Senate Report Reveals Bush Administration Engaged in Horrible Torture With No National Security Benefits
By More on the torture report later, but I think we can sum up two major points. First, the scope of torture was horrible:
In Nov. 2002, a detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to the floor died, apparently from hypothermia. This case appears similar to the that of Gul Rahman, who died of similarly explained causes at a Afghan site known as the “Salt Pit,” also in Nov. 2002. The site was also called ‘The Dark Prison’ by former captives.
The aide said that the Cobalt site was was dark, like a dungeon, and that experts who visited the site said they’d never seen an American prison where people were kept in such conditions. The facility was so dark in some places that guard had to wear head lamps, while other rooms were flooded with bright lights and white noise to disorient detainees.
At the Cobalt facility, the CIA also forced some detainees who had broken feet or legs to stand in stress-inducing positions, despite having earlier pledged that they wouldn’t subject those wounded individuals to treatment that might exacerbate their injuries.
[…]
At least five detainees were subjected to “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration,” without any documented medical need. “While IV infusion is safe and effective,” one officer wrote, rectal hydration could be used as a form of behavior control.
Others were deprived of sleep, which could involve staying awake for up to 180 hours—sometimes standing, sometimes with their hands shackled above their heads.
Some detainees were forced to walk around naked, or shackled with their hands above their heads. In other instances, naked detainees were hooded and dragged up and down corridors while subject to physical abuse.
At one facility, detainees were kept in total darkness and shackled in cells with loud noise or music, and only a bucket to use for waste.
Far more where that came from, I’m afraid. This would be grotesquely immoral no matter what the consequences, but as tends to be the case the alleged payoffs in national security were illusory:
It’s official: torture doesn’t work. Waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, did not in fact “produce the intelligence that allowed us to get Osama bin Laden,” as former Vice President Dick Cheney asserted in 2011. Those are among the central findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogation and detention after 9/11.
The report’s executive summary is expected to be released Tuesday. After reviewing thousands of the CIA’s own documents, the committee has concluded that torture was ineffective as an intelligence-gathering technique. Torture produced little information of value, and what little it did produce could’ve been gained through humane, legal methods that uphold American ideals.
Meanwhile, a Fox News hack has declared that “This is the apology tour on steroids.” America is being thrown under the bus, people! I wish I thought this reaction was going to be an outlier…