Thursday, December 11, 2014

USA Torture, What's New

I already knew that the CIA, with the active knowledge and consent of President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, committed numerous acts of torture throughout the Bush presidency. What I didn't know...
  • When torture defender claimed that waterboarding isn't so bad they were telling the truth. The depth and depravity of CIA torture was so severe that repeatedly nearly drowning people was, by comparison, relatively gentle.
  • The CIA put a unqualified rookie in charge of the Afghan torture camp. In hindsight, that makes sense. If the program went south they didn't want any skilled agent to take the fall. They also probably picked him because he was a psychopath who would enjoy the assignment.
  • The CIA hired outside contractors with no experience in interrogations to design the program. They were quite incompetent but also really got off on developing new torture techniques. We American taxpayers made these junior grade Doctors Mengele into multimillionaires.
  • The claim that "enhanced interrogations" isn't torture wasn't just sophistry. It was an outright lie. The CIA in its internal memos described the program using the word "torture."
There are a few things I can deduce.
  • Abu Ghraib was probably an official approved program. The only apparent difference between the Afghan program and Abu Ghraib was that someone took pictures. The goals were similar. The techniques were similar. The use of untrained psychopaths was similar.
  • There is more, even worse, still secret. The effort by President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry to delay (quash) the Senate report and Attorney General Holder to stonewall it was revealing. Their reasons were ludicrous, like ISIS is going to be even more violent now than a month ago. They are afraid that the Senate report might trigger additional revaluations. Perhaps the drone killing program is as badly run as the torture program or perhaps something even worse. Whatever, it is a secret that President Obama is terrified might get out.
And one outstanding question. What did Hillery Clinton know and when did she know it? I don't care what her opinion on torture is now. I want to know what she knew while Secretary of State.

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