what not.

Thanks for that link, btw.

Douglas Carpenter

(20,226 posts)

8. with the right amount of torture they could have linked Saddam Hussein to the kidnapping of the