Tag Archives: Senate Intelligence Committee

national news

Rectal feedings were 'necessary'?

Someone will have to explain to me how the practice of “rectal feeding” becomes a medical necessity.

Yet it’s a practice that Karl “Bush’s Brain” Rove defended this morning on Fox News Sunday.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/14/karl-rove-torture_n_6322774.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013

The term was revealed in that Senate Intelligence Committee report on the treatment of terror suspects by the Bush administration immediately after the 9/11 attacks. One of the revelations is the practice of “rectal feeding,” which Rove said this morning was a “medical necessity.” The report issued by the Intelligence Committee’s Democratic members said otherwise.

Maybe I don’t get out much, but this practice is new to me.

As I understand it, the procedure involves pureeing food and then inserting it into individuals’ rectum. This is how suspects are, um, fed by their captors. Sounds yummy, doesn’t it?

Well, it’s apparently quite a painful process. It inflicts misery on those receiving these food injections.

If the suspect is refusing to eat as a form of protest, aren’t there other ways to “feed” them? Sedation, perhaps, and an intravenous line inserted into their arm would seem to do the trick.

The Senate report suggests the procedure was meant to torture the suspects and to get them to reveal battle plans or other “actionable intelligence” to which our military and spooks could respond.

It seems to me that rectal feeding goes a good bit beyond what is acceptable.

Leave it, though, to Karl Rove to defend, as necessary, a practice that is ay beyond disgusting.

 

International news, national news

It's Cheney who's 'full of crap'

Richard Bruce Cheney doesn’t believe, apparently, in the same America many millions of others do.

Oh sure. Many millions of other Americans support the former vice president’s world view. I respect that. I just happen to fundamentally disagree with Cheney. No surprise there, right?

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/cheney-slams-senate-torture-report-says-practices-were-effective?CID=sm_FB

It’s that report on torture that’s got Cheney all wadded up.

The report released by Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats asserts that the United States employed illegal interrogation techniques on alleged terrorists taken captive immediately after the 9/11 attacks. Cheney’s view — as if anyone expected otherwise — is to say the “enhanced interrogation techniques” produced “actionable intelligence” that protected Americans from further attacks.

The report says otherwise.

I also am going to climb aboard the same wagon as a bona fide American war hero, Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain, who speaks from personal experience in expressing his support for what the Intelligence Committee Democrats say about torture techniques. McCain’s view of those “EITs” is formed by his own experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He said that captives will say anything to stop the pain and that the information they give to the enemy is more bogus than believable.

Cheney continues to defend tactics that are not in keeping with the values we hold dear in this country. Yes, we’re at war with some loathsome organizations that employ equally loathsome tactics on the people they capture. Does that mean we should sink to that level of barbarism? No.

It means we employ our own sophisticated interrogation techniques to glean information.

And no, no one is saying we should kiss the captives on the cheek, as some have suggested.

What the Senate panel is saying, as I understand it, is that the United States must be true to its claim of being better than the enemy we’re seeking to destroy.

 

 

 

International news

McCain knows — and hates — torture

In the name of all that is sane and sensible, if only the rest of America would listen to John McCain when he talks about torture.

The Arizona Republican knows what torture is and what it does. He speaks from intense and deeply moving personal experience.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/09/john-mccain-says-cia-tort_n_6295986.html

And that is why he needs to be heeded when he condemns the practice of torturing suspected al-Qaeda terrorists, as detailed in a Senate Intelligence Committee summary report.

McCain is the only member of the U.S. Senate who’s been tortured by the enemy with whom we were at war. He spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. So when this man speaks of torture, he knows of which he speaks.

At issue is whether the techniques employed on those suspected terrorists produced “actionable intelligence” in the war against international terrorism. McCain believes such interrogation techniques drive captives to say anything to avoid being tortured.

“I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence,” McCain said in a speech on the Senate floor. “I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering.

“Most of all, I know the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights, which are protected by international conventions the U.S. not only joined, but for the most part authored,” McCain said.

The Republican has been fairly surly and gruff in his criticism of President Obama, who beat him in the 2008 race for the presidency. But the president vowed to erase these interrogation techniques from our country’s policy manual. To that end, McCain has endorsed his former foe’s initiative.

The torture tactics used on the terror suspects well could have been counterproductive as we’ve continued to search for and eliminate terrorist leaders.

What’s more, as McCain has noted, they run counter to the belief that “even captured enemies” must be protected from barbaric treatment.

legal news, national news, political news, Uncategorized

A presidential pardon may be in order

The beans are spilled. The cat’s out of the bag. The CIA just might have broken some laws when it detained suspected terrorists and subjected them to torture techniques immediately after the 9/11 attacks.

The spy agency says otherwise, that it broke no laws.

U.S. Senate Democrats on the Intelligence Committee insist that the torture techniques were real and allege that they broke U.S. law.

The New York Times editorial board refers to the findings in the just-released Senate summary of the “enhanced interrogation” as a sign of “depravity” that defies comprehension.

The thought has occurred to me. Perhaps it’s not an original thought, but I’ll toss it out there anyway.

Given that there’s really no serious need to prosecute anyone for alleged criminal activity, perhaps a presidential pardon would be in order.

Go ahead and snicker. This is a serious suggestion, even absent any formal criminal charges being filed against the principals involved — namely President Bush, then-CIA director George Tenet, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Hey, President Ford pardoned his immediate predecessor in the White House, Richard Nixon, for crimes he may have committed while covering up the Watergate burglary. That was the right call in 1974. A similar pardon just might be the right call now.

Let’s have the debate over whether the suspected terrorists were tortured illegally. Both sides will vent. Both will have their say.

There well might be an inclination in some circles to prosecute those in charge at the time. Others will be declare that there’s no need now to punish those who might have committed a crime.

That’s where President Obama can step in.

He’s got the power to issue summary pardons. This well could be the time to act.

 

International news

GOP fires back at torture report

To no one’s surprise, U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans have their own version of whether “enhanced interrogation techniques” made America safer in the wake of 9/11.

They say the tactics saved lives and protected the country against further harm.

The GOP senators say the tactics were necessary to gather intelligence that led eventually to the killing of Osama bin Laden.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/gop-senators-defend-cia-alternate-report-113434.html

Intelligence panel Democrats are standing by their assertion — correctly, in my view — that American intelligence officials and military leaders could have obtained all of that information and protected Americans without subjecting terror suspects to torture.

So there it is: yet another political schism has erupted on Capitol Hill.

As Politico reports: “The GOP report decried the (Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne) Feinstein study, arguing that it contained ‘faulty analysis, serious inaccuracies, and misrepresentations of fact’ to create a series of false conclusions about the counterterrorism program’s effectiveness and the CIA’s interactions with Congress and the White House.”

So, the other side has responded with what it contends is accurate analysis and objective examination of the facts. Is that what they’re saying?

I’ve noted already that this discussion is going to turn into a liar’s contest over time. One side is going to accuse the other of deceit. It’ll go back and forth.

I’ll just stick to my assertion that “enhanced interrogation” can — and should — include tactics that do not include the physical torturing of enemy captives. I’d even allow for sleep deprivation that would include round-the-clock badgering of detainees as a way to make ’em squeal.

Still, the debate rages on.

International news, national news

You mean the CIA might have fibbed?

The Senate report is out: The CIA reportedly lied to President Bush about how it was using “enhanced interrogation techniques” against suspected terrorists.

And to no one’s surprise — certainly not mine — former CIA director Michael Hayden has fired back. He’s defending his agency’s handling of the interrogation techniques.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/cia-torture-report-113420.html?hp=c1_3

My tendency is to believe the Senate, that the CIA was less than truthful. After all, the CIA is a spy agency and its agents are, shall we say, trained to mislead.

The threshold question that will need to answered and then examined for its veracity is whether these techniques — which some call “torture” — produced actionable intelligence that helped the good guys fight the bad guys.

It’s becoming something of a liar’s contest. The CIA and the Bush administration say they did; others say the techniques didn’t provide any information that more normal techniques could have obtained.

The key element is whether torturing the al-Qaeda suspects helped our spooks find Osama bin Laden and whether that information led to the May 2011 SEAL team raid that killed the world’s most wanted terrorist.

The debate has been joined.

Meanwhile, U.S. embassies around the world have been put on heightened alert in case terrorists become so angry at the report that they strike at Americans abroad.

I am one American who does not want to see our forces torture captive combatants. We keep saying we’re above that kind of thing, that we don’t want to reduce our standards to the level of the terrorists we are trying to destroy.

I’m fine with that.

Our intelligence agencies are packed with well-trained professional interrogators who are fully capable of obtaining information through serious questioning and, yes, perhaps some threatening techniques. To inflict actual pain and suffering on those suspects, though, is no better than what they do to captives under their control.

Exceptional nations are able to employ exceptional tactics — even in wartime.