After a protracted battle with the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Obama Administration will finally release its heavily redacted summary of the Senate’s CIA torture report Tuesday.
Details of what will be in the report are scant right now, though there have been reports that the 480-page document will not use the word torture at all when describing the CIA’s torture of detainees.
Officials who opposed the release were long warning it would provoke a backlash if the world knew what the CIA did, and US embassies the world over are ratcheting up security for the planned release.
The Pentagon is also making preparations, putting thousands of Marines on high alert across the Middle East and Africa for potential operations that may be launched after the release.
House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers (R – MI) is loudly opposed to the release, claiming the CIA warned that publicizing CIA torture “will cause violence and deaths.” Senate counterpart Dianne Feinstein (D – CA) insists the release is vital to ensure that CIA torture never happens again.
The political battle-lines related to torture are already being drawn, with then-President George W. Bush making public his support for everything the CIA did back then, dubbing them “patriots” and insisting releasing a report was “way off base.”
Though President Obama insists he supports the release, his administration has fought tooth and nail to ensure that only an extremely redacted summary of the actual report would be made public, and not the report itself.
I would have been extremely embarrassed if I heard that was the reason for being-on-high-alert during my enlistment. Color coding was bad enough…
Right…publishing the report causes violence. Torturing people, using violence against people, that doesn't cause violence. Gotta love that backward logic under which DC operates.
Waging full scale wars against populations of muslims does not cause violence, they hate our freedom and our willingness to release heavily redacted summaries of torture reports.
This is not about what might cause violence – Congress and the WH don't care. What this IS about is protecting certain individuals who claim that what they did was "legal" according to the legal advice they paid their operatives and like-minded ideologues to write. The last thing the "we didn't torture" criminals want is to re-examine the legal underpinnings of what they did – especially since they derailed any attempt to look too closely the first time.
I used to think that American society as a whole would not accept what was done by Bushco as legal and morally right when they looked at the foundation of their argument. I'm not sure anymore. The societal schism we have now is deep and personal. I've seen family disagreements get physical over ideological differences in politics. We're going over the edge, willfully. You can't even point out the actual lies the Congresscritters or the White House tell without being called "liberal looney" or "wingnut" regardless of whether you are right or not. I call it the "you're either with us or agin us" mentality. And it's getting more and more pervasive. There is no longer much common ground left.
Yeah, what is it about religion and politics that makes people flip out? Why can't they carry a reasonable mature conversation without going bonkers? Why can't people maintain some healthy distance over these issues?
We're not debating Coke vs. Pepsi anymore. We're talking .gov "torturing some folks." The stakes are higher. The propaganda, normalcy bias, and "hand that feeds" are powerful phenomena. Questioning these things can explode a person's entire worldview.
And the last thing TPTB want is for the worldview of the masses exploding. TPTB rely upon the masses being distracted and complacent.
There are certain people who deserve to experience violence, like the psychopaths, I mean psychologists, who got several million dollars (it is said, if one can believe it) for cooking up the torture protocols. They hanged the Nuremberg criminals didn't they?
Bush to blame the killings of thousands of man and women in army while they were fooled by the regime to go to war. But when it comes to U.S. foreign policies and war industry, war parties and etc. when was the last time when the regime told the truth? There never been a honest story told by pentagon or the president when USG wanted to start a war, from Vietnam to Yugoslavia, to Iraq, to Libya to Syria and etc. USG is a militarism regime, it's policies are based on the concept period. AIPAC – state department needs to have the USG on the path of militarism, that's why they have peopke as Paul wolfowitz and his alike on their payroll.
It is not only sad but disgusting that we have a Democratic President who has effectively condoned the admitted federal crime of torture by his preceding Republican President — and we have a Congress which won't even use its undoubted power to call torture "torture." When I joined the US Navy at the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, I took essentially the same oath as all Presidents and members of Congress must take: "To defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign or domestic". I left the military in 1954, but I remain committed to that oath. In my view, my so-called "representatives" in Washington — of both political parties — are domestic enemies of our Constitution. I do not advocate violence against them, but I do advocate all other means in our power to remove these bipartisan traitors from the elected and appointed seats they are befouling. Our so-called "democracy" is currently a sick joke.
You say that you don't advocate violence against these traitors. But what was the view of the US during the Nuremberg trials? Aren't there war crimes whose penalty is death – after a trial setting forth the abundant evidence against those who committed them? I would not advocate non-judicial killings (although my government does when it kills by drone), but after a fair and square trial, some deserve the ultimate penalty.
Everybody knows they tortured. The CIA's just afraid of names being released, because being a sicko torturer can cause embarrassment and a whole plethora of problems with inter-personal relationships.
Time for a little disclosure, eh?
Why would we be expecting blow back if everything we did was legal and according to the norms of international law?
Delay, delay, redact, redact – always the same approach whether it is liars in foreign policy or the cops
in Ferguson. The hope is that the batteries in the flashlight will dim and the cockroaches can find a dark place to hide. Oops, there goes kerry, hey wasn't that psaki ? Lots to hide, hence the worry.
Oh, the hegemony of it all.
Blowback is all BULLS–T!
What they are really afraid of is prosecution for WAR CRIMES. Torture is a violation of US Law, Military Law and International Law. Remember when the torture reports first surfaced? What did these liars say? Oh, we only waterboarded as they them tried to somehow argue that waterboarding was not really torture. Now we are about to hear some of the other "methods" that they employed and it won't even be the whole truth as this report will be heavily redacted.
When you find out that they drilled holes into detainees knees with power tools and S–t like that, just remember thief claim that they don't collect content just metadata.
They are the most vile liars since the third reich.
The time to be concerned with blowback was before torture was authorized, but I'm fairly sure [redacted] in [redacted] who performed [redacted] on [redacted] because [redacted] doesn't really have much to worry about.
Wealth disparity — Root cause of our violent Empire
Until we reach the ultimate conclusion of violence, a society norm will it be to take all we can take, which is why the highest priority of honest government it to equalize wealth.
For the greater a man’s wealth, the greater his greed, as the greater is his desire to fight for wealth — the greater his need to kill to protect wealth.
For our criminal Empire is a complete reverse of what is needed to end all the legalized violence that perpetuates the greatest disparity of wealth the world has ever known. For our Empire is in the business of enabling the corporate rich and all their dictators to enslave their populations, which enables us to do things such as trade our war materials for Middle-East oil. For our government is doing nothing different in our homeland then it does in foreign lands, namely enable the upper half of society to enslave the lower half by poverty.
These cowards. They should have not been torturing in the first place. I believe Washington is truly scared about admitting thier crimes against humanity. I wait for the day that the system is dismantled and its CIA thugs and leaders on trial at the Hague
It's going to be a long, long wait.