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CIA Lied Over Brutal Interrogations

mrspoonsi sends this news from the BBC: The CIA carried out "brutal" interrogations of terror suspects in the years after the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., a U.S. Senate report has said. The summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report said the CIA misled Americans on the effectiveness of "enhanced interrogation." The interrogation was poorly managed and unreliable, the report said. President Obama has previously said that in his view the techniques amounted to torture. The Senate committee's report runs to more than 6,000 pages, drawing on huge quantities of evidence, but it remains classified and only a 480-page summary (PDF) is being released. Publication had been delayed amid disagreements in Washington over what should be made public. CIA Director John Brennan has posted a response.

5 of 772 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Really? by cheater512 · · Score: 5, Informative

    7.5 days with no sleep? After half that you'd be saying its pretty brutal.

  2. Re:Justice by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Informative

    Also, waterboarding was done on 3 prisoners, though the media would have you believe every single prisoner in gitmo had it done to them.

    FTFA:

    The CIA has maintained that only three prisoners were ever subjected to waterboarding, but the report alludes to evidence that it may have been used on others, including photographs of a well-worn waterboard at a black site where its use was never officially recorded. The committee said the agency could not explain the presence of the board and water-dousing equipment at the site, which is not named in the report, but is believed to be the âoeSalt Pitâ in Afghanistan.

    Who are you going to believe, the CIA or your own lying eyes?

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  3. Re:Where are the war crimes prosecutions? by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 5, Informative

    Only one person has gone to jail over this - John Kiriakou, a whistleblower who was prosecuted for revealing classified information about this activity.

  4. Re:Really? by amorsen · · Score: 5, Informative

    Leaving marks or not is a choice for any half-way competent torturer. Being brutal without leaving marks is something which was first developed around 1920 and which has been refined since then. England, France, and the United States have led the world in this, and various governments around the world have been quick to learn from their examples. The reason is, of course, to mislead people like you into believing that torture is not torture.

    See Torture and Democracy by Darius Rejali.

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  5. Re:Really? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Brutal"

    No injuries, marks, or other affects, permanent or otherwise.

    They didn't have fun, to be sure, but brutal it wasn't.

    Ah, the Spanish Inquisition rationaliztion approach From the Wikipedia page:

    "Although the Inquisition was technically forbidden from permanently harming or drawing blood, this still allowed for methods of torture. The methods most used, and common in other secular and ecclesiastical tribunals, were garrucha, toca and the potro. The application of the garrucha, also known as the strappado, consisted of suspending the victim from the ceiling by the wrists, which are tied behind the back. Sometimes weights were tied to the ankles, with a series of lifts and drops, during which the arms and legs suffered violent pulls and were sometimes dislocated. The toca, also called interrogatorio mejorado del agua, consisted of introducing a cloth into the mouth of the victim, and forcing them to ingest water spilled from a jar so that they had the impression of drowning .[76] The potro, the rack, was the instrument of torture used most frequently."

    The freaky part is the similarity to teh Spanish inquisition.

    No one expected that!

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