CIA Report Released

[LongBlade]

The WaPo has an interesting report on the release of the CIA's torture report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/senate-report-on-cia-program-details-brutality-dishonesty/2014/12/09/1075c726-7f0e-11e4-9f38-95a187e4c1f7_story.html?wpisrc=al_national

There are a lot of angles to this and it is a thorough mix of politics and policy. People of all political stripes seem to be going in multiple directions.

Consider just a few things:

• Diane Feinstein is stepping down as chairperson of the Senate intel committee. She may be worried about her legacy.
• Today is the day Jonathan Gruber is getting grilled by Congress about his "stupid American voter" comments on Obamacare.
• Most of this report is old news.
• The report is a vastly redacted release of a much larger report. We don't know who did the redactions or why.
• The report failed to interview employees about their first-hand accounts.
• The release of the report may increase the danger of US troops and personnel overseas.
• The WaPo accounting of the report makes it clear that several people thought the program was off the rails, too aggressive, and some guys couldn't handle what was going on and likely resigned.
• One does wonder if the bad guys deserved this treatment. Part of me wants to say "yes."
• According to the WaPo there may have been almost a quarter of detainees who were cases of mistaken identity. It is not clear from my reading whether they were subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" or not.

I'm not sure if I covered it all, but this is clearly a complex and controversial program and release and timing of the release. It would be easy to ascribe both noble and ignoble motivations about several aspects of it.

[Nefaro]

Some points in the article give me the impression it's an attempt at making some political hay by Feinstein and her Democrat Droogies by drudging up stuff that was already reported on awhile back, adding some outright assumptions without double-checking the sources.

The investigation was conducted exclusively by the Senate committee's Democratic staff.
..
The document names only a handful of high-ranking CIA employees and does not call for any further investigation of those involved or even offer any formal recommendations. It steers clear of scrutinizing the involvement of the White House and Justice Department, which two years ago ruled out the possibility that CIA employees would face prosecution.
...
Instead, the Senate text is largely aimed at shaping how the interrogation program will be regarded by history. The inquiry was driven by Feinstein and her frequently stated determination to foreclose any prospect that the United States might contemplate such tactics again.
**
The report also faced criticism from Republicans on the intelligence committee who submitted a response to the report that cited alleged inaccuracies and faulted the committee's decision to base its findings exclusively on CIA documents without interviewing any of the operatives involved. Democrats have said they did so to avoid interfering with a separate Justice Department inquiry.
**

[JasonPratt]

What was that great word coined by Democrats several years ago to describe Republican political gibberish?

Whharrrgarrble?

[airboy]

"The report also faced criticism from Republicans on the intelligence committee who submitted a response to the report that cited alleged inaccuracies and faulted the committee's decision to base its findings exclusively on CIA documents without interviewing any of the operatives involved. Democrats have said they did so to avoid interfering with a separate Justice Department inquiry."

Sure they did.  Statute of limitations has almost expired for everything.  Lets see.  Obama became President back in January, 2009.  We are close to January 2014.  Unless the Justice Department will bring charges before January 15, the odds this is true is pretty much 0.  In addition, the stuff the report whines about occurred in the first couple of years after 9/11 - which is way, way past the statute of limitations.

I think that Feinstein and her liberal Democratic buddies rammed through another anthology of their witch hunt.

[LongBlade]

I'm not sure what to make of any of this.

There is a lot of partisan fodder on both sides.

And yet it appears as though, whether you approve of EIT or not, at some point a few interrogations went way overboard.

Even the director today in his press conference couldn't speculate as to whether the info gained from people who underwent EIT actually would have given that up whether they hadn't had EIT. Further he refused to connect EIT to the information gained.

Lastly, the CIA did hack the Senate computers. I might be the slow guy in the class, but isn't that some kind of crime? And why is no one discussing that?

Nobody seems to be winning in this struggle. To my mind it only reinforces that (yet another) arm of government got out of control.

The bad guys were enemy combatants. They were lucky to be as well treated as they were.

Still, there are a lot of wrongs here.

[Steelgrave]

The thought of "enhanced interrogation" never felt like America to me. We're supposed to be the good guys, and torture isn't something good guys do. It's distasteful, it's dirty, it's what our enemies do to prisoners, it's not who we're supposed to be.

I grew up thinking America was black and white and that John Wayne was who every man should strive to be. What I've learned since is that such a simple world view may be something to wish for, but it's not reality. It's a complicated world.

I know with a certainty if someone harmed my family, my wife, sons, grandsons....I could do terrible things. I'm glad I didn't have to make the call on what happened to those who struck against our country, costing other's their own family members. It's not difficult to put ourselves in their shoes, or for us to hate when the latest video of a beheading is thrown out on the internet by these savage bastards.

I still think torture is wrong and it doesn't feel "American". I hope it always feels dirty and un-American to us as a people. I hope we are never comfortable with it. I'm glad I'm not one of the men called on to interrogate them. But I'm grateful that other's were willing to shoulder those responsibilities and make those hard calls.

[JasonPratt]

Dad, a Vietnam veteran with some SpecOps missions back in the day (as helicopter crewman -- usually he was chief mechanic but sometimes helped bring supplies in or bring Spooks in or out), had an interesting angle on it: what we put (apparent?) enemies through for EIT isn't as tough as what we put our own pilots and special forces through for prison camp training (which of course by necessity isn't as bad as what some of our enemies put actual captured soldiers through and civilians, too.)

[bayonetbrant]

[JasonPratt]

Well, sister, we're fighting people who would gladly reduce schoolchildren to stains at the first available opportunity.

So yeah, compared to that, some EIT, most of it carefully controlled so as not to go overboard, isn't a thing.

Mom told me this morning about watching CNN interviewing one of the actual interrogators last night; he said (paraphrasing), "Yep, we did it, and we went before Congress and told them what we were going to do and no further, and every one of them asked if there wasn't a way we could go harder. Because every one of them, like us, had seen the jumpers (out of the WTC to escape being burned to death), and never wanted to see them again. So, how are you doing today? How's CNN doing? There's a reason for that."