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US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

intelligence.senate.gov

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Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#181

Post by mikeash »

cyorir wrote: post #171
mikeash wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is different about the 9/11 attacks that legitimizes the use of torture, when you would not support it against soldiers or other criminals? Do keep in mind that 9/11 doesn't even register on the atrocity scale when compared to what's been done by "soldiers of a legitimate state." If you would endorse torture to prevent another 9/11, why wouldn't you also endorse torture to prevent, say, another Hiroshima?

You bring up Hiroshima as an example. I think that in many ways this becomes the old Moral Absolutism versus Moral Relativism problem. You can have a moral absolutist who says, "Harming another human is wrong, therefore we will not torture under any case." (A different absolutist might be more utilitarian in arguing for torture of one to save many, but you get the point- an absolutist has a position and a rigid inter…

You (like so many others, sadly) assume torture is actually effective, and that objections to its use rest solely on immorality.

I object to torture on moral grounds. I also object to it on practical grounds. It doesn't work.

Since both of those objections point in the same direction, the solution is completely clear.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#182

Post by MisterMashable »

In 2004 a whole layer of top CIA officials were forced out. Defense Secretary Colin Powell resigned. Dick Cheney purged the CIA of personnel who might have served as some counterbalancing force. Once the good and reasonable people were gone (fired, forced to resign etc.), the CIA ran amok. If we look honestly at what went wrong, it's pretty clear how to fix it. Fire all the people that lied to Congress and broke the law by employing prohibited techniques. Prosecute them to the fullest extent possible. Simultaneously, conduct an internal review of all the former CIA fired for political reasons and hire them back. These are the people America desperately needs to repair our broken system. The CIA is desperately in need of reform. The world is too dangerous and complicated a place to have the wrong people running our foreign policy. If they lied about torture, what else are they lying to Congress about? Clearly it isn't the solution to every problem but it would be the best possible, immediately actionable step. Bring back the good patriot Americans who were fired from their job with the intelligence agencies for political reasons. Get rid of and prosecute the bad apples.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#183

Post by mikecb »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #104
tdees40 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who has said sorry? Cheney? Bush? Rice? The people who put this system into place continue to defend it and have suffered no consequences.

Before you get on your Liberal high horse, you might want to check yourself. Extraordinary Rendition began under Clinton: https://www.aclu.org/national-security/fact-sheet-extraordin... Beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to this day, the Central Intelligence Agency, together with other U.S. government agencies, has utilized an intelligence-gathering program involving the transfer of foreign nationals suspect…

Extraordinary rendition began before Clinton. The rules around it began with Bush I and presidential decision directive 39.[1] The practice began before that.

[1] http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/pdd39.htm

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#184

Post by Spearchucker »

dragonwriter wrote: post #119
willscott wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The saving grace is that we have a country that was able to admit that it did this. For me, that's hope that we're still in a position to learn from our wrongs, and that the checks-and-balances are still somewhat in-tact.

> The saving grace is that we have a country that was able to admit that it did this. "The country" doesn't admit that "the country" did this. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence "admits" that the Central Intelligence Agency did this, while at the same time insulating everyone else -- even in the Executive Branch -- from involvement, based on "the CIA was lying to everyone, including the White House, who tota…

"The country" doesn't admit that "the country" did this."

And there's the problem.

Imagine, if you will, that your son is taken against his will by say, Iran, because your son has ties to someone who threw a grenade that killed an Iranian. Your son is tortured in much the same way the report states.

Do you care which committee didn't do a thing, or who voted for a thing, or lobbied another? You blame the country. The voting public, the non-voting public, their philosophies, culture, politicians, their military. They collectively represent the individuals who did that despicable stuff to your son.

And it's what perpetuates the hate, the wars, the fear.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#185

Post by mikeash »

tosser-001 wrote: post #141
jaimebuelta wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me refresh one of the key point of the report (sorry about the caps) TORTURE IS NOT EFFECTIVE This is hardly news, it has been known for a long time. CIA knew it before 9/11

Again, that to me is the crux also. If it is not effective than there is no justification. If it is, which the CIA claims it was, then I have no ethical problem with it in this limited situation

The CIA is completely biased here. They have every reason to claim that torture is effective purely to defend their past actions. Their stated opinion on it means absolutely nothing, in that you'd expect them to say exactly that either way.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#186

Post by throwaway-gst »

Amorymeltzer wrote: post #55

The document has > TOP SECRET [blackbox] NOFORN on it. That's crossed out and UNCLASSIFIED is inserted, but what's that black box covering up? Is it another level of secret access so secret we can't know the name?

Perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greystone_%28CIA_operation%29

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#187

Post by pdkl95 »

Cushman wrote: post #138
debacle wrote: post #49

Fellow parents, how do you teach or plan to teach your kids about this? I was discussing this with my son last night, but I really couldn't explain to him the prejudice and fear that people use to justify these types of acts, or the "otherness" that the perpetrators try to construct around the victims in the media. It's just not something he's experienced yet. There's no way to put it into context.

Are you familiar with Jane Elliott's "Blue eyes/brown eyes" experiment? It's a good kind of ultra-lite introduction to racism/discrimination if you've literally never come across the concept before. (Comes up a lot in Holocaust curriculum.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQAmdZvKf6M Though I wonder if small children aren't closer to understanding this than most of us. They're such a jumble of implicit biases at the…

Elliott's experiment is one of the most impressive teaching methods I've ever seen. This is such a good way of introducing kids to discrimination and hatred, how easily it spreads, and how it affects people.

The interviews with the people that had Elliott's lesson much later when they were adults is notable - the lesson stuck with people, in life-affecting ways.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#188

Post by dragonwriter »

tosser-001 wrote: post #131
mikeash wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is different about the 9/11 attacks that legitimizes the use of torture, when you would not support it against soldiers or other criminals? Do keep in mind that 9/11 doesn't even register on the atrocity scale when compared to what's been done by "soldiers of a legitimate state." If you would endorse torture to prevent another 9/11, why wouldn't you also endorse torture to prevent, say, another Hiroshima?

> What is different about the 9/11 attacks that legitimizes the use of torture, when you would not support it against soldiers or other criminals? They had demonstrated the practice of mass killings of innocent civilians and expressed the desire to continue to do so. > If you would endorse torture to prevent another 9/11, why wouldn't you also endorse torture to prevent, say, another Hiroshima? Well, setting aside th…

> They had demonstrated the practice of mass killings of innocent civilians and expressed the desire to continue to do so.

That hardly makes them unique, or even different than previous enemies the US has faced, and dealt with detainees from, and studied the effects of interrogation, and concluded that torture is ineffective.

And, as the Senate report notes, every single one of the CIA claims that this torture was effective misrepresented the facts, either of whether information gained through torture had not independently been gained through other means, or whether the information gained was gained through the torture at all (often claiming information gained from a detainee before "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used was gained through those techniques, which is only plausible if the techniques are so effective that they send shockwaves back in time), or by simply misrepresenting the existence of threats that were supposedly disrupted when no real threat existed.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#189

Post by waterlesscloud »

rdtsc wrote: post #91
bradleyjg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We haven't apologized, we haven't made restitution, and we sure as heck haven't prosecuted the guilty (as required by the convention against torture). I'm struggling to see any saving grace.

Good point, and we might even be in worse position if action is not taken. If there is lack of outrage, it will send a message up the chain that "this is not that bad, nobody really minded this much, let's use harsher techniques next time".

So here's an ethical question-

If the report leads to no action, where is the good in releasing it?

Real risk for real people has been created. It's not theoretical. Actual innocent people have been placed in danger.

If there's no good coming from the report, was it worth placing those people in danger?

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#190

Post by Someone1234 »

lotharbot wrote: post #160
Someone1234 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the next 9/11 or Pearl Habour and then everyone just looks the other way for the next ten years. Japanese internment is still rarely talked about and in some states rarely taught in schools(!).

From what I understand (from talking to now very old Japanese-American men who were in the camps as young adults) it was unpleasant and caused significant hardship, but not even remotely similar to what's in this report. It's important to teach about what happened in those camps and to understand why they were wrong. Drawing inappropriate comparisons between those camps and the absolute atrocities in this report isn'…

> Drawing inappropriate comparisons between those camps and the absolute atrocities in this report isn't helpful.

Nobody did. I said that Americans looked the other way. Nothing more, nothing less.

You're clearly reading more into what I said than what I actually said verbatim.

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