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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

#401

Post by DanBC »

scrapcode wrote: post #337
RealGeek wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget, not all the detainees were terrorists. US promoted a reward program in middle east asking locals to turn in anyone with ties to terrorists. All they had to do was tell a name to US military, and collect reward for every name. Many locals turned in thousands of innocent people just to collect a reward. These people were immediately arrested and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay without any investigation.…

What is your source? Both because I have always heard about the "rewards program" and am interested in reading more, and because wherever you got the information that thousands of people were ever sent to Guantanamo Bay is simply wrong [1]. I see a trend of people rehashing things about Guantanamo Bay that they've heard somewhere else and just putting it out there. It doesn't help the progressive agenda of understand…

Gitmo was not the only detention centre. Abu Ghraib is the most notorious of the other centres.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner...

The most famous innocent victim of paid-information is the taxi driver Dilawar, beaten to death in the Parwan Detention Facility.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_to_the_Dark_Side

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#402

Post by ilyanep »

auston wrote: post #224

Is there a difference in these documents? http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy2.pdf http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy3.pdf

The first is the executive summary of the official study. The second appears to be additional views added by individual senators on the committee. The third is a rebuttal from the Republicans on the committee.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#403

Post by zghst »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #362
chroma wrote: post #328

It's a shame the report is so partisan. The democrat and republican sides disagree on basic facts, such as whether torture worked in extracting information, and whether that information helped to save lives. Both sides accuse the other of cherry-picking to bolster their cause. Since the primary records are unavailable to us, there's no way to get a more trustworthy opinion on the program. The CIA's behavior is probab…

Firstly, torture doesn't work, but it's not about that. Violence simply isn't morally legitimate ever, whether it's aggression or as a response to violence (possibly even greater violence). Whether it's torture, murder, whatever, it doesn't matter. Doing it in the name of war or national security doesn't make a moral difference. The ticking time bomb thing is just an excuse for this behaviour.

I disagree about violence. The animal kingdom is inherently violent. Is it socially inappropriate to use violence in most parts of Western civilization? Yes. But in other places around the world (and in some cultures and groups in the West), violent behavior is the norm. It's brutal, it has lasting effects, it's demoralizing to the victim, however it is what we are all born with.

Does that mean violence is 100% unacceptable? If it wasn't, then we would not eat meat, many sports would not be popular, they wouldn't display fights in movies, etc. As an element of evolution, violence in some form will persist and thrive in our society.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#404

Post by DanBC »

jstrate wrote: post #202
Omniusaspirer wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we can't hold ourselves to a higher standard than religious terrorist groups then something is very wrong with this country.

Can you really not make a distinction between cold shower and televised beheading/castration. I agree there is something very wrong with this country if that is the case. I've spent enough Karma today.

I ask you the same thing I asked Rayiner above: try it for yourself.

Take a letter size piece of paper and put it on the floor. Strip naked. Have a "cold shower", then stand on that piece of paper for just two hours.

Bonus points if you manage to stay standing with a wet cloth bag on your head. Extra points if you manage this after having been on reduced calories and no sleep for 48 hours.

In your case nothing happens if you step off the paper.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#405

Post by rayiner »

clebio wrote: post #399
rayiner wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this theory. It's not really consistent with the fact that "24" was a torture-fest from the first season, aired before the enhanced interrogation stuff really got going. I was in college at the time, and we loved the show. You don't need much "purposeful desensitizing" to convince a bunch of 20-something guys it's okay to torture terrorists.

I've assumed this theory prima facie for a while. Further examples are movies glorifying war (Homefront, Lone Survivor). As coldtea mentions, it could be considered a form of moving the Overton window .

As 'angibrowl points out, the movie trope of the good guy that isn't constrained by procedural rules is very old.[1] The 1980's action movie catalogue is full of it. Moving the Overton window doesn't even make sense in this context. Moving it from where? We're talking about a country full of people that vociferously supported bombing harmless Vietnamese villages off the map. Aside from maybe the folks who grew up in the 1990's, who weren't exposed to any real global conflict, I'd be surprised if the current generation wasn't the least receptive in American history to questionable methods of warfare.

[1] You see it a lot in crime dramas from the 1980's, where things like the 4th amendment are portrayed as just letting criminals off on "technicalities."

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#406

Post by patronagezero »

nickbauman wrote: post #388
patronagezero wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and someone needs to be held accountable. The citizens of the United States need to be held accountable. Sorry, someone has to start looking at the root of the problem.

While I disagree in particular (because it is believed the agents of the US using this torture practices acted in secret) there is an overarching logic that is sound: to the degree a society is democratic is the same degree its citizens are ultimately responsible for the actions of their government officials.

We as a country allow whistle-blowers to be called traitors, imprisoned, character assassinated, assassinated and exiled from our country. The only people that don't or didn't know are those that wished to continue living the 'American dream' in denial.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#407

Post by DanBC »

Loughla wrote: post #379
patronagezero wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and someone needs to be held accountable. The citizens of the United States need to be held accountable. Sorry, someone has to start looking at the root of the problem.

I don't understand, how can you blame the citizens for this, when they were ignorant, against their will, about this? When the institution that is performing these acts out-and-out lies about the impact and severity, how can random citizens be held accountable? That honestly makes no sense to me.

Abu Ghraib was a big fucking clue that something was going terribly wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner...

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#408

Post by rasz_pl »

Nelson69 wrote: post #206
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.

It's a step... It's worth something but it's not like there wasn't a ton of resistance to it. The question on my mind, were their CIA operatives that refused to comply with orders? Take the various police brutality cases, what's lost in the echochamber about it all is that these guys volunteer to be police, nobody is forced to, some of them want to carry guns, that really changes the situation a bit when an unarmed p…

Remember Abu Ghraib? there was only ONE guy not ok with what was happening. It usually takes only one man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFEV35tWsg

in case of US concentration camps there also was one man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kiriakou he is still in prison, because ratting on your fellow men is against the law

There usually are no 'good cops' either, because doing something in the face of evil marks you as a traitor

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#409

Post by waterlesscloud »

rayiner wrote: post #405
clebio wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've assumed this theory prima facie for a while. Further examples are movies glorifying war (Homefront, Lone Survivor). As coldtea mentions, it could be considered a form of moving the Overton window .

As 'angibrowl points out, the movie trope of the good guy that isn't constrained by procedural rules is very old.[1] The 1980's action movie catalogue is full of it. Moving the Overton window doesn't even make sense in this context. Moving it from where? We're talking about a country full of people that vociferously supported bombing harmless Vietnamese villages off the map. Aside from maybe the folks who grew up in…

The current trend traces at least as far back as DIRTY HARRY (1971). "Dirty Harry" was a common reference to extra-procedural cops for a couple decades.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#410

Post by DanBC »

Someone1234 wrote: post #129
user24 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The list goes on. It sure does. > At DETENTION SITE COBALT, detainees were often held down, naked, on a tarp on the floor, with the tarp pulled up around them to form a makeshift tub, while cold or refrigerated water was poured on them. Others were hosed down repeatedly while they were shackled naked, in the standing sleep deprivation position. These same detainees were subsequently placed in rooms with temperatures…

That last one is special. Add "anal rape" to the list of the CIA's torture accolades. Certainly didn't hear about THAT on the news.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner...

> These violations included physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy, and murder.

> In 2004, Antonio Taguba, a major general in the U.S. Army, wrote in the Taguba Report that a detainee had been sodomized with "a chemical light and perhaps a broomstick."[30] In 2009, Taguba stated that there was photographic evidence of rape having occurred at Abu Ghraib.[31] An Abu Ghraib detainee told investigators that he heard an Iraqi teenage boy screaming, and saw an Army translator having sex with him, while a female soldier took pictures.[32] A witness identified the alleged rapist as an American-Egyptian who worked as a translator. In 2009, he was the subject of a civil court case in the United States.[31] Another photo shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner.[31] Other photos show interrogators sexually assaulting prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube, and a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

> In other instances of sexual abuse, soldiers were found to have raped female inmates, and senior U.S. officials admitted that rape had taken place at Abu Ghraib.[33][34] Some of the women who had been raped became pregnant, and in some cases, were later killed by their family members in what were thought to be instances of honor killing.[35]

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