Torture Report Released

So much for American Exceptionalism.
I agree with the ACLU. Since they will never be prosecuted Obama should officially pardon Bush and Cheney. They'll never be arrested but at least it will be recognized as a crime.
Here are some lowlights from the report...
The Most Gruesome Moments in the CIA ‘Torture Report’

Obama already pardoned them all when he swept the whole thing under the rug soon after taking office.

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Updated On: 12/9/14 at 03:44 PM

#crimingwhilewhite

That's the truth.
It's horrific.

The Senate report was never intended to cover what did Diane Feinstein know and when did she know it.

The report renders that unknowable.

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The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence spent the last five years investigating the CIA (and only the CIA as was a part of the bipartisan agreement struck to conduct the study). All of the information that has been released has come from CIA records and interviews with members of the CIA. The scope of the investigation was kept deliberately small so as not to investigate Congress or the White House, cause...you know...God forbid. What is released is a heavily redacted version of the full report with many, many pages not included in the public report. Can you imagine what we don't know if this is what we're 'allowed' to know? It's being released because the American people have a right to know what's been done in their name.

And no...I have no sympathy for terrorists. But I happen to believe that it's wrong to waterboard anyone. To rape...oh...I'm sorry, 'anally hydrate' anyone. To make anyone stand in stress positions while they have broken feet or legs. And I have managed to work up some sympathy for CIA informants that were wrongly rounded up and subjected to torture. I have some sympathy for the mentally slow man who was held and tortured because they wanted information out of his family. I don't have to have any sympathy for terrorists to be ashamed that the United States under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney committed war crimes. It was not a couple of bad apples at the bottom. It was orders from the very top.

That administration was not notified until late 2006... as the report clearly states, if you actually read it.


That's just wrong. It would be chronologically impossible for the White House was not informed until "late 2006."

The CIA created the program after the capture of Abu Zubaydah in March 2002. It went first to the Justice Department, then the CIA and Justice went to the White House and they were given authorization to compile the list of techniques. That list was then shown again to Justice, where it took several months to come up with the infamous rulings that the techniques were lawful, and then the president and the National Security Council approved the list before it was shared with key members of Congress. All that happened before the end of 2004.

But in 2005, members of Congress was already turning against the techniques. So how could the administration not be "informed" until 2006? They were driving it!

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Updated On: 12/10/14 at 04:10 PM

From the report:

"On several occasions in early 2003, CIA General Counsel Scott Muller expressed concern to the National Security Council principals, White House staff, and Department of Justice personnel that the CIA’s program might be inconsistent with public statements from the Administration that the U.S. Government’s treatment of detainees was “humane.”[redacted] CIA General Counsel Muller therefore sought to verify with White House and Department of Justice personnel that a February 7, 2002, Presidential Memorandum requiring the U.S. military to treat detainees humanely did not apply to the CIA."

Buzzfeed (of all news outlets) explores why the Senate report says Bush didn't know until 2006...


BUZZFEED: How The CIA Torture Report Lets American Leaders Off The Hook: The Senate’s long-awaited report on Bush-era torture techniques puts too much blame on the CIA, and not enough on the American

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Damn skippy, Horse Tears! Thanks for posting that.

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^ Done

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