A day after the Senate intelligence committee released 500 pages of its voluminous 6,700-page inquiry into CIA torture, Senator Mark Udall called upon Barack Obama “to purge his administration of high-level officials” complicit in the Bush-era torture program.
That purge, he said, should include the CIA director, John Brennan, a confidant of Obama whom Udall said the president had declined to rein in during a long clash with the Senate intelligence committee. Udall first called on Brennan to resign in August, after Brennan conceded that agency officials had inappropriately accessed emails and work product of Senate torture investigators on a shared network. …
“Director Brennan and the CIA today are continuing to willfully provide inaccurate information and misrepresent the efficacy of torture.
Here is a summary video:
The CIA has a long history of misleading the president and other branches of government to protect itself. It typically promises to try to do better in the future, and has never been seriously brought to task for this behavior. If history and president Obama’s recent statement on the subject are any guide, it will not suffer any significant impact for its deceit and incompetence in this instance either. Perhaps the agency has become stronger than the elected branches of the government. In any event, the consequence is a weakening of our system of government.
This report is appalling. It describes the darkest chapter of US Government behavior that I can remember during my lifetime. Worse than My Lai. Worse than Watergate. Worse than ContraGate. Worse than the many lies told during the Vietnam War.
We should be ashamed. We should be ashamed that these events happened. We should be ashamed that the perpetrators of these crimes (like Mr. Cheney) are not only not in jail, they are treated as respectable public figures offering commentary about this report.
Mr. Cheney, in particular, as well as George W. Bush, should be in jail thanking their lucky stars that they do not face a firing squad.
The activities that this report documents are immoral, evil, and are a betrayal of all the values this nation allegedly holds dear. We are supposed to be the good guys.
Not only is torture ineffective in obtaining useful information, as the Senate Intelligence report has shown, but it foments hatred around the world against the U.S. and consequently terrorism against U.S. targets. It’s ironic that John Kerry warned that the release of the Senate Intelligence report might lead to reprisals against U.S. citizens. With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, had we not engaged in torture in the first place, there would be no such report to release and no reason for reprisals.
…about how one of the first people we interrogated after 9/11 was doing just fine giving us actionable intelligence when an FBI agent was using traditional interrogation techniques, but clammed up when a CIA contractor got a hold of him and started using more “enhanced” techniques. Talk about stupid! Domestic law enforcement elicits confessions and other information that will hold up in court on a daily basis. That should be the standard in these situations as well.
NPR reported that over 5 years ago:
FBI: Key Sept. 11 Leads Obtained Without Torture
Read that story, and you’ll learn that Former CIA director Michael Hayden repeatedly and “emphatically” lied about the effectiveness of torture.
It has been widely known for years that all the torture apologists were making up their own facts to justify the war crimes. Our timid corporate media just weren’t reporting that part of the story.
I didn’t get the sense from her tone that it was some new revelation, just a reminder that this is part of the context, especially since she cited a 2009 Senate hearing in which the FBI agent testified from behind a screen. I also watch her and other MSNBC primetime regularly and have for several years, so I can vouch that this is not just now coming up at least on that network. Of course, when I pointed out on another thread that a lot of this was old news I got jumped on pretty hard:(
That your important news source was a TV talk show, and ironic that your presentation made it sound like it was new information.
Yes, the torturing was stupid and unproductive. We’ve been saying that for a long time. It’s good that you noticed.
She does real journalism, possibly the best of the MSNBC line up (though Chris Hayes is pretty good on that front too). Yes, there’s an advocacy factor to some of her reporting, but I wouldn’t dismiss her as just hosting a talk show.
Has she ever broken a story that was not reported elsewhere? I don’t know the answer to my question, because her “advocacy factor” is a bit much for me, and I don’t watch. If she has, then good, she’s a journalist. If not, I think it’s questionable whether she is.
…but yes, she has done plenty original reporting, some of it rather investigative in nature. I actually think her advocacy is a lot more subtle than many.
I simply downrated your comment because It thought it was presented in a flip manner about a serious matter in addition to being incorrect. You then asked why your comment had been downrated, and I and others provided our reasoning for that. So, you asked for something and you got it (as the old Toyota ad said).
Would E.I.T.’s be effective?
If you accept the substance of the Senate report: they are not effective. The Secretary himself said the “answer is unknowable” today.