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Torture: An Executive Summary

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Preface for Democrats: Your team is guilty, too ...

What You Need to Know ..

There's a media storm regarding the Senate torture report ... appropriately.

But much of the report was redacted by the CIA and White House.

Here's what you need to know ...

Initially, the torture was widespread and systemic.

And it wasn't just bad guys who were tortured:

  • U.S. military files show that many Guantánamo prisoners were held on the flimsiest grounds such as wearing a Casio watch, being a prisoner in a Taliban jail, driving cabs in certain geographic regions, or being Al Jazeera reporters

http://www.nps.gov/stli/historyculture/images/Statue-Scaffolding-Copy.jpg

Torture INTERFERES With Our Ability to Fight Terrorism, Obtain Intelligence Information and Protect Our National Security

Virtually all of the top interrogation experts – both conservatives and liberals (except for those trying to escape war crimes prosecution) – say that torture doesn’t work:

“Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”

  • The C.I.A.’s 1963 interrogation manual stated:

Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions, concocted as a means of escaping from distress. A time-consuming delay results, while investigation is conducted and the admissions are proven untrue. During this respite the interrogatee can pull himself together. He may even use the time to think up new, more complex ‘admissions’ that take still longer to disprove.

  • According to the Washington Post, the CIA’s top spy – Michael Sulick, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service – said that the spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration. “I don’t think we’ve suffered at all from an intelligence standpoint.”
  • A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks (Milton Bearden) says(as quoted by senior CIA agent and Presidential briefer Ray McGovern):

It is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture has served some useful purpose.

 

***

 

The old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work ….

  • A former high-level CIA officer (Philip Giraldi) states:

Many governments that have routinely tortured to obtain information have abandoned the practice when they discovered that other approaches actually worked better for extracting information. Israel prohibited torturing Palestinian terrorist suspects in 1999. Even the German Gestapo stopped torturing French resistance captives when it determined that treating prisoners well actually produced more and better intelligence.

  • Another former high-level CIA official (Bob Baer) says:

And torture — I just don’t think it really works … you don’t get the truth. What happens when you torture people is, they figure out what you want to hear and they tell you.

  • Michael Scheuer, formerly a senior CIA official in the Counter-Terrorism Center, says:

“I personally think that any information gotten through extreme methods of torture would probably be pretty useless because it would be someone telling you what you wanted to hear.”

  • A retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002 (Glenn L. Carle) says:

[Coercive techniques] didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information…Everyone was deeply concerned and most felt it was un-American and did not work.”

  • A former top Air Force interrogator who led the team that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has conducted hundreds of interrogations of high ranking Al Qaida members and supervising more than one thousand, and wrote a book called How to Break a Terrorist writes:

As the senior interrogator in Iraq for a task force charged with hunting down Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former Al Qaida leader and mass murderer, I listened time and time again to captured foreign fighters cite the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as their main reason for coming to Iraq to fight. Consider that 90 percent of the suicide bombers in Iraq are these foreign fighters and you can easily conclude that we have lost hundreds, if not thousands, of American lives because of our policy of torture and abuse. But that’s only the past.Somewhere in the world there are other young Muslims who have joined Al Qaida because we tortured and abused prisoners. These men will certainly carry out future attacks against Americans, either in Iraq, Afghanistan, or possibly even here. And that’s not to mention numerous other Muslims who support Al Qaida, either financially or in other ways, because they are outraged that the United States tortured and abused Muslim prisoners.

 

In addition, torture and abuse has made us less safe because detainees are less likely to cooperate during interrogations if they don’t trust us. I know from having conducted hundreds of interrogations of high ranking Al Qaida members and supervising more than one thousand, that when a captured Al Qaida member sees us live up to our stated principles they are more willing to negotiate and cooperate with us. When we torture or abuse them, it hardens their resolve and reaffirms why they picked up arms.

He also says:

[Torture is] extremely ineffective, and it’s counter-productive to what we’re trying to accomplish.When we torture somebody, it hardens their resolve … The information that you get is unreliable. … And even if you do get reliable information, you’re able to stop a terrorist attack, al Qaeda’s then going to use the fact that we torture people to recruit new members.

And he repeats:

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

And:

They don’t want to talk about the long term consequences that cost the lives of Americans…. The way the U.S. treated its prisoners “was al-Qaeda’s number-one recruiting tool and brought in thousands of foreign fighters who killed American soldiers.

  • The FBI interrogators who actually interviewed some of the 9/11 suspects say torture didn’t work
  • Another FBI interrogator of 9/11 suspects said:

I was in the middle of this, and it’s not true that these [aggressive] techniques were effective

  • The FBI warned military interrogators in 2003 that enhanced interrogation techniques are “of questionable effectiveness” and cited a “lack of evidence of [enhanced techniques’] success.
  • The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously found that torture doesn’t work, stating:

The administration’s policies concerning [torture] and the resulting controversies damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.

  • General Petraeus says that torture is unnecessary
  • Retired 4-star General Barry McCaffrey – who Schwarzkopf called he hero of Desert Storm – agrees
  • Former Navy Judge Advocate General Admiral John Hutson says:

Fundamentally, those kinds of techniques are ineffective. If the goal is to gain actionable intelligence, and it is, and if that’s important, and it is, then we have to use the techniques that are most effective. Torture is the technique of choice of the lazy, stupid and pseudo-tough.

He also says:

Another objection is that torture doesn’t work. All the literature and experts say that if we really want usable information, we should go exactly the opposite way and try to gain the trust and confidence of the prisoners.

  • Army Colonel Stuart Herrington – a military intelligence specialist who interrogated generals under the command of Saddam Hussein and evaluated US detention operations at Guantánamo – notes that the process of obtaining information is hampered, not helped, by practices such as “slapping someone in the face and stripping them naked”. Herrington and other former US military interrogators say:

We know from experience that it is very difficult to elicit information from a detainee who has been abused. The abuse often only strengthens their resolve and makes it that much harder for an interrogator to find a way to elicit useful information.

  • Major General Thomas Romig, former Army JAG, said:

If you torture somebody, they’ll tell you anything. I don’t know anybody that is good at interrogation, has done it a lot, that will say that that’s an effective means of getting information. … So I don’t think it’s effective.

  • The first head of the Department of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge – says we were wrong to torture
  • The former British intelligence chairman says that waterboarding didn’t stop terror plots
  • A spokesman for the National Security Council (Tommy Vietor) says:

The bottom line is this: If we had some kind of smoking-gun intelligence from waterboarding in 2003, we would have taken out Osama bin Laden in 2003.

In researching this article, I spoke to numerous counterterrorist officials from agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Their conclusion is unanimous: not only have coercive methods failed to generate significant and actionable intelligence, they have also caused the squandering of resources on a massive scale through false leads, chimerical plots, and unnecessary safety alerts … Here, they say, far from exposing a deadly plot, all torture did was lead to more torture of his supposed accomplices while also providing some misleading “information” that boosted the administration’s argument for invading Iraq.

  • Neuroscientists have found that torture physically and chemically interferes with the prisoner’s ability to tell the truth
  • An Army psychologist – Major Paul Burney, Army’s Behavior Science Consulting Team psychologist – said (page 78 & 83):

was stressed to me time and time again that psychological investigations have proven that harsh interrogations do not work. At best it will get you information that a prisoner thinks you want to hear to make the interrogation stop, but that information is strongly likely to be false.

 

***

 

Interrogation techniques that rely on physical or adverse consequences are likely to garner inaccurate information and create an increased level of resistance…There is no evidence that the level of fear or discomfort evoked by a given technique has any consistent correlation to the volume or quality of information obtained.

  • An expert on resisting torture – Terrence Russell, JPRA’s manager for research and development and a SERE specialist – said (page 209):

History has shown us that physical pressures are not effective for compelling an individual to give information or to do something’ and are not effective for gaining accurate, actionable intelligence.

Indeed, it has been known for hundreds of years that torture doesn’t work:

  • As a former CIA analyst notes:

During the Inquisition there were many confessed witches, and many others were named by those tortured as other witches. Unsurprisingly, when these new claimed witches were tortured, they also confessed. Confirmation of some statement made under torture, when that confirmation is extracted by another case of torture, is invalid information and cannot be trusted.

  • The head of Britain’s wartime interrogation center in London said:

“Violence is taboo. Not only does it produce answers to please, but it lowers the standard of information.”

  • The national security adviser to Vice President George H.W. Bush (Donald P. Gregg) wrote:

During wartime service with the CIA in Vietnam from 1970 to 1972, I was in charge of intelligence operations in the 10 provinces surrounding Saigon. One of my tasks was to prevent rocket attacks on Saigon’s port.Keeping Saigon safe required human intelligence, most often from captured prisoners. I had a running debate about how North Vietnamese prisoners should be treated with the South Vietnamese colonel who conducted interrogations. This colonel routinely tortured prisoners, producing a flood of information, much of it totally false. I argued for better treatment and pressed for key prisoners to be turned over to the CIA, where humane interrogation methods were the rule – and more accurate intelligence was the result.

 

The colonel finally relented and turned over a battered prisoner to me, saying, “This man knows a lot, but he will not talk to me.”

 

We treated the prisoner’s wounds, reunited him with his family, and allowed him to make his first visit to Saigon. Surprised by the city’s affluence, he said he would tell us anything we asked. The result was a flood of actionable intelligence that allowed us to disrupt planned operations, including rocket attacks against Saigon.

 

Admittedly, it would be hard to make a story from nearly 40 years ago into a definitive case study. But there is a useful reminder here. The key to successful interrogation is for the interrogator – even as he controls the situation – to recognize a prisoner’s humanity, to understand his culture, background and language. Torture makes this impossible.

 

There’s a sad twist here. Cheney forgets that the Bush administration followed this approach with some success. A high-value prisoner subjected to patient interrogation by an Arabic-speaking FBI agent yielded highly useful information, including the final word on Iraq’s weapons programs.

 

His name was Saddam Hussein.

  • Top interrogators got information from a high-level Al Qaeda suspects through building rapport, even if they hated the person they were interrogating by treating them as human

Senator John McCain explains, based upon his own years of torture:

I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering. Often, information provided to stop the torture is deliberately misleading.

According to the experts, torture is unnecessary even to prevent “ticking time bombs” from exploding (see this, this and this). Indeed, a top expert says that torture would fail in a real ‘ticking time-bomb’ situation. (And, no ... it did NOT help get Bin Laden. And see this.).

In fact, torture reduces our national security:

  • The head of all U.S. intelligence said:

"The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world," [Director of National Intelligence Dennis] Blair said in the statement. "The damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

  • A top counter-terrorism expert says torture increases the risk of terrorism (and see this).
  • One of the top military interrogators said that torture by Americans of innocent Iraqis is the main reason that foreign fighters started fighting against Americans in Iraq in the first place (and see this).
  • Former counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke says that America's indefinite detention without trial and abuse of prisoners is a leading Al Qaeda recruiting tool
  • A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks, says:

Torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.

Torture puts our troops in danger, torture makes our troops less safe, torture creates terrorists. It’s used so widely as a propaganda tool now in Afghanistan. All too often, detainees have pamphlets on them, depicting what happened at Guantanamo.

"The administration’s policies concerning [torture] and the resulting controversies ... strengthened the hand of our enemies."

  • General Petraeus said that torture hurts our national security
  • The reporter who broke Iran-Contra and other stories says that torture actually helped Al Qaeda, by giving false leads to the U.S. which diverted its military, intelligence and economic resources into wild goose chases
  • Raw Story says that torture might have resulted in false terror alerts
  • Hundreds of other experts have said the same things

U.S. Officials Launched a Systematic Program of Torture Using Specialized Techniques Which Produce False Confessions ... to Justify the Iraq War

Not only did Bush, Cheney and other top government officials lie about us into the Iraq war by making a false linkage between Iraq and 9/11, but they carried out a systematic program of torture in order to intentionally create false evidence of that allegation.

Indeed, the entire purpose behind the U.S. torture program was to obtain false confessions.

And the torture techniques used were Communist techniques specifically designed to produce false confessions.

Senator Levin, in commenting on a Senate Armed Services Committee report on torture in 2009, dropped the following bombshell:

With last week’s release of the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinions, it is now widely known that Bush administration officials distorted Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape “SERE” training – a legitimate program used by the military to train our troops to resist abusive enemy interrogations – by authorizing abusive techniques from SERE for use in detainee interrogations. Those decisions conveyed the message that abusive treatment was appropriate for detainees in U.S. custody. They were also an affront to the values articulated by General Petraeus.

 

In SERE training, U.S. troops are briefly exposed, in a highly controlled setting, to abusive interrogation techniques used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions. The techniques are based on tactics used by Chinese Communists against American soldiers during the Korean War for the purpose of eliciting false confessions for propaganda purposes. Techniques used in SERE training include stripping trainees of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, subjecting them to face and body slaps, depriving them of sleep, throwing them up against a wall, confining them in a small box, treating them like animals, subjecting them to loud music and flashing lights, and exposing them to extreme temperatures. Until recently, the Navy SERE school also used waterboarding. The purpose of the SERE program is to provide U.S. troops who might be captured a taste of the treatment they might face so that they might have a better chance of surviving captivity and resisting abusive and coercive interrogations.

Senator Levin then documents that SERE techniques were deployed as part of an official policy on detainees, and that SERE instructors helped to implement the interrogation programs. He noted:

The senior Army SERE psychologist warned in 2002 against using SERE training techniques during interrogations in an email to personnel at Guantanamo Bay, because:

[T]he use of physical pressures brings with it a large number of potential negative side effects… When individuals are gradually exposed to increasing levels of discomfort, it is more common for them to resist harder… If individuals are put under enough discomfort, i.e. pain, they will eventually do whatever it takes to stop the pain. This will increase the amount of information they tell the interrogator, but it does not mean the information is accurate. In fact, it usually decreases the reliability of the information because the person will say whatever he believes will stop the pain… Bottom line: the likelihood that the use of physical pressures will increase the delivery of accurate information from a detainee is very low. The likelihood that the use of physical pressures will increase the level of resistance in a detainee is very high… (p. 53).

McClatchy filled in some of the details:

Former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration…

 

For most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”

 

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document…

 

When people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder,” he continued.”Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn’t any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam . . .

 

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay,

Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

 

“While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”

 

“I think it’s obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq),” [Senator] Levin said in a conference call with reporters. “They made out links where they didn’t exist.”

 

Levin recalled Cheney’s assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11

hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

 

The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.

In other words, top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false linkage.

The Washington Post reported the same year:

Despite what you’ve seen on TV, torture is really only good at one thing: eliciting false confessions. Indeed, Bush-era torture techniques, we now know, were cold-bloodedly modeled after methods used by Chinese Communists to extract confessions from captured U.S. servicemen that they could then use for propaganda during the Korean War.

 

So as shocking as the latest revelation in a new Senate Armed Services Committee report may be, it actually makes sense — in a nauseating way. The White House started pushing the use of torture not when faced with a “ticking time bomb” scenario from terrorists, but when officials in 2002 were desperately casting about for ways to tie Iraq to the 9/11 attacks — in order to strengthen their public case for invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 at all.

 

***

 

Gordon Trowbridge writes for the Detroit News: “Senior Bush administration officials pushed for the use of abusive interrogations of terrorism detainees in part to seek evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq, according to newly declassified information discovered in a congressional probe.

Indeed, one of the two senior instructors from the Air Force team which taught U.S. servicemen how to resist torture by foreign governments when used to extract false confessions has blown the whistle on the true purpose behind the U.S. torture program.

As Truthout reported:

Jessen’s notes were provided to Truthout by retired Air Force Capt. Michael Kearns, a “master” SERE instructor and decorated veteran who has previously held high-ranking positions within the Air Force Headquarters Staff and Department of Defense (DoD).

 

***

Kearns was one of only two officers within DoD qualified to teach all three SERE-related courses within SSTP on a worldwide basis, according to a copy of a 1989 letter written Aldrich, who nominated him officer of the year.

 

***

 

The Jessen notes clearly state the totality of what was being reverse-engineered – not just ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ but an entire program of exploitation of prisoners using torture as a central pillar,” he said. “What I think is important to note, as an ex-SERE Resistance to Interrogation instructor, is the focus of Jessen’s instruction. It is exploitation, not specifically interrogation. And this is not a picayune issue, because if one were to ‘reverse-engineer’ a course on resistance to exploitation then what one would get is a plan to exploit prisoners, not interrogate them. The CIA/DoD torture program appears to have the same goals as the terrorist organizations or enemy governments for which SV-91 and other SERE courses were created to defend against: the full exploitation of the prisoner in his intelligence, propaganda, or other needs held by the detaining power, such as the recruitment of informers and double agents. Those aspects of the US detainee program have not generally been discussed as part of the torture story in the American press.”

 

***

 

Jessen wrote that cooperation is the “end goal” of the detainer, who wants the detainee “to see that [the detainer] has ‘total’ control of you because you are completely dependent on him, and thus you must comply with his wishes. Therefore, it is absolutely inevitable that you must cooperate with him in some way (propaganda, special favors, confession, etc.).”

 

***

 

Kearns said, based on what he has read in declassified government documents and news reports about the role SERE played in the Bush administration’s torture program, Jessen clearly “reverse-engineered” his lesson plan and used resistance methods to abuse “war on terror” detainees.

In a subsequent report, Truthout notes:

Air Force Col. Steven Kleinman, a career military intelligence officer recognized as one of the DOD's most effective interrogators as well a former SERE instructor and director of intelligence for JPRA's teaching academy, said he immediately knew the true value of the PREAL manual if employed as part of an interrogation program.

 

"This is the guidebook to getting false confessions, a system drawn specifically from the communist interrogation model that was used to generate propaganda rather than intelligence," Kleinman said in an interview. "If your goal is to obtain useful and reliable information this is not the source book you should be using."

 

***

 

"In SERE courses, we emphatically presented this interrogation paradigm as one that was employed exclusively by nations that were in flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions and international treaties against torture," Kleinman said. "We proudly assured the students that we - the United States - would never resort to such despicable methods."

(Interrogators also forced detainees to take drugs ... which further impaired their ability to tell the truth.)

And false confessions were, in fact, extracted.

For example:

And the 9/11 Commission Report was largely based on a third-hand account of what tortured detainees said, with two of the three parties in the communication being government employees. And the government went to great lengths to obstruct justice and hide unflattering facts from the Commission.

According to NBC News:

  • Much of the 9/11 Commission Report was based upon the testimony of people who were tortured
  • At least four of the people whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators information as a way to stop being “tortured.”
  • The 9/11 Commission itself doubted the accuracy of the torture confessions, and yet kept their doubts to themselves

Details here.

http://longstreet.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83542d51e69e2010536e647d2970b-pi

 

Torture Has Been Recognized As Terrorism for Thousands of Years

Moreover, torture has been recognize for thousands of years as a form of terrorism.

Indeed, America's recently-leaked criteria for putting people on the terror watchlist says torture is terror (page 47-48):

***

http://www.theispot.com/images/source/FredaLibertyUpended1.jpgAnthony Freda: www.AnthonyFreda.com

Torture Is a War Crime ... Which Can STILL Be Prosecuted

Many argue that the statute of limitations on Bush and Cheney’s crimes of torture have all run … so it is too late to prosecute them.

However, the United States War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal statute set forth at 18 U.S.C. § 2441, makes it a federal crime for any U.S. national, whether military or civilian, to violate the Geneva Convention by engaging in murder, torture, or inhuman treatment.

The statute applies not only to those who carry out the acts, but also to those who ORDER IT, know about it, or fail to take steps to stop it. The statute applies to everyone, no matter how high and mighty.

18 U.S.C. § 2441 has no statute of limitations, which means that a war crimes complaint can be filed at any time.

The penalty may be life imprisonment or — if a single prisoner dies due to torture — death. Given that there are numerous, documented cases of prisoners being tortured to death by U.S. soldiers in both Iraq and Afghanistan, that means that the death penalty would be appropriate for anyone found guilty of carrying out, ordering, or sanctioning such conduct.

Here's a brief round-up showing that prisoners were injured - and killed - due to U.S. torture:

Waterboarding IS Torture

Not Just Waterboarding

Children, Too

People Died While Being Tortured

Gen. Barry McCaffrey said:

We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the CIA.

The ACLU wrote in 2005:

The American Civil Liberties Union today made public an analysis of new and previously released autopsy and death reports of detainees held in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom died while being interrogated. The documents show that detainees were hooded, gagged, strangled, beaten with blunt objects, subjected to sleep deprivation and to hot and cold environmental conditions.

 

There is no question that U.S. interrogations have resulted in deaths,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable.

 

***

 

The documents released today include 44 autopsies and death reports as well as a summary of autopsy reports of individuals apprehended in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents show that detainees died during or after interrogations by Navy Seals, Military Intelligence and “OGA” (Other Governmental Agency) — a term, according to the ACLU, that is commonly used to refer to the CIA.

 

According to the documents, 21 of the 44 deaths were homicides. Eight of the homicides appear to have resulted from abusive techniques used on detainees, in some instances, by the CIA, Navy Seals and Military Intelligence personnel. The autopsy reports list deaths by “strangulation,” “asphyxiation” and “blunt force injuries.” An overwhelming majority of the so-called “natural deaths” were attributed to “Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease.”

 

While newspapers have recently reported deaths of detainees in CIA custody, today’s documents show that the problem is pervasive, involving Navy Seals and Military Intelligence too.

Spiegel reported in 2009:

At least two men died during imprisonment. One of them, a 22-year-old taxi driver named Dilawar, was suspended by his hands from the ceiling for four days, during which US military personnel repeatedly beat his legs. Dilawar died on Dec. 10, 2002. In the autopsy report, a military doctor wrote that the tissue on his legs had basically been “pulpified.” As it happens, his interrogators had already known — and later testified — that there was no evidence against Dilawar …

And see this. And it is now clear that the CIA covered up murders at Guantanamo.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 limited the applicability of the War Crimes Act, but still made the following unlawful: torture, cruel or inhumane treatment, murder, mutilation or maiming, intentionally causing serious bodily harm, rape, sexual assault or abuse.

The Nuremberg Tribunal which convicted and sentenced Nazis leaders to death conceived of wars of aggression – i.e. wars not launched in self-defense – defined the following as “crimes against peace”, or war crimes:

(i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
(ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i)

The Tribunal considered wars of aggression to be the ultimate war crime, which encompassed all other crimes:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

Judgment of October 1, 1946, International Military Tribunal Judgment and Sentence, 22 IMTTRIALS, supra note 7, at 498, reprinted in 41 AM. J. INT’LL. 172, 186 (1947).

Given that Iraq had no connection with 9/11 and possessed no weapons of mass destruction, the Iraq war was a crime of aggression and – under the standards by which Nazi leaders were convicted by the Nuremberg Tribunal – the American leaders who lied us into that war are guilty of war crimes.

Benjamin Ferencz, a former chief prosecutor for the Nuremberg Trials, declared:

A prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity — that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.

See this, this, and this.

The Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court – Luis Moreno-Ocampo – told the Sunday Telegraph in 2007:

That he would be willing to launch an inquiry and could envisage a scenario in which the Prime Minister and American President George W Bush could one day face charges at The Hague. Luis Moreno-Ocampo urged Arab countries, particularly Iraq, to sign up to the court to enable allegations against the West to be pursued.

As a Japan Times Op/Ed noted in 2009:

In January 2003, a group of American law professors warned President George W. Bush that he and senior officials of his government could be prosecuted for war crimes if their military tactics violated international humanitarian law.

Eminent legal scholars such as former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clarke and Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law and a professor of law Lawrence Velvel have since stated that high-level Bush administration officials did commit war crimes in relation to the Iraq war.

Torture is – of course – a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which make it illegal to inflict mental or physical torture or inhuman treatment. It is clearly-established that waterboarding is torture. The torture was, in fact, systematic, and included widespread sexual humiliation, murder and other unambiguous forms of torture.

Velvel and many other legal experts say that the torture which was carried out after 9/11 is a war crime.

General Antonio Taguba, who led an official investigation into prisoner abuse, said in 2008:

There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

Colin Powell’s former chief of staff stated that Dick Cheney is guilty of war crimes for overseeing torture policies.

Matthew Alexander – a former top Air Force interrogator who led the team that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – notes that government officials knew they are vulnerable for war crime prosecution:

They have, from the beginning, been trying to prevent an investigation into war crimes.

Former  prosecutor in the Guantanamo military commissions, and current Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve (Darrel Vandeveld) wrote:

Torture is a crime and the United States engaged in it. Those are two indisputable facts…

 

The process of self-examination and accountability has been, and remains, the only way to move forward and regain our moral and legal grounding

 

We have a Department of Justice for a reason, and now it’s up to Attorney General Holder, the nation’s top law enforcement officer, to do his job and appoint an independent prosecutor to follow the evidence where it may lead…

It is critical that we hold accountable those who authorized, those who legally sanctioned and those who implemented the torture policies of one of the darkest periods in our nation’s history. What is at stake is nothing less than our democracy.

Moreover:

General Ricardo Sanchez, the former top coalition commander in Iraq, called for a Truth Commission so we might fully understand the failure of the military and civilian command to honor the pledge of our constitution.

 

Sanchez . . .stressed that the outcome must embrace a variety of solutions, including prosecution.

 

Sanchez stated, “When the president made the declaration that the Geneva Conventions no longer apply, we unleashed the hounds of hell and eliminated all the foundations for the training, ethics and structure we had built into our soldiers and our leaders for how to conduct these kinds of operations.”

 

Sanchez stated many problems could be traced to loyalties to individuals and political parties.

Former President Jimmy Carter is also calling for a truth commission with the possibility of prosecution:

“[I] like to see is a complete examination of what did happen, the identification of any perpetrators of crimes against our own laws or against international law,” said Carter. “And then after all that’s done, decide whether or not there should be any prosecutions.”

A Malaysian war crimes commission also found Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and five administration attorneys guilty of war crimes (although but the commission has no power to enforce its judgment).

Postscript: Torture is also apparently continuing under Obama. See this and this.

 

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Wed, 12/10/2014 - 20:01 | 5538648 TeethVillage88s
TeethVillage88s's picture

This is disgusting...

U.S. military files show that many Guantánamo prisoners were held on the flimsiest grounds such as wearing a Casio watch, being a prisoner in a Taliban jail, driving cabs in certain geographic regions, or being Al Jazeera reporters

Many state that those tortured were mainly innocent farmers, villagers, or those against whom neighbors held a grudge. Indeed, people received a nice cash reward from the U.S. government for turning people in as “suspected terrorists” (and see this movie)

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 10:28 | 5536194 Polymarkos
Polymarkos's picture

I was Army Intell. I handled a LOT of prisoners, and did lots of collection ops. TORTURE DOES NOT WORK. Simple tricks and psychology was all we needed. All this crap about waterballing (the OLD name--now waterboarding) NOT being torture is bullshit. If you think it isn't torture, have someone do it to YOU. HUNDREDS OF TIMES. See what a gibbering blob you turn into, and then think back to your outlook before you turned into a blob.

 

IT IS MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE TO TORTURE PRISONERS. We sold a part of our soul when we started that evil policy. IT is a measure of how far we have fallen.

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 13:21 | 5536889 Prober
Prober's picture

2 interesting observations:

These actions were done by the most devout militant christians against the most devout militant islamists, who are much, much worse.

Note: Buddhists are not involved in any of this stuff.

 

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 11:05 | 5536333 Urban Redneck
Urban Redneck's picture

Sleep deprivation and subject disorientation are hardly "simple tricks" to execute properly since they require 1) TIME 2) A TEAM and 3) COORDINATION and 4) DILIGENCE.

Since you bit their bait hook, line, and sinker... by accepting the false premise that "torture doesn't work", answer me this- Where do you draw the line?

I could find thousands of blacks in the US who would testify as the efficacy of simple sleep deprivation and subject disorientation (with some coffee and humiliation thrown in for good measure) in obtaining false confessions. So your framework leaves something to be desired.

On the bright side - at least the INSCOM trolls get to (literally ) drag a subject's family and loved ones into the equation less frequently than their some of their counterparts in other agencies, but that can always be overcome with some "simple psychology"...

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 10:35 | 5536219 usednabused
usednabused's picture

I totally agree with you on all this. Just one question though, how is it possible for the creeps in power to fall any farther? Wouldn't they need shovels?

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 10:15 | 5536143 Prober
Prober's picture

If I were CIA, I would snatch this character masquerading as "George Washington", drop into ISIL territory, then get popcorn & beer to enjoy resulting graphic video of poetic justice :-))

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 14:04 | 5537044 r0mulus
r0mulus's picture

It would be very good for the mods to get your IP address and report you for making threats against someone's life online.

It would also be good for them to ban you permanently.

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 10:10 | 5536110 Aguila2011
Aguila2011's picture

My question is "Why is this being released now?"  After the Nov election defeats and the remaining time that Barry has in office, why is the CIA being "attacked now?  I have read all the comments and torture aside, there is still a big part of the CIA that is involved in clandestine intelligence gathering and not involved in torture but in protecting Americans.

I think Feinstein released this stuff now to give the current Admin time to "remake" this service with their commie stooges.  Like remaking the military, a lot of senior and experienced people will probably be shown the door by some affiliation with "torture".  Go high enough and everyone has dirt on their hands.  Barry will have the excuse he needs to finish this part of "transforming" America before he ships off to retirement with the missus and his security detail.

Keep the big picture in mind guys.  Easy to get side tracked by the emotional crap that the media slings.

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 10:00 | 5536083 Prober
Prober's picture

Human species is so fortunate to be blessed with islamic cult worshipers who never engage in any kind of torture, kidnapping, ransom, beheadings, oppression, murder, terror bombings, etc.

Anyone know if this character masquerading as "George Washington" is an entitlement parasite, living off other people's earnings and government debt ?

 

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 10:30 | 5536210 usednabused
usednabused's picture

I have no idea whatever if GW is on the welfare rolls or not. But I am sure that you, Prober are a genuine piece of shit. The sort that this world doesn't need.

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 13:15 | 5536876 Prober
Prober's picture

I am here to stay, opposition to all socialist parasite scum ! :-))

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 10:14 | 5536137 Gadfly
Gadfly's picture
Troll much?  "Member for 1 week 1 day."
Wed, 12/10/2014 - 13:32 | 5536914 Prober
Prober's picture

So your policy is that new members are not welcome and you want to hold yourself up as some paragon of virtues ?

Your ARE just an intellectual & moral "gadfly" - HA !

You should change your moniker to "airhead".

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 08:44 | 5535878 Elliott Eldrich
Elliott Eldrich's picture

Hey! Hey! USA! Who'd you torture to death today?

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 09:17 | 5535936 Dugald
Dugald's picture

Yeah yeah, yadda yadda.........But who goes to prison?

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 07:50 | 5535796 p00k1e
p00k1e's picture

Nothing to see here. 

The U.s Government made ‘acts committed during War’ non-criminal.   Now the U.s. Government implies a war started that 9-11-01 morning.  However, insurance does not pay-out on an “Act of War”…..  but the WTC owner was paid out.

The entire investigation was a money grab.  A sham.  Grab what YOU can. 

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 07:50 | 5535795 nmewn
nmewn's picture

Why are you posting this nmewn?...

Another Witness in Michael Brown Shooting Found Dead

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Another-Witness-in-Michael-Brown-Shooting-Found-Dead--20141208-0044.html

...because justice never sleeps.

Its unclear to me what grand jury testimony they gave (pro-Wilson or anti-Wilson) but the fact that two of them have now been found murdered? is, shall we say, defying the odds.

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 07:24 | 5535778 flacorps
flacorps's picture

My point is if we're willing to torture why the total surveillance? Or if we're going to have total surveillance why the torture? 'Cause if you're gonna have both it's Groundhog year: 1984.

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 07:05 | 5535760 GCT
GCT's picture

George as you browbeat the last administration you might want to complete the thought process.  WE ARE STILL DOING TORTURE.  Worse this administration is even more powerful.  Our president is now Judge, Jury and Executioner without a trail, without a crime, without due process. 

Torture is bad you will get no arguement from me.  Now we just kill people with drones all in the name of terrorism, many time missing and killing innocent people.  Although a long watch try the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4jD1bQYQj4

 

I do not agree with everything the Author states but many of what the man states makes sense.

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 07:04 | 5535759 beaglebog
beaglebog's picture

I don't believe those who claim they were not complicit in torture.

They need to be water-boarded ... it's the only way to get the truth.

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 08:32 | 5535856 overmedicatedun...
overmedicatedundersexed's picture

funny how the day of : the gruber obuma care testamony "we lied healthcare died", we get Dems senators hitting the news cycle with this torture report, funny I say, oh and don't forget the GOP house funding another 1.1 trillion bill in .gov budget for 2015..all on the same am, seems american public has trouble keeping focus wonder why?

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 06:18 | 5535737 FallenOne
FallenOne's picture

we cornholed some folks with foreign objects. ya know cuz they're foreigners

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 06:15 | 5535728 Radical Marijuana
Radical Marijuana's picture

The War on Terror was deliberately designed to become a self-fulfilling prophesy! The basic system is debt slavery backed by wars based on deceits. There is a cascade of organized crime down from the highest levels to lower levels. Torturing prisoners was part of a plan to radicalize them for several decades, certainly going back to the early 1950s.

The events on 9/11/2001 were the most spectacular symbol, so far, that the War on Terror was designed to become a self-fulfilling prophesy, because those events were an inside job, false flag attack, used to start genocidal wars against people who never had anything to do with those attacks. Events have been orchestrated since then to accomplish what has actually been accomplished, namely more genocidal wars, in a vicious spiral with blow back, that would enable there to be much more genocidal wars.

The globalized ruling classes, that control all NATO countries, have become criminally insane. There are no reasons to doubt that the situations they created will not continue to get worse faster. One of the reasons why those ruling classes did the events on 9/11/2001 was to prepare to impose democidal martial law in NATO countries, with that first and foremost being prepared to impose in North America. Everything outlined in this article above will be coming home, because it was deliberately designed to enable that to happen. The main reasons for WHY there has been this vicious spiral of War on Terror and torture is that its goal is to be able to able to move forward its overall agenda within North America.

In my opinion, the more one learns about this, the worse it gets. Meanwhile, articles like the one above tend to implicitly presume some degree of Hanlon's Razor is still valid. However, in my view, everything that this article above correctly stated was also originally understood by the people who have deliberately designed and implemented the War on Terror to become a self-fulfilling prophesy, which is continuing to succeed in moving their real agenda forward.

After learning enough about this, I have become resigned to the significant probability that I could end up being another one of the people tortured and murdered (if I otherwise happened to live long enough to see conditions deteriorate that badly), when the martial law being prepared is imposed in North America. So far, there are way too little signs that enough people are understanding the true nature of the War on Terror to prevent that from continuing to be a runways vicious spiral of self-fulfilling prophesies.

I regard the events on 9/11 as having been a deliberate investment in mass murder, which was designed to pay back far more mass murders in the future. I regard the history behind that as beginning with the successful assassination of politicians, preparing the way for the criminally controlled government to mass murder thousands of people on 9/11, which was then able to be leveraged up to mass murdering millions of people, which is surely headed towards hundreds of millions, if not billions, in the foreseeable future. Of course, I wish that was not the case! However, I am not aware of any politically practical ways to prevent the established systems of criminally insanities from continuing to become way, way more criminally insane.

In my opinion, anyone who wants to try to understand the full meaning of the factual statements asserted in the article above has to come to terms with the degree to which the ruling classes have become criminally insane, and that, so far, they have been quite successful in their strategies of driving the War on Terror, along with torture, to become vicious spirals of self-fulfilling prophesies, which are achieving what those were intended to achieve.

The relative social power of the pyramidion people is based on thousands of years of social successes from backing up lies with violence. That has been developing at an exponentially accelerating rate, throughout the history of Neolithic Civilizations, with the government of the USA now being the heart of that beast, of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which is able and willing to continue to work towards more genocidal wars, along with imposing democidal martial law in North America.

The ruling classes' systems of debt slavery backed by wars based on deceits have already been built, and are automatically getting worse, faster. Meanwhile, in the general public there appears to be practically no understanding of what is really happening, because the vast majority of people have been conditioned to not want to understand. Meanwhile, articles like the one above, while correct in the points that it makes, continues to be grossly superficial with respect to understanding how and why that situation developed, so that the War on Terror and torture could be deliberately designed to do all of the things that were condemned in the article above.

In fact, the social pyramid systems are getting steeper. The ruling classes are relatively getting even more wealthy, and therefore, politically powerful, and therefore even more able to actually get away with promoting their systems of debt slavery backed by wars based on deceits. The top most of top pyramidion people are far more criminally insane than most ordinary people are able to fully imagine. However, we have probably not seen anything yet ... because there continues to be practically no ways to develop better death controls, than those which are done through the maximum possible deceits, because that was what was most successful throughout previous human history, and continues to be so at the present time, despite that overall situation becoming more criminally insane, the more positive reinforcement it achieves from driving the vicious spiral of the self-fulfilling prophesies of more War on Terror, along with more associated torture.

In my view, almost nobody takes seriously enough what the first book on the Art of War stated, when it started by saying "success in war is based on deceit" and ended by saying "spies are the most important soldiers." War was organized crime on a larger scale. Thousands of years of human history has amplified that to more astronomical sizes. Therefore, we have ended up with the biggest governments being the biggest forms of organized crime, effectively controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals.

The basic social system is a pyramid, and within that, the pyramidion people were those selected to have been the best at deceits and treacheries. The global ruling classes have always be engaged in pushing forward their agenda of social control through backing up lies with violence. The most spectacular recent installments of that have been the events on 9/11/2001 being an inside job, false flag attack, which were deliberately designed to accomplish everything that has since been accomplished, using 9/11 as the excuse and reason for moving forward their agenda of more genocidal wars abroad, along with preparing to impose democidal martial law at home.

At the present time, I seen barely the slightest hints of any deeper understanding of that overall social situation, regarding how and why natural selection pressures enabled the development of social pyramid systems, based on backing up lies with violence, which have become runaway criminal insanities, headed towards psychotic breakdowns far worse than we could currently comprehend. Given the degree to which the overwhelming vast majority of people do not understand any of that, because they have been successfully conditioned to not want to understand any of that, I see no good grounds to doubt that democidal martial law will be imposed in North America, with the government here becoming the worst imaginable terrorist and torturing organization, indeed, much worse than we could fully imagine at the present time.

I see almost nothing in the public spaces that comes remotely close to understanding the murder systems and death controls enough to operate those better, rather than for those to automatically run amok way worse, as their so far successful criminal insanities enable them to become way more criminally insane in the foreseeable future. We are facing a situation where thousands of years of human history, where everything was built on systems of being able to back up lies with violence, has been pumped up and UP by advances in science and technology, which were primarily applied to become better at being dishonest, and backing that up with violence, but otherwise, no scientific progress was generally made regarding any deeper understanding about how and why that was happening.

Therefore, nothing was promoted in the public spaces about how to operate better death controls, through better murder systems, due to the historical achievements of the actual murder systems, operating the actual death controls, being done through the maximum possible deceits, which in turn enabled there to be a political economy based on the maximum possible enforced frauds. Within those overall systems of debt slavery, backed by wars based on deceits, the ruling classes continued to develop in order to control those that they ruled over, which continued to work all too well, such as how the War on Terror, and its associated torture, have become very successful self-fulfilling prophesies, enabling the established social pyramid systems to get even steeper, with even greater runaway social polarization.

Meanwhile, the ruling classes continue to thereby become more wealthy (as measured in terms of the social tokens of wealth), and so, more politically powerful. Indeed, that appears to be so to the degree that writing articles which reveal more of the facts about that situation, or commenting upon such articles, will probably have no significant effect, other than get one's name on the list of people to be included as priorities murdered, when the democidal martial law finally kicks into gear.

Of course, in the bigger picture, those ruling classes, are criminally insane, while the people who have adapted to be controlled by their systems of lies backed with violence have tended to become just as criminally insane, if not more psychotic, in the sense of being even more out of touch with relatively more objective realities regarding how the actual combined money/murder systems are operating. Tragically, there appears to be no practical benefit achieved for anyone who more fully appreciates the degree to which our civilization has become criminally insane, due to the paradoxical ways that social success based on being able to back up lies with violence, or enforce frauds, drove that civilization as a whole to become more and more criminally insane. Overall, the destruction of the natural world will trump the social polarization. In my view, the madness of the criminally insane ruling classes, and the matching madness of those they rule over, will finally result in them destroying themselves. However, I can barely perceive any practical point in attempting to communicate that perspective, given the overwhelming degree to which the established systems of the ruling classes, and those they rule over, are already way too criminally insane to be able to recognize how criminally insane they really are.

Since the ruling classes have been too successful in getting their War on Terror and its associated torture going, as vicious spirals of self-fulfilling prophesies, unfortunately, I do not see any politically practical ways for that to be prevented, or to stop, other than through its own eventual mad self-destruction, in which context the consequences of its destruction of the natural world will become far worse than the consequences within the human world, expressed by the social pyramid systems driving more extreme social polarization.

To me, it looks like most people appear to still be fooled by the lies, while the few that are not fooled by the most obvious lies continue to be fooled by the more hidden levels of lies. The basic bigger picture is that natural selection always existed, in which context death controls always existed, wherein the murder systems were the most obvious of those. Human history selected for the development of murder systems doing death controls through the maximum possible deceits and treacheries, while the survivors of those developments became integrated into those systems, so that the only publicly significant opposition was controlled in ways whereby that opposition stayed within the overall frame of reference of deceitful death controls.

The article above is implicitly like that, in the degree to which it continues to covertly presume upon Hanlon's Razor, to argue as if the rulings classes did not already know everything that article correctly stated, except that the ruling classes had been deliberately applying that in reverse, because they wanted more social control, which they believed they could continue to achieve through bigger lies, backed up by more violence. So far, the ruling classes have been quite successful in doing that, while their opposition has practically accomplished nothing.

In my view militarism is the supreme ideology, and it deserves to be so. I promote the view that we need better death controls, which could be achieved through profound paradigm shifts in militarism, which would have to be the result of intellectual scientific revolutions, which enabled people to understand better how the only things that exist are the dynamic equilibria between different systems of organized lies operating robberies.

At the present time, the ruling classes are able to be the pyramidion people inside of a social pyramid system based on backing up lies with violence, within which the vast majority of people have been brainwashed to believe in those biggest bullies' bullshit social stories. Therefore, it was possible for spectacular events, like those on 9/11/2001, to become remarkably successful inside job, false flag attacks. The War on Terror and its associated torture are working fantastically well to accomplish their criminally insane objectives.

As a whole, human civilization has become so psychotically insane that there can be no reasonable doubt that we are collectively preparing to commit suicide, when looked at from an overall perspective, as the final consequences of society being almost completely controlled by lies backed by violence, which have become entrenched systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, which are careening more out of control the more socially successful those systems become. Thereby, the ruling classes that effectively control the government of the USA have been able to blast their war crimes and levels of treason to such astronomically amplified sizes that they have at least gone into orbit around the Earth, if not headed out with enough escape velocity to leave the solar system behind.

Within that overall context, the degree to which the history of warfare was successfully based on deceits and treacheries has meant that there is practically no radical truths about the death controlling murder systems which arise to a sufficient level of public consciousness in order to enable those to be done better. Instead, we appear to be trapped inside of the vicious spirals of the ruling classes, and those they rule over, becoming automatically more criminally insane ...

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 04:02 | 5535655 VWAndy
VWAndy's picture

 After 200 times Id be a fruit loop.

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 09:24 | 5535947 Dugald
Dugald's picture

The Elites answer to over population is all.......

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 04:00 | 5535653 MeBizarro
MeBizarro's picture

Most Americans aren't going to care about this one way or the other just as they didn't really care about Iraq & Afghanistan especially after GW Bush was out of office.  Bet most Americans think that torture ala movies/TV works wonders and those mediums influene popular American opinion far more than any Congressional report on the topic. 

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 03:24 | 5535639 beaglebog
beaglebog's picture

You torture me.

I will say anything to make it stop. Anything.

You know this ... so are sceptical of everything I do say ... "Well, he is being tortured, so he will say anything to make it stop."

Your only choice is to keep on torturing me, since you cannot trust a single word from my mouth.

I have no doubt that this is the reason that poor guy was waterboarded some 200 times.

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 01:17 | 5535496 TeethVillage88s
TeethVillage88s's picture

Repost, but I think Bipolar USA knows what is going on... Bribed Federal Officials, Dirty Wars for Neocons, Fraud & Corruption jointly conspired on by Federal Officials and Banks... the End of the State of Justice... the Beginning of Police State when DHS was created & Funded... Banks Crashed the Economy and use monopoly of creating money to invest in non-capital equities & Assets instead of the US Economy:

- Decapitalization
- Cost Cutting Cultural Shift to Free Trade, Off Shoring, Outsourcing, LBO & Mergers to cut Employment & Pensions, Savings are traded for Household Debt, Education is traded for Cheap, Uninformed, Labor Force, Open Borders traded for Security
- Racketeering is called Leadership & Democracy
- War is called a Blessing to USA

I would point out that the Idea that Was America is forgotten, as are our US Constitution & Individual Rights not out of a Cock Up, but as normal business. Hanlon's Razor be Damned.

Liberty, Freedom, Equality, and Justice seems to speak to the reasons for breaking from Great Britain. The Magna Carta is a key inspirational Document. Excessive Taxation, Control over the Currency, Occupational Forces, a Justice System that did not serve the Colonies' People, and no return or benefit from the Monarchy Government on Taxes Paid.

- We have a Military Republic or are Part of a European Empire
- Animal Husbandry taught Rulers how to Govern
- Money as the biggest power on Earth, controls Government, Politicians, Laws, Justice, Medicine, Banking, Military, US Infrastructure, and all our basic Human Needs
- US Leaders Follow the Money, Debt Controls the People

- All Politicians, Governments & Business Leaders use Long Term Strategies... to position themselves for success
- Global Business Interests... Like Machiavelli, Charlemagne, Sun Tzu, Stalin, Mao Zedong, ...effectively swoop in to Claim World Resources for their own and keep Labor Cost Down
- War is a struggle for power, wealth, resources played out on the Battlefield or Theater of War by those who will not benefit
- PNAC appears to be a tool by those who wage war for power

When will a people pull the power of government back from Greedy Bankers, Lawyers, Politicians, Nebobs, Traders, and Globalist?

- Angst, Pathos, Ethos, Logos, Calling, have to be recognized as Primary Positive Motivations of all Humans
- Money, Greed, Power, Financial Interests, Status, Envy, Jealousy, have to be recognized as questionable Primary Motivations of all Humans
- Philosophy in some form must be taught again in communities

In the USA we teach Infantilism, in that we permit a marriage between Government & Business or the Wealthy, Duopoly.

As we witness the Tripart Train Crash of Federal Government, Federal Reserve Bank, and TBTF Corporatism...

- Laws & Taxes Proliferate
- Systems of Laws, Taxes, Banking, Corporations, Financial become huge monstrosities of Complexity, Laxity, Corrupt Accounting, Corrupt Auditing, Corrupt Principals, and Corrupt & Dirty Wars implemented by a Confused Military & Confused Foreign Policy

National Referendums would spur national Debates & National Education Efforts around each Train Wreck. The Split Personality of the USA could Recover by 2016 since we still have understanding of conservative business & government Practices, like Auditing, Accounting, Standardization, Budgeting, and monitoring systems.

However, the USA is headed for War, Dissipation, Corruption, and utter destruction.

http://www.history.org/history/teaching/ideaofamerica/

How is Money Creation Monopoly in the hands of Wall Street & London Banks = Equality?

How is War Funded by Big Wall Street or London Banks = Justice, Sovereignty, Equality, Liberty, or Freedom?

How is 90 Million Unemployed, a Shortage of 30 Million good Full Time Jobs, a Shortage of 20 Million Businesses, use of Slave Labor overseas, $57 Trillion in US Debt = Freedom, Liberty, Equality, or Justice?

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 14:01 | 5537033 r0mulus
r0mulus's picture

sing it from on high, brother!

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 05:42 | 5535483 TNTARG
TNTARG's picture

America will be remembered, no doubt. May be The People begins to understand "why do they hate us". Without the interrogation mark.

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 00:33 | 5535432 disgruntled hou...
disgruntled housewife's picture

Has anyone else seen NYTimes article- Wall Street Seeks to Tuck Dodd-Frank Changes in Budget Bill?http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/wall-street-seeks-to-tuck-dodd-frank-changes-in-budget-bill/?ref=business

I am sure Zero Hedge audience was already aware of this article's information but notice the timing that the nytimes decides to run it. While everyone is busy being disgusted by the CIA- which we should be- they decide to inform their readers of this.

I am disgusted because I don't think this was any accident. They cover the issue but run it at a time to protect their banker buddies.

Scum really does rise to the top. It needs to be skimmed off. I can't breathe.

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 23:23 | 5535297 Gadfly
Gadfly's picture

Torture is evil in and of itself.

But when you do it in order to produce false confessions and testimony from innocents, in order to justify the lies you told in the first place to drag us into a phony war (which caused the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children in another country, caused the death and dismemberment of many of our own men and women, and bankrupted our country), THIS IS EVIL ON A MIND-BOGGLING SCALE.

That no one has swung from the gallows is incomprehensible. 

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 15:37 | 5537381 TeethVillage88s
TeethVillage88s's picture

Torture in part may be used to corrupt US Military Personnel.

- Conditioning
- Desensitization
- Teaches Fascism
- Provides basis for Evaluating Soldier
- Enlists Soldiers into a Group that can be used at will

Corruption is a process. Power, Status, Money, Elitism, Special membership

Is that how they Corrupt New Congress members?

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 23:47 | 5535349 TheReplacement
TheReplacement's picture

Saddam swung.

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 23:23 | 5535303 himaroid
himaroid's picture

Well, if you put it that way......+1

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 22:56 | 5535236 himaroid
himaroid's picture

My cousin waterboarded viet cong in the field in vietnam. He said it saved beaucoup Marines.

Maybe if y'alls life was on the line you would'nt be such pussies about it.

 

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 15:46 | 5537423 TeethVillage88s
TeethVillage88s's picture

If your brother became a Nazi and worked with Doctor Mengele torturing some folks... would you follow him?

Where do you draw the line?

- Broomsticks in asses
- Electrodes on Genitals
- Electro Shock
- Brain Operations
- Killing Family Members in front of the Prisoner
- Rape of Mother of Prisoner
- Sex Change like Manning
- Russian Roulette with Revolver

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 00:59 | 5535471 dreadnaught
dreadnaught's picture

you meant to say your cousins best friends grandfather heard his Mailman say that his sons best friends fiances uncle said that a Salvation army worker said that torture produces good results .......gay retard

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 23:26 | 5535307 DavidPierre
DavidPierre's picture

That must be the same cousin of yous who makes $800/day on the internet posting pictures of pussies.

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 00:27 | 5535424 himaroid
himaroid's picture

Yep. And too bad for you he doesn't need any new models.

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 05:18 | 5535700 conscious being
conscious being's picture

Do some more reading. The torture was a lot more than water-boarding. The guardian article touches on some of what went on / is still going on??

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/09/cia-torture-report-worst-...

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 22:47 | 5535212 Gadfly
Gadfly's picture

Evil is, as Evil does. Our government is Evil. Period. Amen.

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 22:27 | 5535162 Fix It Again Timmy
Fix It Again Timmy's picture

Dick Cheney is going out on another book tour featuring his new book, "30 Rectal Feeding Recipes That'll Knock Your Socks Off"... I am deeply ashamed of our country and the dirty, deranged fucks who call themselves leaders....

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 23:32 | 5535320 palmereldritch
palmereldritch's picture

Actually the following specific reason seems more credible...notwithstanding the general goal of torture -  being the 'conditioned dehumanization of both victim and perpetrator to effect greater slavery and misery' :

http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/07/14/371210/who-is-abu-bakr-albaghdadi/

[emphasis mine]


The largely unknown leader of the Takfiri terrorist group ISIL has declared himself “caliph” of Islam and rightful ruler of the world’s nearly two billion Muslims.

Al-Baghdadi’s declaration was met with a barrage of ridicule. Observers pointed out that al-Baghdadi declared himself Caliph while wearing a Rolex wristwatch – a symbol of enslavement to Western materialist consumer culture.

Muslim scholarly authorities – even those deluded enough to support the “Syrian rebels” – have unanimously repudiated Baghdadi’s bogus caliphate. Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the best-known pro-Syrian-rebels TV scholar, dismissively rejected Baghdadi’s claim. Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of Tunisia’s Al-Nahda Party, called Baghdadi’s self-promotion “reckless,” “deceptive,” and “ridiculous.” The most important group working to restore the caliphate, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, said Baghdadi’s proclamation distorted the reality of what a caliphate is supposed to be.

Even Assem Barqawi, the spokesperson for the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front – an erstwhile ally of ISIL in the Syrian war – spurned al-Baghdadi’s claim, and ripped ISIL for its brutality.

In short, al-Baghdadi and ISIL have no support whatsoever among Muslims. They are loathed even by their fellow ultra-Salafis, Wahhabis and Takfiris.

Yet the self-proclaimed “caliph” and his roughly 2000 ISIL followers have been relentlessly promoted by the Zionist-dominated Western media and terror-industry think tanks. For example, terror expert William McCants of the Brookings Institution told the New York Times: “ISIS is now officially the biggest and baddest global jihadi group on the planet… Nothing says ‘hard-core’ like being cast out by Al Qaeda.”

A naive, angry young Muslim who saw this in the New York Times might get the idea that ISIL is cool. That’s exactly what the Zionist New York Times and the Zionist Brookings Institution want.

Zionist propagandist Sheldon Filger – who treasonously shilled for Israeli citizen Stanley Fischer’s appointment as head of the American Federal Reserve – is also shilling for al-Baghdadi. Filger writes:

“The lessons of history itself should compel us to take Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's promise to wage a ferocious worldwide war of vengeance against those he sees as the enemies of God with the utmost seriousness. His sermon in Mosul may very well mark the opening shots of the Third World War...”

Worse yet, al-Baghdadi and ISIL are not just being hyped – they are also being armed, trained, and dressed in identical black Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles uniforms. The money is coming from US taxpayers, CIA drug-money slush funds, and CIA-asset Persian Gulf oil sheikhs.

Why are the CIA and the Zionists supporting ISIL and promoting al-Baghdadi’s fake caliphate? And why does Israel provide support and medical treatment to ISIL terrorists in Syria?

This paradoxical situation – a self-proclaimed “caliph of Islam” who has no support among Muslims, but massive support from Zionists and imperialists – points to an ineluctable conclusion: ISIL is a manufactured fake-opposition group.

So who manufactured ISIL – and how?

So who manufactured ISIL – and how? Circumstantial evidence suggests that al-Baghdadi may have been mind-controlled while held prisoner by the US military in Iraq. The American and Zionist authorities are scrambling to hide the fact that al-Baghdadi spent more than five years in US custody. Why would they engage in such a cover-up unless they had something big to hide?

Wikipedia, a tool of the Zionist wing of the CIA, is peddling the following falsehood: “According to US Department of Defense records, al-Baghdadi was held at Camp Bucca as a ‘civilian internee’ by US Forces-Iraq from early February 2004 until early December 2004, when he was released. A Combined Review and Release Board recommended an ‘unconditional release’ of al-Baghdadi and there is no record of him being held at any other time.”

This may not be an outright lie. There may indeed be “no record” of the fact that al-Baghdadi was held and treated by a secret CIA mind-control unit at Camp Bucca from 2004 until 2009. The records of such a “fabricate a fake ‘radical Muslim’ leader through mind control” operation would undoubtedly be destroyed or concealed behind a high-level National Security classification. But is such a thing really possible? Sadly, yes. CIA mind control technology has made tremendous strides since it began in the 1950s with the lavishly-funded MK Ultra program.

MK Ultra was closed around 1960 because it had achieved its objective: Power over the human mind such that a brainwashed “Manchurian candidate” assassin could be created. That is, an ordinary human being, after CIA treatment, could be made to kill someone – anyone – without the slightest conscious awareness of his actions. The most notorious “Manchurian candidate” is Sirhan Sirhan, the mind-control slave who was set up as a patsy in the CIA’s murder of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

The CIA also has a track record of creating cults – and their charismatic leaders. The Reverend Jim Jones, an anti-establishment clergyman, was turned by CIA mind-control into a fire-breathing, charismatic puppet-master, who convinced hundreds of people to join him in a mass suicide. Ironically, the puppet-master was himself a CIA puppet; the mass suicide was a CIA experiment designed to discover whether a large group of political dissidents could be so totally controlled that they would kill themselves on command. This experiment, like the murder of RFK, was a success.

More recently, the CIA has been conducting Nazi-style mind-control experiments on Muslim inmates in Guantanamo and other terror prisons. Jon Ronson – a mainstream journalist and bestselling author who generally keeps his humorous distance from “conspiracy theories” – discovered in 2003 that Guantanamo inmate Jamal al-Harith and others had been subjected to torture and “silent sound” mind-control experiments while in US custody.

In her book The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein shows that CIA torture is not designed to elicit information. Its real purpose is to “break” the subject so he or she can be mind-controlled.

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 22:45 | 5535206 Gadfly
Gadfly's picture

Bingo!

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 21:21 | 5534981 Brutlstrudl
Brutlstrudl's picture

"Another objection is that torture doesn’t work. All the literature and experts say that if we really want usable information, we should go exactly the opposite way and try to gain the trust and confidence of the prisoners".

 

Oh Torture works all right. But you have to have  the right guy. And the right guy is somebody who hates you enough to to drive an airliner into a World Trade center.

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 23:21 | 5535298 DavidPierre
DavidPierre's picture
Chris Bollyn... Israel behind the 9-11 attacks and the Iraq wars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw4UDcmOqp4

After 4 years 30 weeks on ZH and you still spout such shit in the comments?

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 23:58 | 5535370 TheReplacement
TheReplacement's picture

So drink the koolaid or get out?  There are dozens of theories on every subject here.

Let's be real.  Israel wasn't behind Iraq.  Americans were.  Maybe they held dual citizenships or maybe they didn't.  The point is, they were Americans all the same.  Who cares what Israel does anymore than they care what Russia does?  What matters is what we do, that is what we control.  We need to take responsibility.

Wed, 12/10/2014 - 01:43 | 5535535 usednabused
usednabused's picture

Ha, If there were two of you I doubt you coud be twice as ignorant. Is it those dual citizens priveledge to be citizens of the USA when they're doing all their shitty deals, and killing people worldwide, but when they steal boat loads of cash, why then they can be regular joo's again?Yeah, send it to Israel  way of a tax exempt route.... Israel WAS behind the Iraq debacle. They simply bought some cheap politicians here to do their bidding.

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